Staying in the Game

I've seen a couple dozen messages like this during my career. In fact, I've even crafted a few. I've been through mergers, acquisitions, downsizings, organizational changes, personal career set-backs and a myriad of new corporate initiatives. And the best lesson I learned from all of them? Stay a player.

Granted my tactics for what that meant varied with the situation. Sometimes the safest play was to keep my head down and do my work exceedingly well until I understood the new landscape. Sometimes I rolled with the punches long enough to realize what was happening might be great for the company, but not a great long term choice for me, so I moved on. Sometimes I helped others acclimate to the new direction or culture and found new opportunities emerging along the way. Sometimes the toll was personal, like when a promotion I'd worked my entire career to reach was given to an outsider. Still, I stayed in the game.

But there's more to winning at working than survival. To grow and thrive in the corporate world you must find your resilient center and evolve. That may mean learning new skills, aligning with a new boss or company, changing direction, letting go of the way things used to be done, compromising approaches or moving on.

Only fifteen percent of S& P 500 companies listed at the end of the 1950's are still in existence fifty years later. In a Fast Company (Nov04) interview with Jim Collins, author of the best selling book, "Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies," he advises companies to, "Preserve the core! And! Stimulate progress!" He claims, "To be built to last, you have to be built for change!"

His advice is as true for successful companies as it is for successful people. You need to preserve your core and stimulate your progress. If you do, you'll stay a player and deal with the changes coming your way. Sure, change can be painful and difficult and uncomfortable, but if you're open to what it brings, it may surprise you. It did me. My best lifetime career opportunity came after I was denied the promotion I coveted. It never would have happened if I hadn't stayed in the game.



(c) 2005 Nan S. Russell. All rights reserved.