Category: Career Advice

The following phrase occurred to me after conversations I had with two ex-colleagues. Both of whom also now happen to be very good friends;

“You don’t know what you don’t know, so how can you ever be sure you know enough?”

Both find themselves in a similar position; both have progressed in their careers at their respective organisations, and both have very recently received a significant bump in responsibility and work-load. Neither has EVER received the recognition they deserve, but both have dramatically improved things for their departments after taking over. They also replaced people on much higher salaries.

It’s very easy for me to rail on the senior management at those organisations about how they must show appreciation for their star performers. In both monetary terms, and the respect they have earned. But the fact remains that neither of these talented guys know their true worth.

Yes, their senior management are idiots, they probably always have been, but if my friends had been paying attention they would be in a better position to negotiate. If they had been laying the right groundwork over the course of their careers, no promotion would have been offered without the corresponding upward review of their compensation packages.

And the thing is, I know exactly how they feel. After 12+ at my last ‘corporate gig’ it was not until the last few years that I started to get it right. It took a further year after my departure for me to finally know my worth. The true value of my skill-set.

I also know exactly why it took this long; fear.

When I started a new career in my 30’s, I could not have known less about my chosen field of cybersecurity. My first two weeks as a Firewall Administrator consisted of my learning what a firewall was and faking my way to a couple of credentials. Over the next 5 years I worked my up to managing the department, which was then all taken away during a company merger. For the next 7 years I worked my way up from a brand new consultant to Director of 28 consultants across 14 time zones.

Yes, my compensation increased, but I very much doubt it was in-line with my market value. Why? Because I always doubted that I had learned enough in my career to have proven my value, to be worth more than my management were offering. Also, having spent so long at one place, my blind loyalty got in the way. I assumed I would be taken care of if gave it my all.

I could have gone on for years this same way, luckily the final decision was made for me. When I look back, I can see years of wasted time and misplaced loyalty, but if I’m really honest with myself, it was my own fear and laziness that really held me back. All I had to do was look around, have some conversations, and above all; stop being such a wuss.

I know it’s not as simple as I’m making out to be, we all have responsibilities (family, mortgage and so on…) but in the end, YOU are the one that sets your value, and if you’re not getting your due, YOU are the only one to blame. I had no choice in working this out, I was “laid-off”, but one of the most amazing upsides of a bad situation is that I’ll never be afraid again.

I know my worth, do you know yours?

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[This article is based loosely on the Dunning-Kruger Effect.]

Have you ever been part of a meeting where someone whom you suspect has no idea what they are talking about, is actually the one controlling the meeting’s outcome? Or the opposite; been part of a meeting where you KNOW someone in the room is an expert on the relevant subject, yet remains quiet? Now combine the two; the expert stays quiet while the idiot rambles on.

I’m sure at some point I’ve been both, and if I’m honest, mostly the idiot.

One of the many aspects of human nature is our susceptibility to bow to confidence. Con artists and organised religions alike (but I repeat myself) have preyed on this for millennia. Politicians, emperors, dictators, cult leaders, you name it, all have the ability to make us believe utter nonsense. We are invariably less influenced by what is said, than how it’s said, and by whom.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
– Voltaire

The opposite aspect of this is that even if you are an expert on something, if you aren’t confident in your presentation, your knowledge and skill may be of little impact. Potentially, even if you did speak up, your hesitant manner would negate your audience’s trust in your message. That’s if they were even listening in the first place.

Yet another aspect of human nature is that we really don’t care about other people’s opinions. We are either pleased when people agree with us, or we’ll debate, argue, even fight with those who don’t. Our tolerance for alternative opinions, was well as our ability to adjust our own, only gets worse as we get older. We spend our lives surrounding ourselves with things that make us comfortable, all of which do nothing but reinforce our established beliefs.

I have long been a proponent of self-reflection. The ability to take an objective-as-possible look at yourself, maybe even from another’s perspective, is critical in being able to adapt to whatever the world throws at you. From my experience, there is a direct correlation between the ability to self-reflect and the ability to accept responsibility for both your life, and your actions.

Blaming others is a form of blind-faith, it suggests an infallibility that can never exist. Both experts and idiots are affected equally on this point, both negatively.

The lines between confidence and arrogance, faith and stubbornness, mentorship and patronisation are all blurry, and entirely dependent on the recipient’s perception, not the deliverer’s intent.  Self reflection / observation is the only way you can adapt to the person(s) opposite you, and without that adaptation your own needs will not be met. At least not in full.

While being aware of your tendencies does not equate to an ability to make immediate adjustments (as I know very well), we all have to start somewhere. Whether you’re an expert or an idiot, everything you do is in some way contextualised by those around you. It’s up to you to maximise your impact in a beneficial way.

In your personal life, do as you wish, but at work you are beholden to someone; employer, stockholders, customers, or just your immediate team. Neither the humble expert nor the confident idiot are any good to anyone.

Including yourself.

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No-one would call me gregarious, outgoing, or perhaps even friendly, but I will have every conversation offered to me. To NOT have that conversation suggests many things, almost all of which are negative; I think the person is dull / stupid / annoying, that I know more than they do, or that I do WANT to know what they know and so on. These things are judgmental, arrogant, and ignorant respectively. Of all things that it’s bad to be, ignorant is to me the worst.

I’m certainly not saying that by having the conversations that I’m suddenly a saint, but as some use faith to stop thinking for themselves, I use conversation to keep some of my more negative tendencies at bay. We all have negative thoughts, we all think bad things, but it’s knowing that we aren’t a bad person because we don’t act on those aberrant thoughts that ensures we remain good citizens.

But all of that is from a personal development perspective, in its somewhat lighter form, conversation can make or break your career development too.

It’s very easy to assume that you make your own way in life, that anything good you have is through your own hard work. Basically you created your life out of a vacuum. This is simply not the case.

Here we are in 2014, and anyone who in has a smartphone has access to information that we can never in a million years (quite literally) read, let alone absorb and retain. We must all categorise what we see every day into one of 3 buckets:

1. Read, absorb, and assimilate for ongoing use;

2. Skim, file away for reference; or

3. Ignore

95% of what we read is in bucket 3, 3% is in bucket 2, and only 2% is how we each use to make a career for ourselves. It is my belief that even that 2% does not truly give us full benefit until the context means something else to others as well.

You’ve probably heard the sayings; “Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.” and “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” [Aristotle and Einstein respectively], so by definition, nothing you say or think can really make any difference until shared.

Everyone you meet is the perfect sounding board in some fashion, but it requires you to take your own ego completely out of the equation. In the end, I don’t think anyone can ever care as much about someone else’s opinion as they do their own, so surely it makes sense to listen more than talk?

I am in no way saying that you should always forego your own needs / ideas / opinions in favour of everyone else’s, but it’s only really in conversation that we can obtain either the validation we all look for, or something else to think about.

Let’s face it, none of us is perfect, and once you hit your 40’s your opinions on almost everything are pretty much set. If we can, even from time to time, shut the hell up, who knows what we’ll learn.

All that said, talking to me about sports is a great way to get yourself ignored.

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In a recent post (Digital Anarchy? Not Without Identity Management) I posited that eventually Identity Management would consist of a construct of your entire life. From the beginning, all the way through your to your present day, and continuing without pause until the end. The premise is that the more that is known about you, the harder it becomes to pretend to be you. Most fraud mechanisms work on making value judgements related to ‘normal’ behaviour, so why don’t we help that process along?

Privacy and profiling issues aside of course! 🙂

So it occurred to me that if all potential employers knew exactly what I believed in, and – assuming they agreed with me – how I could provide benefit to their organisation, then a CV is almost unnecessary.

LinkedIn already provides the factual information about my previous employment, and as much detail regarding my functions / achievements as I deem fit to share. Employers can do a background check based on my online presence long before approaching me directly. So add a blog on top of that, and what else could they possibly need to make a decision regarding next steps?

References? Background Investigations? Yes, but these are final steps, as the only purpose a CV serves is to get you that first interview. As such, it is VERY hit and miss, and a shining gem of a CV to one HR pro is a not-so-polished turd to another. In the end, HR are not even your final audience, but every candidate is expected to know all about writing CVs and cover letters, as well as interview techniques and etiquette. All you end up doing is filtering out the worst candidates, not narrowing down the best.

A blog, on the other hand, shows many things, all of which have good and bad elements depending on your point of view:

  1. Communication Skills – Writing is not easy, and even doing an average job of it takes a level of skill. If you cannot get your point across in 500 – 1000 words, AND in a way that the majority can understand, you either need to work on your writing skills, your knowledge of the subject, or both.
    o
  2. Subject Matter Expertise – Blogs on specific subjects should be written by people who have relatively significant experience in their chosen profession. But that does not mean they are alway right. A blog from a ‘security expert’ with whom I vehemently disagree will be dismissed just as quickly as would a blog on intelligent design.
    0
  3. Desire to Help – While my blog [for example] was initially started because my wife told me to, it soon became an integral part of my weekly tasking. The skill-set I have (such as it is) does no good to anyone until everyone can follow the guidance I am trying to impart. Security expertise [for example] is NOT something that should be used just as a competitive advantage. There is plenty of opportunity to make a living while giving as much as you can back.
    o
  4. Thought Leadership …Or Not – One of the fastest growing buzz-phrases / clichés, but the concept is sound; Are you a person who creates the new, improves the old, or sustains the present? All of these things have their place, any one of them is not necessarily better than the others, but you need to know which you are, and so do your potential employers.
    o
  5. Skin In The Game – A phrase I’m borrowing from our American friends, it means that you are actually taking part in something, and not just sitting on the sidelines watching. Good if you’re contributing positively, bad if you’re an idiot.

Anything that fights against “But we’ve always done it this way!” is to me a good thing, and that’s where a blog really comes into its own. All of your ideas, concepts, or even random thoughts need to be put down into words that others can follow, which mean YOU have to clarify them first. Ideas catch on, but only the ideas that see the light of day.

For good or bad my blog is now my CV, let’s see how it pans out! 🙂

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Or to put it another way; a life without trying much of anything new.

Just to clarify; I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to be content with your lot in life, and not wanting to try new things. In fact, I almost envy those people actually.

Almost.

But if you accept this as the definition;

REGRET
verb
1. feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over (something that one has done or failed to do).

…then it’s fairly clear – to me anyway – that if you don’t have any regrets, then you have either not done much, or you have no remorse for the bad things you did do. And we have ALL done something bad to someone at some point.

So the cliched advice to ‘live your life without regrets’ is frankly impossible if your existence is even remotely eventful. No-one is perfect, no-one gets everything they have ever wanted, and not every failure in life can be tacked up to a mere ‘disappointment’.

Not only have we all done things we wish we hadn’t (even if takes years to realise it), we have also likely had many instances of wishing we HAD done something but now it’s too late. If neither of these are true for you, what the Hell HAVE you been doing with your time? Living a perfect life? Lucky you, but for the other 99.9999…% of the population we are left dealing with consequences.

But here’s the rub; I’m not only glad I have regrets, but I actually look forward to collecting more, because it means I’ve put myself out there and I have been in positions to make decisions I can regret.  I have lived a relatively unspectacular life and have hundreds of regrets, all of which were experiences I would not trade for anything.

I am what I am now because of my mistakes and my successes, and am therefore defined not only by all of the good I’ve done, but by those regrets. Basically they make me human, they make me real.

For example; I’m at this moment happily married (my wife might not be), have a job that is ridiculously cool, loving family / friends, and enough money. But all of this was built on the foundations of countless train-wreck relationships, disastrous career moves, and a great deal of pain. My own, and the pain I’ve caused others.

To have no regrets now, or in the future, suggests that I have everything I want (I don’t), that I’m not sorry for some of the things I’ve done (I am), and that I will make no more mistakes for which I WILL be sorry down the road (I undoubtedly will). It means that I’m moving forward, I’m exercising my ‘…right to life, liberty and security of person.’ and that I will always accept responsibility for my mistakes.

But I’m proud to say that I have NO regrets based on unfulfilled wishes, mine are all based on things I didn’t do, did do, or on goals I have failed to reach [yet]. There is no room for fantasy or ‘if-onlys’ in a life of accountability and one well lived.

On the balance, I have a GREAT life, and I already know what my next regret is going to be; tomorrow’s hangover! 🙂

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