Drive your career aggressively

Today, we will look at three of the attributes that will help you to drive your career: value, volunteering and visibility. If you real ly want to accelerate your career, spend most of your time on high-value projects, high-value operations and high-value initiatives. It is true that time is money.

And so, never waste your valuable time on unimportant matters. Keep yourself busy with only those things that matter most to the company. Avoid wasting time in simple and little fights, avoid wasting time on not-so-important things like Facebook , Twitter and so on.

Just to be clear, it is good to move on with times and to socialise and so this column is not against such social networking platforms, but that serious workers should only use their own free time like lunch time, evenings and nights for non-work related activities. Do also be careful not to get addicted to such infectious evolutions. You really want to maximise the value you obtain from every bit of time you spend on anything.

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When a chance arises where they want someone to volunteer and help with some action, always be ready to volunteer unless you are over committed and preoccupied or unless the action you are being invited to volunteer for is of no value or a bad one. Volunteering is a very good way of getting a free chance to step outside your box, learn a few new skills, know new people and important contacts as well as gain those important, but rare big points arising from your benevolence and possibly great performance. Make sure that although you are volunteering, your output must be the best possible output.

This might be as simple as a question on who should be a secretary in a meeting. Volunteer and write the best minutes that can be and circulate them the same day or at the latest the next day. These little gestures count a lot if you are to accelerate your career.

You will be seen as someone who when given some responsibility, they do it perfectly well and fast. There is no point in volunteering to be secretary only to circulate the minutes ages after the meeting or minutes that have dozens of errors and are incomplete. Thirdly, gain some visibility for what you do.

Let us face it, products that do well on the market are not necessar ily the best products. It is those products which are good and well marketed. This world is competitive and opportunities gravitate towards people who are known to decision makers.

This is a secret many pretend not to accept as true in practice but almost everyone knows. Make sure that at your organisation, you are not a number. You are known to all your peers but also to most if not all senior people, people who make important decisions that can affect you positively or negatively.

Work out a plan to get to know them and to get them to know you. Best is to get them know you through actions, good actions. That becomes tough!

Find clever ways to subtly ‘engineer’ your visibility. Most successful career people that I know the world-over do this in various ways. How you can do it, is left to you as an assignment. Good luck as you rise and shine on the fast track to accelerated career progression!

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