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I recently finished an article in an older issue of the Harvard Business Review entitled What Only the CEO Can Do (May 2009, by A.G. Lafley)  As I read it, I realized, like many HBR articles, that the principles described can be applied in another way.  In the article, then Proctor and Gamble CEO A. G. Lafley suggests a company’s CEO is the link between the operation inside the company and the world outside.  In this capacity, there are four tasks that only the CEO can perform.

I’ll paraphrase the four tasks because they’re slightly out of context here, but I highly recommend reading the article (Reprint R0905D):

1. Define the what’s important to the company in the outside world.
2. Decide what business the company is in.
3. Balance short term and long term goals.
4. Shape the values and standards by which the company operates.

If you think of yourself as the CEO of your own career, you can translate these four tasks into crucial activities that only you can do:

1. Define what is meaningful to you
2. Decide what you’re going to do with your career
3. Balance the immediate needs of your life with long term goals
4. Determine your personal values and standards and hold yourself to them

Let me break these down.

Define what’s meaningful to you

Lafley says the CEO must decide which stakeholders are the most valuable and what results are the most salient.  In other words, on whom will the company focus and what are the key measures of success?  When the needs of multiple stakeholders conflict, decisions are made in favor of the key stakeholder.

Translating this to your career means more than simply saying your focus is your employer and the measurement is your salary.  We all have stakeholders in our lives (even the unattached can count themselves as a stakeholder) and they tend define our priorities.

Let me rephrase that- you define your priorities by deciding which of your stakeholders are most important.  This, in turn, defines the choices your make regarding your career.  Is you primary stakeholder your family?  Then maybe your career choices should maximize the time you can spend with them.  Is your main stakeholder your start-up?  Then make choices designed to grow the business.  The key is to identify all the stakeholders, decide which are the most important, and manage your career in such as way as to favor those stakeholders.

It may sound funny, but my dogs are key stakeholders in my life.  When I decided to adopt them, I chose to do so knowing I would be limiting myself.  I don’t feel it’s right to pull them out of one kennel only to place them in another if I take a position that requires a lot of travel.  This conscious decision actually points to task four, determining values, which I’ll discuss later.

Once you’ve determined which stakeholders are important, the next step is turning those priorities into quantifiable results.  Statements like “having a good work-life balance” are meaningless phrases common to business today.  What is the balance?  40 hours a week with a lot of vacation?  Working from home?  Maybe you are your primary stakeholder (which isn’t necessarily bad) and your results include new opportunities every 2 years.

To recap, decide who your primary stakeholders are, identify which career “results” are most important for them, and make decisions based on the idea that, if you run into a conflict, you decide in favor of the primary stakeholder.

Decide what you’re going to do with your career

In Lafley’s article, the CEO must decide which products or services the company will offer.  For example, if you run a management consulting company, are you focused on project management, executive coaching, or business process improvement?  What does your company do and what does it not do?

This same thing applies almost verbatim to your career.  Imagine you are a one-person company and your job is the company’s product or service.  Are you in the right business?  Are you in too many businesses?  When you’re offered new opportunities, do you think about how they align with your “core business?”

I was once offered a promotion that I turned down because accepting it meant leaving my chosen field (IT).  If I think of myself as a company, I’m in business to improve management decisions by applying technology, statistics, and design principles to data (“business intelligence” is the common term for it.)  The new opportunity would have meant more money but it wouldn’t have played to my strengths.  While this decision set me back a little, I have no regrets.  Accepting the job would have made me a little more financially comfortable but ultimately frustrated and unhappy. Continue Reading »