25 Years to Overnight Success

It has been about a year and a half since my company reorganized and some people are beginning to post for other positions within the company, sometimes even outside. So, I too have been thinking and posting lately myself. Aside from that, for my own development, I have been reading about ambition and I wanted to share a couple of quotes that I have found interesting. 

The first is this, “How we live when ambitions are delayed significantly shape who we become.” The other relates to the outworking of ambition. From a CEO of a large construction firm, “It took me twenty-five years to become an overnight success.”

So let me briefly write about the first quote and how I think about it. I have a certain ambition to change roles or to get a promotion and I try to post out or up and it doesn’t happen. What do I do with that? What do I do with the unrequited ambition?

This is where I have gone to…

·         What is it about my current role that I still could learn or need to learn before I move to my next assignment?

·         How can I rethink what I currently do to prepare myself for that next role?

·         If I am the best, in my mind, at my current role, how can I get even better?

·         What does my response say about me and how I need to change to meet conditions as they are?

Let me share why I have gone there. I am thinking long term career development. I am thinking 10-20 years. I am thinking about finding my career best in each new job. If I am unable to change roles there has to be something that I can learn where I currently am that will help me years down the road. A very wise man one time suggested, when I was complaining about my situation, to blossom where I was planted. I think that advice is appropriate here too.

So what about the other quote? I heard this quote from a man that had worked very diligently on a vision that he had of being the head of a large construction company. By the time that he was selected to do a very visible project, he had been at honing his craft for over 25 years. Many people came up to him and asked him questions as if he had come from out of nowhere. His response was the quote. If you know anything about Jeremy Lin, he is another example of this phenomenon. Cinderella stories have a history.

So how does this all fit into Career Development? This is where I see it headed. I have my development goals and what I see as a successful career. My day to day experience is going to shape me and refine me until my goal is reached or until my career aspirations change. So if my ambitions are delayed so that I can learn something more, all the better for my long-term growth.

 If I am looking at my career goals from the long term I need to be in the upper loop of the victim-accountability loop and learn something and have it shape me and how I see things. When I have learned all that I need to learn and my role is visible to a broad audience or gets noticed in some way I will have walked through many hours of diligence and hard work to arrive at my career goal.