Conversely, who you are and who you know and socialize with away from your company...both within your industry and within the community-at-large...can foster your career.
Some people ignore the outside world until their career runs into difficulty. Only then do they launch a frantic program of polishing old contacts and networking new ones. Don't make that mistake. Learn to live your life so that you continually renew and expand relationships outside your company.
The legitimate claims on your time and attention made by your family and close personal friends, added to what every employer expects from an upwardly-mobile executive, leave very little time for career-enhancing contact with people you don't see at work.
But you do have a few minutes. This chapter suggests ways you can leverage that small fund of time, so that it will pay large dividends in both career progress and personal satisfaction.
Executives who wouldn't for years be considered industry leaders join together to proclaim a new and differently-focused professional association. As founders, they become President, Executive Vice President, Chairman of the Executive Committee, etc. There are enough impressive titles to let each of the founders have one.
Amazingly, I've never seen a group of reasonably-credentialed executives fail in an effort to start a new association. On the other hand, I've never seen anything but failure when one self-seeking individual tries to start an association, just so he or she can head it. A solo grab for status is too obvious and obnoxious to attract a following.
Frankly, I could list at least a half-dozen thriving associations started by groups of founders who stardusted themselves, while setting up useful organizations that have survived and thrived. How deliberate and how accidental was the personal advantage? No one can say. The fact is that all of these people achieved something valuable for their profession. If they simultaneously gained something for themselves, it was a fitting reward.
Although I can't name the current crop of organization-starters in this context without offending some of them, I'll share one example which is now ancient history.
A handful of self-proclaimed "young influentials" in the field of consumer products marketing named themselves "Cabal" and "by invitation only" attracted one or two other such rising "superstars" from each of the most prestigious New York-based consumer products manufacturers and advertising agencies. Purpose: "To meet and hear off-the-record talks" by Chief Executives of leading companies and agencies.
Despite skepticism about both the premise and prospects of the new organization, I accepted my "invitation." What followed were three years of fascinating monthly luncheons at the Harvard Club, as one after another of the CEOs of America's largest corporations and agencies showed up to address less than 40 middle managers. And during that whole time, the same five or six people who conceived the project held the offices of the group, contacted the speakers, greeted and introduced them, and sat with them at the head table.
So if the Trilateralists, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the leading trade association in your industry haven't beckoned, you might consider joining with several congenial co-founders to start a new association.
Investigate the possibility that there may be an online "community" that merits your participation. Or perhaps start one.
Frankly, all I've seen of online "communities" (admittedly very little) has been a complete waste of time. Topics have been trivial at best, and participants haven't seemed to contribute much.
Write your way to prominence.
Perhaps you can be one of the lucky few to author an article of interest to the Harvard Business Review, or to some comparably eminent publication. But even if your expertise is too specialized and your profile as yet too low for such a celebrated journal, you can probably come up with something for a trade paper in your industry.
Once you've seen yourself in print, you'll be hooked. Each time the writing will become easier. Moreover, as a published "authority," you'll be called for your comments by professional writers and reporters who prepare for their articles by reading prior ones. And when recruiters look on the Internet for leaders in your field, they'll find you.
Indeed, if you really have something to say, maybe you should write a book. A couple individuals I know wrote books on the principles of their industry while still only upper-middle managers. The books were successful, and helped widen the distance between them and their peers. Today both have the title President. One heads the company he joined fresh out of business school. And the other is a man I recruited as president of a small entrepreneurial company, which he has since built into the number-one company in America in its field.
Outside board memberships provide contacts and prestige.
Obviously, you'd be delighted to be asked to join the board of a major NYSE- listed corporation, and maybe someday you will. Certainly that's more likely if you rise to the top of the company you're working for, and if you continually take steps to broaden your network of personal contacts.
