Do you want to become a CEO?
I’ve had the honor of formally and informally mentoring dozens of highly talented people over the years. When the topic of career development comes up, one piece of tried-and-true advice always seems to resonate: “You have to define what ‘success’ means to you.” Many early-career individuals assume that their goal is to “climb the corporate ladder”, to move up through the organizational hierarchy in hopes of one day becoming CEO. Analogous to the odds of becoming a professional athlete, the fact is, very few people will ever become a CEO (and fewer still are cut out for success in that role). You’ll want to compose a clear picture of the role you do aspire to, and map the steps you can take to get there.
Take some time for introspection: What aspects of work make you happy? How many hours per week do you want to spend working? How much of your week do you want to spend with friends and family? What are your inherent strengths and weaknesses? How much money do you really need to live the lifestyle you want to live? Write down your answers to those questions. With that honest self-assessment, customize your career goals. Then determine what skills you must develop to move into the role you desire, talk to people who are already in your desired job, and work with your current management to get assignments that will help you build and demonstrate the necessary skills.
Achieving career growth often happens in different ways than just straight up the ladder. Regardless of your specific goal, it can be a good idea to make occasional “lateral” moves or take on special projects to broaden your experience and round out your skill set. Along the way, re-visit your self-assessment from time to time (annually works for most people). As you are exposed to new experiences, you might decide your original preferences don’t apply anymore. There is no rule against changing your career plan as you go.
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Over the years we’ve been exposed to Six Sigma, Juran, Deming PDCA, 8D, Dale Carnegie, A3, Shainin, and more. Each technique works pretty well, and has been demonstrated many times in a wide variety of industries and circumstances. At the core they are all essentially the same!
Each approach relies on an underlying logical flow that goes like this: [a] make sure the problem is clearly defined; [b] be open to all sources of information; [c] vet the information for relevance and accuracy; [d] use the process of elimination to narrow down all possible causes to the most likely few; [e] prove which of the suspects is really the cause of the issue; [f] generate a number of potential solutions; [g] evaluate the effectiveness, feasibility and risk of the potential solutions; [h] implement the winning solution(s); and [i] take steps to make sure your solution(s) don’t unravel in the future.
The differences between the paradigms resides in supplementary steps and toolkits. For example, 8D contains the important “In
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