HOW TO ACHIEVE A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IN A TOUGH ECONOMY--PART I
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Everyone is using the "R" word--even Fed chief Ben Bernanke talked about recession. Unless you are on another planet, it is likely that your organization has gone through several "down sizings" or "right sizings" as your boss likes to call it. Yet the "powers to be" continue to insist on higher quality and increased productivity with ever fewer employees. Time to get depressed, right? Wrong!

Time to put yourself in the driver's seat of your career by developing powerful new skills to enable you to survive during these tough times, so that when the economy turns around, as it will, you will be ready to take your career to the next level, faster.

TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR CAREER

The days when your employer looked out for your career are gone. Take advantage of the following specific strategies to put yourself in charge of your own career:

PICK YOUR PLACE OF WORK CAREFULLY
Exercise considerable care to find the right place of work. After all, most of us spend at least one-third of the best years of our lives at work. That is why you need to find a place of employment that has a positive organizational climate. Here are easy things to look for: How are people talking to each other? Are they upbeat, positive, energetic and generally positively inclined toward the management team, their coworkers and the organization? Check for negatives by noting how many signs tell employees what not to do and how thick is the policy manual? During your interview, ask to see the corporate vision, philosophy or mission statement. If the interviewer does not know what you're talking about, forget it. Such an organization does not know where it's going. If there is a philosophy statement see what it says about the organization's commitment to developing its human resources. If it says nothing, it's very likely that the organization does not value its people. Also look for an organization that is willing to pay you in accordance with how you perform instead of how you conform by evaluating the promotion opportunities for people who want to succeed, and who are willing to take calculated risks. Perhaps most importantly, find employment where you can build clusters of skills that are readily transferable across many different organizations, such as project management skills.

PICK YOUR BOSS CAREFULLY
The right boss is a person who is, first and foremost, interested in your personal and professional development, knows how to practice the double win and is on his way to the top. Great bosses are also excellent mentors or coaches; they tell it like it is, provide you with straight advice, use their abundant mental energies to catch you doing things right, are intent on making you look good, are committed to helping you succeed and can take you along to the top. (If you are working for such a person now, cultivate and nurture that relationship. It's worth its weight in gold.)

KEEP YOUR RESUME FLOATING
Even if you have found a great job and a great boss, you should be scouting for new and challenging positions all the time. Keeping your resume floating is especially important if you are no longer being challenged and growing in your current job. Remember, the day you get too comfortable in your current job, you are vulnerable, and it's time to look for something else, because it means that someone who gets paid less than you will be able to do your job cheaper, faster and more effectively than you.

INVEST MORE IN YOURSELF THAN IN YOUR JOB
Some people are operating under the assumption that learning is only valuable when it relates directly to their specialty or when it is paid for by their employer. Unfortunately, that will not suffice in this tough economy, where learning may be your only sustainable competitive advantage. Given that we are in a tough economy you must invest in your most important resource: yourself. You must be infinitely curious, be a voracious lifelong learner and continually force yourself to get out of the self-imposed "box." One way to do that is to get in the habit of reading outside of your professional specialty for a half an hour every day.

What if you can't seem to make time? Do what I do, listen to educational audio programs in your car. It will enable you to learn without taking away from your precious discretionary time. This new habit will keep you on the cutting edge, provide you with all kinds of new entrepreneurial ideas and help you stay motivated even on days when you experience a temporary slump. (Check out my money saving offer in section #2, http://www.WolfRinke.com)

To become the best you can be invest 2-5% of your annual income in your personal and professional development. I know it sounds counter-intuitive when you are finding it tough to make ends meet. However, if you do that consistently you will move yourself into the top 10% of your profession and that will have a direct positive impact on your income even during tough times.

THINK CONTRIBUTION NOT POSITION
In the good old days some people were more concerned with position titles than results. In today's tough economy, however, the primary determinants of success are results and outcomes, i.e., what specific impact do your contributions have on customer service, quality, the bottom line and other specific measurable outcomes? The current employer-employee "contract" can best be summarized with the following statement from one of my clients: "We will not provide you with job security. You will be employed by us as long as you add value, and it is your responsibility to find ways to add value at all times. In return, you can expect interesting and important work, the freedom and resources to perform it well, compensation that reflects your contribution, and the experience, training and development that will be useful here and elsewhere."

In the next issue of this eNewsletter I will provide you with specific strategies you need to master to not just survive, but thrive, in this tough economy.


Wolf Rinke