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The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers: The Guide for Achieving Success and Satisfaction (Paperback)
by James M. Citrin , Richard Smith
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Career success, Self help |
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Understand the Value of You – with the highly effective and unique tips of this classic – to find the path to your career & life success! |
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Author: James M. Citrin , Richard Smith
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Pub. in: January, 2005
ISBN: 1400081688
Pages: 288
Measurements: 7.6 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00981
Other information: Reprint edition
ISBN-13: 978-1400081684
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- MSL Picks -
The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers, by James M. Citrin and Richard A. Smith was an easy read, and a worthwhile one. There were five basic 'patterns' that the book detailed are as follows:
1. Understand the Value of You. People with extraordinary careers understand how value is created in the organization and manage their careers according to the value chain. There are three phases of your value, the Potential phase, where employers hire your what you will be able to do, the Experiential phase, where employers hire you to put your previous successes to the test, and Harvest phase, where you are reaping the seeds of knowledge sewn in the years of past experience.
2. Practice Benevolent Leadership. Behind every great manager are great employees and great mentors. Use your friends wisely!
3. Overcome the Permission Paradox. Bottom line - successful careers are built on those things that weren't told you couldn't do, not those things you were given permission to do. Understand explicit permission versus implicit permission, and use that to your advantage!
4. Use the 20/80 Principle of Performance. Get out of your defined job and create some real value against the 20% that really matters!
5. Find the Right Fit. No passion, move on to the next gig. This is a major part of the battle. Don't be too successful at something you don't like!
Based on nearly three years of research, 5 Patterns is filled with new concepts and entertaining and inspiring anecdotes. The uniqueness of 5 Patterns is almost immediately apparent. The foundation of this book is a comprehensive research effort to determine who top professionals really are and how they achieved their success. The research included a detailed survey of more than 2,000 executives. Though much more of a quick, entertaining read than a heavy analytical tome, 5 Patterns is scattered with insightful bits of fact-based information from the research underpinning.
In addition to the survey research, the authors conducted more than 300 in-person interviews. Many of the interviews and anecdotes in the book are about people that are well known, such as Lou Gerstner and Elizabeth Dole, but some of the most fascinating are about people many have never heard of, like Denys Gounot who began his career in the mud fields of France and ascended to the top of the communications industry, or Mark Metzler who as a young manager passionately confronted industry icon Fred Smith to change his company, or David Berman who defied almost all odds as a penniless immigrant and emerged as one of the world's top Hedge fund traders. The authors define extraordinary careers not by financial measures or being in the "C" suite, but as the ability to fully leverage strengths and passions, as well, as a natural cultural fit in an organization.
The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers is a book that will most certainly appeal to general business audiences, but each group will take away something unique. Students and aspiring professionals early in their career will benefit from 20 years of experience packed into a three hour read. Human resources professionals will identify secrets to creating tangible gains in productivity, innovation and organizational success. Organizational effectiveness, leadership and career development functions will find insights and tools from which to base new and ambitious initiatives. Some may critique the 5 Patterns as offering a message that is unrealistically optimistic - that success is not based on luck, aggressiveness or politicking, but rather on replicating specific patterns of behavior - and therefore extraordinary career success is something attainable to nearly everyone.
- From quoting Libby Sartain
Target readers:
General business audiences, students, human resources professionals
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James M. Citrin, a prominent CEO and board director recruiter, leads Spencer Stuart's Global Technology, Communications, and Media practice and is a member of the firm's worldwide board of directors. He is the author of Zoom: How 12 Exceptional Companies Are Navigating the Road to the Next Economy and coauthor of Lessons from the Top: The 50 Most Successful Business Leaders in America - and What You Can Learn from Them.
Richard A. Smith is a respected thought leader and recruiter of CEOs for both public and private corporations and a core member of Spencer Stuart's Strategic Leadership practice. He has authored numerous articles on leadership and talent resource management, including the widely cited white paper, Tier One Talent: Investment Strategies for Human Capital.
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From the publisher
What is different about the careers of people like Lou Gerstner, the acclaimed, recently retired chairman and CEO of IBM? Or Senator Elizabeth Dole, Yahoo! COO Dan Rosensweig, and Tom Freston, chairman and CEO of MTV Networks?
Why did they ascend to the top and prosper - why did they have extraordinary careers - while others equally talented never reached their potential or aspirations?
Jim Citrin and Rick Smith of Spencer Stuart, the world's most influential executive search firm, set out to explore this question. The result - based on in-depth, original research - is sure to be the most important and useful book for anyone seeking to crack the code of how to build a rewarding, personally satisfying career.
Like weather systems and financial markets, careers contain patterns. What Citrin and Smith found from their research and extensive experience is that people with extraordinary careers are guided by five straightforward patterns that can be harnessed and used by everyone. These individuals:
- Understand the value of you by translating their knowledge and experience into action, building their personal value over each phase of their career
- Practice benevolent leadership by not clawing their way to the top but by being carried there
- Solve the permission paradox, the dilemma of not being able to get a job without experience and not getting the experience without the job
- Differentiate using the 20/80 principle of performance by storming past their defined jobs to create breakthrough ideas and deliver unexpected impact
- Do not micromanage their careers, but macromanage them by gravitating toward the things they are best at and have a passion for, and working with people they like and respect
No one manages your career for you. But with Citrin and Smith as your guide, you’ll be able to understand - and act on - the root causes of success. And what better source for strategic career advice than Spencer Stuart, the firm that over the past ten years has conducted more than 60 percent of the searches for Fortune 1000 CEOs?
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Understand the Value of You
I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things. - Benjamin Franklin
Value is not intrinsic; it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment. - Ludwig von Mises
The Power of Career Knowledge
Before he was diagnosed with testicular cancer, Lance Armstrong thought he had all that he needed to be a champion cyclist. He had oversized lung capacity, explosive power in his legs, and fiery ambition stoked by a tormented youth. So when he began racing as a professional on the European circuit, he expected to win and quickly emerge as the best rider in the world.
But he soon learned about the peleton, a swarm of cyclists that makes up the mass of road racers. To the spectator, it seems like a colorful blur of riders storming by. But inside the pack, there are subtle forces at play and a culture that governs how things really work. One rider helps another one day and gets the favor returned the next. The deans of the sport, who have worked their way up the hierarchy by paying their dues, demand - and are accorded - respect and recognition. For one without an understanding of how the game is really played, the peleton could prevent you from winning by blocking you out, slowing you down, even running you off the road. Why? Because in racing, the peleton is often more powerful than the individual.
In his book It's Not About the Bike, Armstrong said, "As an American, I was a gate-crasher in a revered and time-honored sport, and I had little concept of its rules, written and unwritten, or its etiquette." Since he raced with no deference to the elders and never backed down, he was making enemies. It wasn't until after his miraculous recovery and the maturation and self-awareness that went along with it that Armstrong truly understood all the elements required to win in cycling. It was not all about bulldozing straight ahead, pushing aside everyone else. It was not about parading, mouthing off, and shoving his fists in the air after winning a stage. It was about respect, a continuous give-and-take between competing riders, an appreciation of the proud history and traditions of the sport. And, of course, it was also about ferocious competition, explosive speed, and lung-bursting endurance. When he coupled his talents and his drive with knowledge and experience, Armstrong went on to win four consecutive Tours de France and become the unassailable best rider in the world.
What's the moral of the Armstrong story for you? Careers, like other important activities in life, are governed by subtle yet pervasive dynamics that significantly influence your value in the marketplace for professional talent. Once you truly understand them, you are bound for glory. Remain ignorant of them at your own peril. Many talented professionals come unmoored from the path they set by failing to appreciate what really determines their professional value, never achieving the level of success and fulfillment attainable to them. The most successful professionals have come to understand the underlying factors that determine value in the job market, how to maximize their market value at different stages of professional life, and why some careers prosper while others peak and decline.
Does the fact that some professionals have a much better understanding of how value is created in the workforce really make a difference? You bet it does. Our survey asked this question: "Do you have a strong understanding of what drives value in the marketplace for professional talent?" When we analyzed the responses, we were stunned by the results. When professionals answered "strongly agree" to this question, they were more likely - by a factor of two to one - to have the degree of success to which the vast majority of people aspire. They are extremely satisfied with their career and compensation, passionate about their job, and optimistic about their future. In addition, those with the greatest self-reported knowledge about the dynamics of careers were 35 percent more likely to be performing at or near peak productivity levels, believe their value within the organization is growing at above average rates, and are much less likely to consider external job opportunities. For both the aspiring professional and the organizations they work for, an understanding of the drivers of professional value turns out to be a most critical asset.
What are the underlying factors that determine value in the job market? How do you maximize your market value at the different stages of your professional life? Why do some careers prosper, while others peak and then decline?
The Value of You
What are you worth? For many, the answer to this question may seem a matter of simple math. Just take your total annual compensation, add benefits, and voilà - you've got your answer. Not so fast. Placing a monetary figure on your talents may be correct for a static moment in time. However, the equation for determining your true worth over time is more nuanced than you might first imagine. In addition to the critically important characteristics about you as an individual - intelligence, interpersonal skills, leadership, and ambition - there are key macro factors at play as well. Age matters, influencing where you fit into the demographic trends of the population at large. So too does the demand for professional positions similar to yours at any given point in time. And all that volatility among companies is not necessarily a bad thing - increasing fluctuations in corporate valuations turns out to actually enhance your value in the marketplace as well. Finally, recognize that this is the age of intellectual capital. With technology-enhanced productivity improvements working their way across the economy, the value of specialized knowledge is at a premium.
These factors together constitute the foundation of the job market - or more accurately stated, the human capital market. While most workers don't understand their worth in the broader job market, our research suggests the extraordinary executive is instinctively aware of the forces that drive her value at each and every stage of her career, and single-mindedly focuses her energies and actions on maximizing that value over time. But most have gained their knowledge through trial and error, often over many years.
What we will do in the remainder of this chapter is help you understand what determines value in the marketplace and how you can influence it, thereby avoiding the difficult process of the hit-or-miss approach.
Solving the talent-worth equation is partly a matter of testing the job market waters, in much the same way that you might market-test a product to gauge consumer acceptance. But while this will give you some information, it is not the most complete measure of your true value. To do this, you will need to get beyond short-term compensation data and look at the underlying factors that determine real value in the employment market.
Specifically, you must first understand four key macro factors:
- Demographics. You need to assess where you fit in the aggregate supply and demand of professional talent.
- Market liquidity. Is your supply in demand? You need to gauge the number of professionals seeking positions versus the number of open positions seeking professionals.
- Company volatility. You need to evaluate how fluctuations in corporate valuations enhance or diminish your value in the marketplace.
- Intellectual capital. You need to consider how the financial markets value intangible assets, notably intellectual capital, relative to hard assets, or book value.
To help professionals and their companies understand where they stand in the evolving market for talent, we have developed an analytical tool that measures these four factors over time, which we call the Human Capital Market Index (HCMI). Details about the methodology and research behind the HCMI can be found at www.spencer stuart.com. But the bottom line of our research is this: Given the massive structural changes in the economy over the past thirty years, professionals as a collective whole are worth far greater today than in all but a couple of the years of the past three decades. Your individual characteristics are still essential, of course, but at a macro level, your value should be enhanced by the rise of an economy dependent on the service sector, which means that there is a much greater demand for talent and intellectual capital. (Note that the number of jobs in the manufacturing sector has fallen from 40 percent of total employment in 1950 to less than 18 percent today, while service sector employment has grown from less than 14 percent to more than 35 percent over the same time period.) Despite increased economic turmoil, the upward trend in the value of you should continue in the years to come, based on demographics, continued technology-based productivity improvements, and the ever more valuable role of knowledge in the workplace. In short, talented individuals will continue to be able to create more economic value in the years ahead, and this will in turn pull up their own value.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-05-11 00:00>
This was one of the best career management books I have read. It is unfortunate that material like this is not included as part of a college curricullum, whether its in B-School or otherwise. The framework presented in this book is clear, concise and easy to follow. The examples are terrific. While reading Five Patterns I gained a better understanding of why certain things in my career worked better than others and where I might make a few adjustments. |
A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-05-11 00:00>
Many people work hard and work long but never progress past a manager-level position, and that comes only if they're lucky. Citrin and Smith have presented five simple patterns that can really boost one's career if one is willing to put them into action. There are over 50 case studies that give great examples on how to implement each pattern. If your career is in a rut, step out onto the edge and give these five ideas a swing. It just may be the best thing that you ever do for yourself! |
Brian A. Schar (MSL quote), USA
<2007-05-11 00:00>
If you are looking for step-by-step handholding, this book will not provide that. Rather, "5 Patterns" identifies 5 patterns, as you might gather from the title, that are common to successful leaders. I prefer that approach to the all-too-common connect-the-dots approach of the typical management/leadership book that attempts to shoehorn you into the "one true formula" for success. "5 Patterns" provides a good balance between personal histories of successful leaders and the lessons that one can learn from those histories.
While the book sets forth suggestions based on the 5 patterns that may help you in your career, it is ultimately up to you to decide what lessons you wish to draw from this book. Particularly if you are feeling stalled in or dissatisfied with your career, you should at least get this book from your library; you will likely be impressed enough to add it to your personal collection.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-05-11 00:00>
While reading this book you will stop and consider your current career path and what has lead you to this point. You will go back and remember when you started your career and what you felt were your goals and whether or not they have been achieved or whether they are still important to you. This book will help you do a self evaluation of where you want your career to go from here and what is important to you. This book is based on research from some very interesting individuals some you have heard of and some you haven't but you will find much of what is written will hit home with you. This book is a great read whether or not you are in the process of changing jobs or careers. It really helps you to do a review of your own career path. |
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