Conquering Career A.D.D.

Avoid the 8 Fatal New Manager Mistakes if you’re considering or recently made a career move.  Often it’s sink or swim, and Fast Start ensures you properly position yourself for longer-term career success in 90 days or less.

In the old days ( i.e. 1850 – 1995), you’d get an entry-level job, work your way through an organization, and peak just above or below your highest potential skill level.

You’d then begin your transition to cranky old (usually) man — counting the years and months to retirement, until such time as you were presented with a gold watch that you took home to help you keep track of the relatively short time you had before you died.

That concept of work looks more outdated than orange shag carpet, and acid-washed jeans – and about the same level of comfort, too.

There is a credible argument that this all changed because of the decline of large employers, and the increasing irrelevance of labor unions.

But I wonder if it’s a result of our collective Career Attention Deficit Disorder (A.D.D.)

Virtually the entire workforce was raised on television — that in addition to encouraging ADD, teaches us some very powerful lessons that we come to expect in the workplace:

  1. Work should always be fun!  They told us all we had to do was go to college and study hard, and we’d be ultimately and indefinitely fulfilled by our work.
  2. Any problem can be sorted in 22 minutes.  Remember Freddy “Boom Boom” Washington’s drug problem on Welcome Back Kotter?  Probably not – but it lasted 22 minutes.  He was fine the following week.
  3. Tomorrow’s problems are someone else’s problems.  Any episode of The Apprentice will make it clear that you just need to do whatever it takes to win today’s challenge, and don’t worry about tomorrow’s.
  4. If you’re having a conflict with someone, just yell at them.  Your passionate argument will win them over, they’ll say they’re sorry, and you’ll be best friends from then on (see #2 for further detail).

After a lifetime of having these messages reinforced, we become part of a workplace that has absolutely no resemblance to a TV sitcom, and we become more shocked than a Wheel of Fortune game show contestant that accidentally ends up on Jeopardy.

As a result, many of us end up with ‘Career A.D.D.’  — we listlessly wander from employer to employer, looking for the Holy Grail of fulfilling work that was promised to us by the TV.

Career and internal role changes are a fact of business life today.  Our Fast Start program is a 90-Day Onboarding Plan for the transitioning leader.  It leads and supports you through the critical first 90 days in your new management position. Coincidentally, each of the 6 Training Videos included in the Fast Start program is approximately 22 minutes long, just like a TV sitcom…and they will solve critical problems every new leader experiences.