All of this means that companies faced with changing products and changing careers are also faced with changing attitudes and changing philosophies. Only a few years ago a firm described as a "staid old business house" was a bulwark of security. Today, unless it has changed its attitude and philosophy, it is on the way out. Thus the young man entering this challenging world of tomorrow must bring with him a new understanding of things as they will be. Your father could groom himself to be the head of a department and achieve his goal; today you have no assurance that either you or the department will be there.
Don't groom yourself to become the head of a department. Groom yourself to be a department head, and you can let the changes come as they may. This same rule applies to all jobs in government, commerce, and industry. Job labels and career labels are going to change, but when you know what your talents are, and where they can function to best advantage, you don't have to worry about labels. It's the product inside-the best that's in you-that you have to sell, and you can write your own label.
Write a good one. Executives heading new departments, developing new products, are like impulse buyers in a new super-market-they can't be sure of what they want, but they are eager to give a tempting package a try.
What Is This Thing-The Best That's In You?
In answer to the question above, I hope you never find out. When you have made a habit of success, the best that is in you will be still in the process of development when you make at some venerable age that final try. Recently I attended an award dinner for a retiring executive, in the course of which he received the traditional gold watch and the following accolade from the president: "Mr. Johanns, known to all of us as Joe, has served this company for forty years, and has left an enviable record all of us can shoot at. From his start as a sander in the finishing department to his present position as vice president in charge of production, he has never been satisfied with doing an average job. It had to be better-than-average, or he didn't want his name connected with it."
The voice droned on, but I had heard all I wanted to hear. It was all there in those words-"better-than-average." They explained why a vice-president of 65 was being handed his gold watch by a president of 47. In terms of achievement, doing an average job means you are holding your own. It follows, then, that to get ahead, you must do better than average, which is not necessarily very much. That happens to be a loaded statement.
In any business, average performance is a known quality. It is calculated in production units and plotted on graphs, and may well be the backbone of the theory called "Management by Exception." Anyone with the power of observation has but to look around him to see what the average performance of his fellow-workers amounts to, and nudge his own performance a notch above. In so doing, he is dealing with the known. So well known, in fact, that it can be plotted on a graph.
But the best that is in you goes far beyond anything that can be plotted on a chart. When you have analyzed your achievements and discovered through Success Factor Analysis the areas in which success becomes your domain, you are only at last beginning to appreciate what you can really do. I wish I had you in front of me, so I could pound on the desk if necessary, to deliver this final truth:
For the man who doesn't know his real abilities, and therefore turns in the average performance, the chart is drawn.
For the man who recognizes the average performance of his fellows, and sets his course a notch above, the way is more remunerative but still confined to paralleling the known average.
But for the man who knows his own abilities and uses them, there is no ceiling. He is not content with the average performance of others. For him "above average performance" is not the course, nor even the start of it.
Success is his goal, and each success achieved leads on to greater ones. And thus in making a habit of success, he will find that success has made a habit of him. That's all.
In establishing this habit, may you find it incurable?
