One of the weirder experiences most of us can relate to is being in a meeting where nearly all of the participants disagree with the decision being made, but the power dynamics keep anyone in the room from objecting. It’s never a great feeling, and it seems to happen for a few different reasons
I'm not one to extol the virtues of failure. I get annoyed whenever people talk about “celebrating failure.” That said, there are some benefits to getting your ass handed to you every once in a blue moon.
Investing time, money and energy into a strategy, only to have the market not respond is like taking a punch. You might not get knocked out, but the effect of multiple blows can take a toll on your confidence and enthusiasm.
I nearly scrapped this column, because they’re not bad ideas per se. Both are still in fashion today, especially in the startup-o-sphere, and like many popular ideas there's more than a grain of truth to them. But these two ideas have run themselves ragged, and I see them doing more harm than good when I encounter them.
Whatever problems you uncover, the most important thing is to ask yourself how your role relates to these issues. How can you do your work in a way that helps alleviate some of the issues you’ve discovered? Are you in a position to directly affect any of these things simply by virtue of being a new person? Simply by being aware of these issues, you’re bound to find new ways you can improve the business directly or indirectly.
The challenges you’ll find in any organization come in two flavors:
Type 1 Challenges often sound like restatements of the organization’s overall mission, and employees will openly acknowledge them often. For example, a software company trying to build a better web browser may cite technology barriers as a major challenge. These are obvious, and you may be working on some of these challenges as part of your core responsibilities. Don’t stop digging here.
Type 2 Challenges are the real deal, and you won’t hear about them during the interview process. A Type 2 Challenge for the software company above might be, “We have zero brand recognition and don’t know how to market our products.” That’s a much scarier problem for the future of the business than some technological hurdle. These are the kinds of things you need to be on the lookout for...
Generating real momentum for yourself doesn’t happen overnight, but you have the tools you need accelerate this process right now. Rather than hoping to someday be in the right place at the right time, there are a few things you can do to find what the right place is and just go there already.
Three Steps to Career Momentum
