Short-Term Benefits, or Long-Term Growth?

I live in Arizona, and one of our traditions here is the annual rodeo. While I am not a big fan of sitting in bleachers on a hot day, the rodeo does have a certain charm about it. It’s fun in an old-fashioned sort of way, much like a small-town parade back east, where the whole community gets involved.

I remember one rodeo in particular, back in 1987, because it was there I had an eye-opening experience. You could have fried an egg on my cowboy hat that day — it was 110 degrees in the shade. Seeing a large sign that read, “Cold Beer Here,” I left my seat and went off towards the rodeo sideshow for liquid refreshment.

Along the way, I spotted a wooden enclosure with children gathered around. They approached me and asked if I had any quarters, so I reached into my pocket and walked up to take a closer look. As it turns out, a small wooden box housed the famous “Rodeo Rooster,” a little fellow who plinks out a tune on a tiny piano when rewarded by seeds. Just imagine how hot it was for the rooster inside that glass-enclosed cage!

As the seeds scattered over the piano keys and the talented bird began to play, a revelation about my own work came to me. I must have been feeling very philosophical that day, because I thought of how working for seeds was a lot like getting a weekly paycheck. That rooster and I were both stuck in place working for short-term rewards instead of long-term goals. The Rodeo Rooster could have been on David Letterman, but instead he was working for seeds in a sideshow. It felt as if my own career was in trouble, as well.

After helping my rooster friend to a fine lunch, I went back to the bleachers, thinking about some changes I should make in my life. The image of the sideshow rooster wouldn’t leave my mind.

At the time, I worked as one of six recruiters in a stuffy recruiting firm where the owner sat in a comfy air-conditioned office while the rest of us sweated in cramped cubicles. (Not much different than the Rodeo Rooster’s working conditions.) When Fridays rolled around, we’d get our paycheck and forget about our career problems for a couple of days.

Thinking about my predicament all weekend, I quit on Monday and decided to move on with a new business, where I could better control my destiny and (I hope!) reach our family’s goals for a better life.

Don’t Let the “Easy Way” Get Its Hold On You

Perhaps in reading my story you’ll believe that starting my own business was due to a need to make more money. While more income is always nice, the money I’d been making wasn’t all that bad. It was good enough to keep me in my seat for a few years. Those had been days, months, and years of humdrum work (and with a boss I didn’t like all that much). I hung in there because it was the easiest thing to do.

As a recruiting consultant, one common trait I have found in the best candidates is that they are not motivated solely by the short-term; they don’t get caught taking the easy way out all that often. These special people take a much longer view of their careers. They keep their eyes open for new opportunities inside and outside of their companies, and consider each for its advantages, disadvantages, and potential impact upon their future career goals and ambitions.

In short, they focus on long-term goals and don’t get waylaid by the kind of instant gratification that keeps them glued in their seats. They have learned that change is sometimes necessary to make real progress in personal development.

Brian Tracy, author of The Psychology of Success, says that humans will always try to shorten the time necessary to perform any task. Human nature insists we find the easiest way to do any job. If we can earn a living without the exertion of pushing ourselves forward, that is what most of us will do. And therein lies the trap.

When I realized that day at the rodeo that I had become something other than what I wanted to be, I wondered how it had happened. I was the guy with one year of experience that had been repeated many times. Never had my thoughts turned toward increasing my value to the company and thereby earning additional years of experience in the bargain.

Jim Rohn, another of my favorite authors and speakers, says in Seven Keys to Wealth and Happiness that there is a major life question to ask yourself regularly on the job. It is not, “What am I getting?” Typical questions in that category refer to job titles, pay, benefits, time off, prestige . . . naturally, we all ask ourselves those questions many times over the course of a year. I’m not disputing that they are important; I’m just suggesting that you can’t plan your life by those markers.

Rohn suggests a better question: “What am I becoming?” He believes that what you become in your career directly influences what you get on the job, and that by keeping your eye on this aspect of your personal development you will be far more richly rewarded. Jim advises that you check back regularly to make certain that you are becoming a person who provides increasing value to whomever employs you.

Shift the Emphasis To Providing Value

As I look back at each stage of my career, I can easily spot times when I could have made extraordinary progress by simply being prepared to provide more value to my employer. As Brian Tracy put it, “The inability to delay gratification is a primary predictor of economic failure in life. People fail because they do what is fun and easy rather than what is hard. They do what is tension-relieving rather than what is goal-achieving.”

Looking over my notes in preparation for this month’s column, I find numerous examples of people I admire who pushed themselves past easy gratification and into some means of providing more value for their employers. All of them have been successful because they have focused on reaching goals and on providing more value to their employers.

Here are a few examples:

• The scientist who took outside course work at his own expense on project management — and who later became the coordinator of an external research project his company had with a major research university. He used this two-year experience to get a fantastic job with one of the world’s largest biotech concerns.
• The GMP documentation coordinator who took on the company’s network management and eventually became its director of information sciences. The “easy” career route would have kept her in the Quality Assurance department.
• The production manager who spent four years pursuing an MBA in the evenings and who then used this degree, and a job change, to springboard into a position with a larger company as a worldwide strategic operations manager.
• The director of business development who combined his 12 years of deal-making expertise with a finance degree earned part-time, preparing himself for a desired move to a VP Corporate Development post.

Your choice of goal-achieving activities over those opportunities for immediate gratification will ensure your career in science has staying power throughout the ups-and-downs of any one particular job market.

David G. Jensen is the founder and chief executive officer of CTI Executive Search, a unit of CareerTrax Inc. (Sedona, AZ). CTI is a leading recruiting firm in the biosciences. You can reach Dave at (928) 282-5366.