5 mistakes I made in my career that I want you to avoid
A short list of things you should not be doing in your working life
For a marketers’ meet-up last week, I was supposed to talk for 15-20 minutes, and I was at a complete loss about the topic.
Standard tactics and strategy playbooks were nothing they hadn’t heard about before, and I didn’t want to talk about the same things we always seem to talk about.
Then I thought about going the other way completely, about the things we never talk about. Our mistakes.
So I worked on a short list of things I did wrong and which we should not be doing in our careers. And it was received well enough for me to write it up for you here.
Let’s dive in.
Not playing the long game
I have written repeatedly in this newsletter about playing the long game with your career. That is because I did not do it, and I don’t want you to make the same mistake. As I wrote here: You have to give yourself 2 years at a minimum to understand what the hell is going on around you. Then another 2 to master the craft, and another year to understand how you want to play the game. There’s no shortcut to this.
Your career is a compounding game. Stick with roles, companies, and whatever it is that you’ve now been doing for some time. If you want to get a deeper idea of why I say this, and if you don’t trust me, read So Good They Can’t Ignore You, by Cal Newport.
Not standing up to bad managers
A terrible manager I once had cost me a couple of crores. This is water under the bridge now, but I write this to demonstrate that there are real costs of having a bad leader. Good jobs become unbearable, great opportunities fizzle out. But attributing such situations to just having a bad manager is laziness.
Bad managers make for terrible experiences, but thinking of yourself as a victim will not help. You have to get through. You have to stand up for yourself. There are always power imbalances, the situations will suck, and there will always be politics. You have to learn to ask better questions, give feedback, take feedback, understand the games being played, and stick with your journey. It’s your career, defend it.
Not taking responsibility when it mattered
Early in my career, I was very good at tasks, but I wasn’t good at seeing the bigger picture. I did not understand that my job wasn’t to do just this one thing well, but to understand what it led up to, and see it through to a successful conclusion. This inability, born mostly of inexperience, cost me promotions at a crucial juncture. Don’t make that mistake.
Your managers are looking at you to solve a problem, not just do things. They don’t need someone of your intelligence and ability to just follow orders, they can get anyone to do that. They need you to step up when it matters, to understand the larger goal, and get the job done. No complaints, no excuses.
Waiting for permission to do things
I let one of the biggest breaks of my career amount to nothing not because I did not know the job, but because I kept waiting for permission. I remember the day I realised what I had let go of, and it still rankles.
So here’s a tip: Always think you are one step higher than where you are at your company, and act accordingly. Dress accordingly, own things accordingly. Never wait for permission. This is not my own formulation, I read it somewhere, but I knew this was where I had gone wrong in that specific role.
It’s a rather simple principle, but notoriously difficult to imbibe and execute. Think about this one deeply, because it’s important.
Not asking for what success looks like
Every time you have a new job, a new role, or a new project, or even every month or quarter, ask your manager what success looks like. Get the answer, preferably in writing, and then periodically, ask again.
Why? Because your manager will keep shifting goalposts. Or they will forget. It’s not their fault. Business is dynamic, and everything keeps changing, their own opinions, the market, and larger strategy. So ask for clarity again and again. One way to do it is show weekly/fortnightly progress and align your manager to the roadmap at intervals. That way, you can both show progress and keep your manager in the know about what you are doing. There’s nothing wrong if they want to change it, but they will have to acknowledge that you were going in a different direction before.
There it is, then. Are there more? Definitely. But knowing to avoid doing these at the beginning of your career will protect you from your easiest, most obvious career-limiting decisions.
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