Guerilla Job Warfare

UP THE LADDER IN A DOWN ECONOMY
An Employees Guide To Corporate Climbing in Tough Economic Times

By Harrison Barnes
Book Five: Guerilla Job Warfare
www.employmentcrossing.com
UP THE LADDER IN A DOWN ECONOMY
AN EMPLOYEEs GUIDE TO CORPORATE CLIMBING IN TOUGH ECONOMIC TIMEs

By Harrison Barnes
Book Five: Guerilla Job Warfare
TABLE OF CONTENTs
Introduction Your Job Is a Game: Make Your Opponents External

What Does a Team Player Look Like?
3 2

Play Each Day Like Its Your Most Important Working Weekends and Holidays is a Good Game Plan Create Rules of the Game That Make You Feel successful
Play the Game by Your Own Rules
5 8 11
5
How You Handle Chaos Determines success Or Failure

Observations About Order and Chaos Chaos is Good
17
8 4
Your Job is a Mind Game Its All About Belief systems
27
Introduction
Welcome to Book Five of our series. This is where we separate the wheat from the chaff, because this is where we tell you the whole truth. Everything up to this point has been preparation for what Im about to share with you. Are you ready? Your job is a game. Thats the whole truth. Throughout your career youve been thinking that its real. Youve been thinking that it defines you and that it is the key to your true identity. You are wrong. In all my years in the workforce, I have come to realize that all of our jobs are, quite simply, games. In every job youve ever had, you are a playing piece in a game, and your ability to play the game as part of a team determines your success. In the same way, the ability of your employer to externalize the game and the opponent will determine the success or failure of the enterprise. Every organization has a certain set of rules by which it operates, and if you violate these rules, you can be kicked out of the game (fired), much like a soccer player can be ejected from a game for doing something improper. Your employer will typically have a set of rules for when you are to be at work, how the work is to be done, and the required number of completed tasks you are required to accumulate in a specific time (in a sports we might call these points). Every organization also has a series of freedoms and barriers. The freedoms are the actions you can take and the things you can do, and the barriers are the things you cannot do. The freedoms are given out in way similar to how sports teams assign different freedoms. For example, in soccer the goalie is the only one allowed to touch the ball with his hands (a freedom), while the other players are not allowed to touch the ball (a barrier). In corporations, different people have different rights depending on their positions in the corporation. Take a moment to think about some of the freedoms and barriers you face in a typical workday. Imagine your co-workers as teammates, your employer as a team captain, and your clients or customers as opponents. The workplace and its objects, such as human resources, revenue and other resources, are representative of the tools or equipment used in a game. These are all elements in your game toolbox. In this chapter, well explore how to work with them so that you are victorious.
CHAPTER 1
1. YOUR JOB Is A GAME: MAkE YOUR OPPONENTs ExTERNAL
Games consist of rules, freedoms, barriers, and opponents, but the most significant part of any game is the presence of an opponent. If you dont have an opponent, its not a game; its practice. One of the most interesting things I have seen in the workforce is that organizations tend to have opponents that are both external and, unfortunately, internal. A business and its people are motivated primarily by the presence of outside opponents and the need to overcome them. Businesses and their people are also made more cohesive by working together as a team against internal opponents. When this process does not occur, the organization most often fails. Most companies have a series of external opponents. For example, Yahoos external opponent would be Google and vice versa. Amazons opponent would be Barnes & Noble. Apples external opponent is Microsoft. Organizations generally unite in the belief that an external opponent needs to be fought against in a given space, whether its the search engine market, the book market or the personal computer market. The presence of opponents brings people within corporations together to fight for a common purpose to prevail in the marketplace, or to win the game. This, while not always in the forefront of ones awareness, is the motivation for people in a company to work hard and believe in what they are doing. But what happens where there is no established force for the organization to fight against? The opponent becomes internal, and people inside the company start manufacturing internal opponents instead of external ones. You hear more about this in companies without welldefined competitors than in companies with someone to compete with. In my opinion, the internal opponent phenomenon is among the more important things to understand when it comes to your success in getting and keeping a job. Several years ago, I started getting calls from associates in a large law firm in Los Angeles that was called Troop Meisinger at the time. This was a very successful law firm and was considered a great place to work. While I am not aware of the specifics of how the firm was run, essentially many parts of the firm had been pieced together from numerous other law firms via recruitment or mergers. When these various groups joined, they were often viewed as competitors for the firms work and profits, and were treated as outsiders. Eventually the firm was made up of numerous factions that were all working against one another. Instead of competing with outside law firms, these factions were competing against each other.
The calls that I received during that time from the firms associates were always about a different internal opponent within the firm. With so many internal opponents, the firm eventually imploded. When many of these groups eventually found new jobs at other firms, they ended up creating the same problems wherever they went. The adage, two is company and three is a crowd is often true. Two people collaborate better than a group of three, because in a group of three two people will often find a degree of fault with the third person and end up excluding the third person in some way. The same thing happens in many organizations. Someone always seems to be on the outside, and becomes an internal opponent within the group. It is like an athlete who is playing poorly. The team starts talking about how this player is harming the overall success of the team and may decide to sideline the player. I read somewhere that every year General Electric ranks its employees, and the employees in the bottom 0 percent are given one year to improve. If they fall into the same bottom 0 percent the next year, they are dismissed. This is a method by which the company ensures that people who are not performers are excluded from the team. Unhealthy organizations can find internal opponents in a paranoid way from time to time. These organizations allow rumors to flourish and enemies will be seen right and left. If a manager arbitrarily fires people (regardless of whether or not they were playing by the rules), people in the organization may start manufacturing internal opponents, often for no reason at all. No one knows who can be trusted in unhealthy organizations. The process gets out of control and mob mentality takes over. What Does a Team Player Look Like? Dont look for internal opponents among your co-workers, staff or employer. They are members of your team, and the opponents should be somewhere out there, external, in the companies and organizations with which you compete. Externalize the opponent to ensure that you are playing by the rules in your company and are always seen as part of the team. If you are not seen as part of the team, then you will quickly find that the team is against you. When you interview for a position, stress that you will be part of the team and not someone who will be excluded. When you do a job, do everything within your power to win favor with the team and prove that you are an asset. Do things publicly that show you are trying to help the team, and never, ever speak negatively about your team members.
One of the best ways to tell if someone will be good at a job is to look at her employment stability. I believe this is more important than where she went to school, how well she did in school, or how prestigious her last employer was. Employment stability shows the ability to play on a team successfully. The best workers are the ones who have the most stability, simply because they are able to work well with the team. The people who have had the most employment stability have very similar profiles in many respects. They join teams rather than get jobs. When they are looking for a new job, it is usually because the owner of the company retired, or some other factor beyond their control. When these kinds of team players are hired, it brings positivity to the organization. I have seen the resumes of people who have joined one company after another that failed. I have hired some of these people only to discover that they brought negative and polarizing energy to the company. When I observe people in companies who have had a lot of employment stability, I notice that they never participate in office gossip or negative conversation about others. They remain neutral and simply dont get involved. Involvement with political innuendo and gossip is the quickest way to end up on the outs with your team. I watch these people and am amazed at how well they navigate the waters and stay employed when others around them drown in a sea of petty politics. Working with most employers is like avoiding a hot ball thats always moving around, and if it touches you it will cause you to be ejected from the game and lose favor with the team. The people who do well are the people who consistently play by the rules, and because of this the team always views them as valuable players. A true team player truly wants to be part of the team, and focuses on external opponents rather than internal ones. In order for your company to succeed, it is important that it has an external opponent to drive it towards victory.
CHAPTER 2
PLAY EACH DAY LIkE ITs YOUR MOsT IMPORTANT
It is the work we do when people are not looking that matters. Thats a key piece of the game, because the game extends beyond workplaces and job descriptions. It reaches in to the very core of who you are and what your work ethic looks like. The more you improve your game, the more praise and rewards will come your way. When you are continually improving at each task, you will continually look forward to the next task, and then the next one and the one after that. Play each day of your life like you are playing in the World Series. Every single day and every single moment matters. Most people never do the best work they can because they dont know how to play the game. But it is possible to have a relationship with your work that is one of love, improvement and challenge, while embracing everything that you do. Embracing your work is the only way to continually move ahead and stand out among all of the people out there who are competing for the life that you want. I was reading an article in the New York Times recently about President Obama -- before he ever announced his candidacy -- being on vacation in Hawaii and being recognized by a reporter (who was also on vacation). Most politicians would not be too excited about being caught off guard by a reporter in the middle of a family vacation. But what happened was surprising. Obama proceeded to be the nicest and most open guy he could be. He sat down and spoke with the reporter about his policies and other matters for some time. While most politicians would have viewed this as an annoying imposition, Obama was smart enough to realize that he needs to be on all the time. Thats how the game is played. His team is the entire United States and beyond. You simply cannot buy this sort of glowing press coverage. Obama realized that if he wanted to be a public figure and a representative of the people, he needed to be accessible and heard. This is what the best people out there do in every discipline: they live their work and are always on, wherever they are. Several years ago people in America got jobs and typically stayed with the same company for most if not all of their entire careers. They looked forward to annual raises and occasional promotions, and generally did what they were told. It didnt matter whether or not they liked their work. People did the work they were given in the hours required, and could look forward to a pension and other benefits many years later. They resented their bosses, they resented their jobs, but they did their work because it was required of them. They looked forward to the weekends and dreaded Monday mornings.
www.employmentcrossing.com 5
Today we are no longer tied to employers like this. Most people move around numerous times in their careers and work for multiple employers. In this modern environment, employees are less loyal to employers and vice versa. We rarely have pensions. Instead, we have portable 40ks we can move between employers. Because work is so different today, there is no reason not to give 00 percent; if you dont, your employer can easily find someone who will. There are people who will only work hard for an organization if the organization is prestigious or experiencing financial success. There are people who will only work hard if they feel they are in their dream job with their dream employer. There are people who will only put in their best effort if it looks like they might receive a bonus. Let me give you some examples of people like this that I have seen or heard of in the past: The lawyer who goes to work at a less prestigious law firm than the one where he previously worked, and doesnt work as hard because the community doesnt think highly of the firm. People who only put in a good effort before a performance review is about to occur. The manager who decides to stop working hard the day he realizes he cant qualify for a bonus. The contractor who made big money when the economy was strong, but suddenly can only find work on small, low-paying projects. Instead of doing a good job, the contractor wastes time and does not apply him or herself. The person who works hard only when his or her supervisor is watching. The job seeker interested in working for a particular company who is extremely rude to someone he or she meets at lunch, believing this person cannot help him or her get a job. I remember walking into a high school when classes were not in session and seeing a girl going down the hall picking up various pieces of paper and trash from the floor. The school authorities did not know anyone was on campus; it was the middle of summer and there was no reason to be there. This girl was the class president, and this sort of work was something I knew that she probably never told anyone she was doing. She just did the work to support the school. This was a public school in the Detroit area, and in the few years I knew this girl I saw numerous examples of her doing things like this that no one ever gave her credit for. A few years ago it occurred to me that this girl was probably famous by now. She was between and when I knew her, and although I never spoke with her about her work ethic back then, her need to contribute in the true sense had a profound effect on me.
It turned out I was right. When I searched for her on the internet, what immediately came up were pictures of her in Asia, in places like Vietnam, Laos and other countries helping people who were stricken by poverty and disease. There were news stories about her everywhere. Twenty-five years ago I would have predicted that this sort of selflessness would have made an impact somewhere. Her attitude towards work is the same now as it was then. To be really outstanding in life (and in a job) doesnt require a lot; probably no more than an extra 0 percent effort can turn you into an extraordinary performer in your chosen field. The way to do this is to focus your efforts on the work you are doing rather than how people respond to it or what they think of you. Making the most of each days performance strengthens your relationship with your work rather than your relationship with the rewards. Your work is far more involved and more complex than any reward you could possibly receive for it. The best performers are continually focused on doing the best they can no matter what. Making each days performance the most important ever is something that enables you to constantly improve. Your work can teach you how to become a better person, how to communicate more effectively, and how to know -- and be comfortable with -- your place in the world. When I watch people work I can see their characters coming through. I can see how the way they treat their work relates to the way they treat themselves and the people around them. Your relationship with your work is a reflection on your character and the sort of person you are. Keep in mind that those around you see everything you do and every single part of your performance, regardless of whether or not you think they are watching. The greatest athletes and sports stars are intently and exclusively focused on the game, and oblivious to the people in the stands.
CHAPTER 3
WORkING WEEkENDs AND HOLIDAYs Is A GOOD GAME PLAN
I cannot tell you how many careers I have seen ruined by having the wrong attitude when it comes to working weekends and holidays. While you may consider your work just a job, if you telegraph that message to your superiors you will be in trouble quickly. In order to really thrive in most jobs, your work must be far, far more to you than just a job. In this particular version of the game, your co-workers actually are your opponents, because you need to be outstanding in comparison to them. There is no better way to let your superiors know that you take your work seriously than to put in those extra hours, and in this case, it does matter whos watching. It is generally the youngest and most promising -- on paper -- whose careers take a hit due to less-than-stellar work ethics. Presumably because of past achievements, these individuals think they are exempt from having to work hard because they can coast by on the merits of what they did in the past. But unless you are working weekends and holidays, your career with most serious organizations will be fairly short. I want to be clear at the outset that what I am about to write may not necessarily be a good fit for you. However, if you are interested in holding a job through all economic climates and being the subject of repeated promotions and advancement in your current role, then ask yourself this question do you want to win against your peers, or lose? You should be working weekends and holidays because: It is a privilege to have work There is only one way your organization makes money Clients and customers do not care about your weekend There are only a certain number of opportunities for promotion in your company You will not always be expected to work weekends and holidays.
If you are in a job that keeps you busy and productive, consider yourself fortunate. The fact that there is a lot of work means that the employer is doing something right and the company is generating money to pay your salary. The presence of great amounts of work means that the company is probably getting repeat business from having done a good job with its current clients or customers. It also means that the firm likely has opportunities for you to advance.
Having been a legal recruiter for a long time in good and bad economic cycles, I have seen and spoken with hundreds of associates who were laid off or downsized because there was not enough work. And these were talented young attorneys. Believe me, everyone in a firm gets nervous when there is not enough work because this means their jobs are in jeopardy. This is true in any industry, from scientists to store clerks. There is also the potential situation where your company may not have a lot of work, but your employer has sought you out and given what work there is to you. This is even better, because it means that he or she likes your work product and/or you personally. You are being recognized and are in a position where you have some added job security. So if you are asked to do work on a weekend or holiday, keep in mind that there could be problems much worse than this. The company might not have any work to give, or your boss might think someone elses work is better than yours. The company only makes money when you are working, so that makes you extremely valuable. Depending on your position, it is possible that you have no idea of the economics of your company. You do not know what your companys office space costs, what the furniture in your office costs, or what the companys obligations are for salaries and the products or services it provides. Regardless of your companys financial obligations, your company needs money (and lots of it) to survive. If you help your company make a lot of money, you will be contributing to its survival. When your bosses and other decision makers evaluate you, they will be concerned with how hard you are working, because this is how they make money. When it comes right down to it, your relationship with your employer hinges on your ability to make the company money. In this sense, the employer does not care if you do this on a weekday, holiday, or weekend. Similarly, clients and customers dont care about your weekends either. I am astonished when I speak with associates in law firms who are upset about taking calls or doing client paperwork on weekends. In a large law firm, clients have major problems, whether its litigation, a bankruptcy filing, or defending an important patent. When you are working on matters like this, you must remember how important they are to the client. Clients need attorneys who take their legal matters as seriously as they do and are accessible and available when needed. Again, this is true in all industries. If you have issues with working weekends and holidays on important or time-sensitive matters for clients, then I you might want to reconsider working in a job where others are dependent on you. In this scenario, you, your customers and your employers are teammates, and you have an interdependent relationship. You need to be there to make money for the employer so he can pay you. You need to serve the client so he can give money to the company. As someone in a role where others are dependent upon your work, you hold a great
deal of importance. The people who depend upon you need someone who is going to be there when needed. Your employer and your clients want to feel that you have their backs covered. Employers want to feel that the work you are doing for them is the most important thing on your agenda. Also keep in mind that there are only a certain number of promotions your employer can make. When choosing between two people for advancement, employers generally seek reasons to exclude one candidate from consideration because the number of available spots is so limited. Those who expect you to work weekends and holidays almost certainly did the same thing before they became your supervisors. In fact, they were probably among the hardest working people in the company. Because they did this, they see absolutely nothing wrong with you doing the same thing. In order to rise, you must bond with your superiors. You can bond with your superiors by showing them that you are sharing the same experiences they once had. While much can be said against working weekends and holidays, understand that working weekends and holidays is important to your company, your clients and your own advancement. If working weekends and holidays is offensive to you, then you should learn to be happy with your current position with no advancement. Certainly there are companies where working overtime is not expected at all. Nevertheless, because of the kind of message working weekends and holidays sends to your clients and your superiors, making this sort of commitment will only help you if your objective is to get ahead.
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CHAPTER 4
CREATE RULEs OF THE GAME THAT MAkE YOU FEEL sUCCEssFUL
I attended a private high school called Cranbrook-Kingswood (CK), which was quite competitive to get in to. A couple of years before I started school there, the founder of Little Caesars Pizza, Mike Ilitch, had given a ton of money to the school with instructions to build an indoor hockey rink because he loved hockey, and his son, who was a student at CK, was a very good hockey player. I also believe he may have required the school, as part of his gift, to have an exceptional hockey team. The school recruited the best hockey players from all over the United States and Canada and gave them free tuition, room and board. In order to ensure that these kids got good enough grades to graduate, the school created special classes for some of them in math and other disciplines. I want to be clear that several of the hockey players were extremely intelligent and did not need these classes; however, a lot of these kids had come from backgrounds where athletics, rather than academics, had always been stressed. I first found out about this special program when I met and became friends with a kid from my neighborhood who had played hockey for my school for one year. Ill call him Dennis. He had been a star player in his public high school his first year and was living a dream. He loved hockey and was doing fine in school, and all the girls adored him. One day after practice, a scout from CK walked up to Dennis and told him if he wanted to attend the school and play hockey there, he could attend the school for free. Dennis accepted. He and his family were incredulous because they had known other kids who were far more intelligent who had gone through a rigorous admissions process and were not able to get into CK. Dennis instant admission to the school was incredible to me too, because it took months for me to get in. I had to take tests and come for interviews, and my parents were even interviewed. I needed recommendations from past teachers. It was not an easy process. After one year, Dennis was kicked out of the school for bad grades. He was a big handsome guy and the girls were always interested in him. But after getting kicked out of school, he really struggled. He had low self-esteem and migrated into aggressive partying. He also had several auto accidents while drunk. I think he even stopped playing hockey. Before going to CK, Dennis had been a star hockey player and was happy with his life. After going to the CK, he became very unhappy. I realized that he was unhappy because hed been trying to live according to a completely different set of rules than he lived with before getting into the prestigious school. Of course he failed!

At Cranbrook-Kingswood, Dennis learned these rules about what success means: It is important to do well in school You are only successful if you are on the path to an important college. It is more important to do well in school than to do well in hockey.
In Dennis environment before CK, none of this mattered. But a he was thrown into a new environment where all the rules changed, and he quickly came to feel bad about himself. He went from having it all to near self-destruction because the rules of the game had changed so abruptly. Over the years I met many of the CK hockey players, and I came to believe that for many of them, going to this school did not serve them well. While they could have been extremely happy in most environments, going to a school where academics and getting into college were stressed so much set them up for failure. I believe Dennis was an example of how disempowering and self-defeating these rules and standards can be. I used to spend several hours a day reviewing resumes of attorneys that were applying for jobs for which our firm was recruiting, and as a result, I have come to understand the hopes and dreams of attorneys quite well. Regardless of whether the attorney is still in law school, has been practicing several years, or is a partner in a large law firm, there are certain rules by which most attorneys measure themselves that tell them whether or not they are successful. These rules most often involve: The size of the firm that employs them. How prestigious this firm is considered by the legal community. How much money their firm is paying relative to other firms. The quality of law schools and pedigrees the attorneys have at the firm. Whether or not they become a partner within a certain number of years.
This is a gross generalization and is, of course, not the rule for every attorney. But many of them do judge their success according to these criteria. One of the hardest things about going to a top law school is that the competition inside these schools is quite intense for the top jobs. Every year students compete for the jobs paying the most at the largest firms. Students from the top law schools get a higher percentage of higher-paying jobs at prestigious firms than students from the lower-ranked law schools. Its a very big game. While I dont know the exact numbers, I believe about 85% of the law students graduating each year will not get jobs with the large firms that pay top market salaries. Instead, they get jobs that often pay 50% or less than the jobs in the top firms. In the smaller firms,

attorneys typically dont earn as much money, and the work is most often for smaller and less prestigious client, but they are doing work that is essentially no different than in the largest firms. I have noticed that many attorneys from the best law schools are governing their lives and their careers with the following rule: I will not be successful unless I am practicing law with a large law firm. In addition, attorneys with small firms who went to bad law schools are often trying to get into the larger firms. They, too, do not feel successful unless they attain that goal. Somewhere along the way they have become attached to a rule that says, I will not be successful until I am working in a large law firm. And guess what? Many of them are unhappy when they dont achieve this. They use this rule to set themselves up for lifelong disappointment. It is crazy. Instead of being happy practicing law, a lot of attorneys decide that they will never be successful until they get a job with the largest and highest paying firms. They spend years believing that they will only be happy once they get that big job. This is a very disempowering attitude. I have noticed that the people who are the happiest have the fewest rules about the way things should be be. If you ask yourself what it takes to be successful you may say: I need this kind of car. I want this sort of job. I want this sort of house. I want my mate to be a certain way.
These are the rules that define happiness for many people, while other people are happy just to be alive and have a roof over their heads. Who do you think is happier? If you set rules that are difficult to meet, you will experience pain and disappointment. If you create rules that are easy to meet, you will experience empowerment and fulfillment. In this game, you get to make your own rules. My personal definition of success requires that I experience a minimum of pain and tons of pleasure. The way I do this is by setting rules that empower me rather than hurt me. I do have rules, and sometimes theyre absurd, and I have to laugh at myself when I see them clearly. Using examples from my own life, I have very few arguments with my wife about anything. However, when she gets excited while talking about something while eating, she will often speak while chewing. When I was growing up, my mother used to get incredibly angry with

me if I spoke while chewing food. She would call it a sign of disrespect and, in one case, she made me sit next to the dog on the floor while eating as punishment. So obviously I grew up with a rule about this. Years later, I find myself getting angry when I see people eating with their mouths open. I take it as a sign of disrespect, among other things. I know this is completely irrational and makes no sense. The only reason I am reacting this way is because of the rules I learned when I was younger. Here I am, decades later, having a lovely meal with my wife, and suddenly this rule comes up and prevents me from having a good time. We create our own rules for all the games we play, and these games include our intimate relationships, our finances, our careers, our politics, our environments and our spiritual outlooks. We use these rules to interpret our experiences, and in the case of the hockey player, these rules can cast a shadow over what was could have been a happy and successful life. Have you allowed rules to do this to you? What would happen if you had fewer rules and lived within a rule budget rather than constantly needing to be something different? What would it be like for you to create a brand new game? I live in a large city, and when I go to small towns, people tell me they are unhappy and wish they lived somewhere else. When I meet people who went to less-than-prestigious schools, they tell me they wish they had gone to better schools. I used to hire writers in our Los Angeles office who had experience in the entertainment industry, but I stopped doing that when I realized that they all felt lousy about themselves because they didnt succeed as screenwriters. They had rules that said they were only successful if they were selling screenplays to major studios. Anything less was failure, so consequently, they never gave their all to the job with our company. I remember once speaking with a man who had grown up, been friends with and gone to school with a couple of people who ended up becoming very famous. One was a United States senator, the other was a state governor, and the other was the CEO of one of the largest companies in the world. This person was nowhere near as successful as his friends were, but he still had a good career. But instead of feeling like he had a good career, he could only compare himself with his successful friends. He felt like a failure his entire life. What has to happen for you to feel successful? What are your visions, rules, fantasies and definitions, and how are these keeping you from true happiness? Rules control how we feel about ourselves. Every conflict youve ever had is probably because a situation or a person violated some rule you had firmly planted in your mind about how things should be.
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Play the Game by Your Own Rules I believe that we essentially have two choices in life. First, we can be average; molded by the people around us and marginalized by doing what society wants us to do. Or we can take a stand, choosing not to play by the rules and simply doing things in a way that makes sense to us. This philosophy can also be applied to your job search, providing a tremendously successful strategy, especially in a challenging economic environment. Let me share a story about one of the most incredible men I have known. He changed the rules of the game in his life. He drew a line in the sand and decided he was going to live the life he wanted. He may have been a lot like you. Whether you are in a blue-collar job or a white-collar career, you will identify with this man.
From when I was about 8 until I was I had an asphalt selling business. I would go doorto-door to literally every house in Grosse Pointe, MI. every summer trying to sell my asphaltrelated services. Most of the people who lived in Grosse Pointe at the time were Caucasian and conservative. The men wore ties to work. Very few people drove flashy cars, and most of the cars were American. The whole atmosphere was very button-down. The people I met going door-to-door worked for auto companies or suppliers of auto companies, and appeared to be quite conservative. One of the largest homes in Grosse Pointe was inhabited by a man named Ken. Ken wore expensive, flashy shirts from Italy and ridiculous-looking Swiss watches and had a collection of Ferraris. Although I only went to Kens door once a year, when I passed by his house I notice him sitting in his driveway, revving a Ferrari, walking around his backyard pool in a robe, or smoking a cigar while taking a leisurely stroll around his property. Ken always seemed to be enjoying himself, almost as if he were in a perpetual state of bliss. I ran my asphalt business for several years and eventually met Ken. We became friends, and I gradually learned all about his businesses. Ken had gone to all the right schools, got an MBA, and had gone into the banking business. He was a banker with a prestigious bank for several years and enjoyed his experience. However, he realized that he would never be able to achieve the life he wanted by staying where he was. One day he was having the windows cleaned at his house. He noticed that the two men from the window cleaning company showed up, cleaned his windows in 5 minutes, and left. They did this three times a year and each time Ken was billed $5 by the window company. He saw that the cleaners went to each house in the neighborhood to do their tri-annual cleanings. Ken figured that the men doing this work probably did not make more than $8 an hour.
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He realized right then and there that there was a lot of money in window cleaning. Despite being a high-paid banker, Ken started cleaning windows in his neighborhood each weekend. You can imagine how people must have looked down on him; someone from a blue-blood background doing this blue-collar work. But Ken decided this was something he wanted to do. Pretty soon, Ken was making more money cleaning windows each weekend than he made each week at the bank. Then Ken quit his job. Ken was soon making over $ million a year with a window cleaning crew of six guys going door-to-door around Grosse Pointe. But more importantly, Ken was the person he wanted to be. He did not have the same stress he had when he was a banker, even though he took a seemingly ridiculous risk with his career, going from prestigious banker to window washer. How many of us have ever had the courage to do this in our own lives? Do you want to be a musician, an artist, or an actor? How about an auto mechanic or a sports coach? What would happen if you followed your heart and did what you want to do? Yes, there would be some losses, but the benefits would far outweigh them. When you do this, everything changes. You cannot imagine the number of people who have stepped out of the rat race and done exactly what they wanted to do. The rewards of this do not always have to be economic; the most important rewards from these decisions are spiritual. Those are the ones that change you from the inside out.

CHAPTER 5
HOW YOU HANDLE CHAOs DETERMINEs sUCCEss OR FAILURE
Yesterday I received a call at :00 am from an employee who had been working for a recruiting company of ours for less than hours and was giving notice before boarding an airplane. Ill call her Cheryl. We had brought Cheryl out to work for us from another city and were training her in Pasadena before she fled back to her home city. During Cheryls hours with the company, she witnessed the numerous changes we were forcing ourselves to go through. One of our largest businesses was formerly a student loan company. Despite the fact that the number of loans we were doing was down 8% from the previous year due to the economic climate, we had kept some employees unnecessarily on the payroll in the hope that things would pick up. But now it was time to let them go. Cheryl was witness to the chaos these layoffs created in our company. While we were doing fantastically well in several of our businesses, the loan industry was not one of them. Moreover, our company has recently replaced its Chief Financial Officer and its Human Resources person. This resulted in an incredible amount of confusion. We had new people reorganizing everything and trying to get everything in order. Youre at the airport? I asked. Yes. I left the keys to the truck you let me use at the front desk and took a taxi to the airport. I also bought my own plane ticket home. I left the book you let me borrow on the front desk in the office. In my entire career, I had never seen anything like this. In fact, the job Cheryl was quitting was quite a prize, and nobody had ever quit the position within the first year of starting, much less run away in a panic. I was amazed by what I was witnessing. I had been on the phone with her the night before listening to her reasons and justifications. She related how we were not organized enough. She felt that we should have had a benefits package ready for her the moment she started. She overheard someone say that we had made a late payment on one of our phone bills. All of the administrators in our company were too busy to speak with her the day she arrived because we were in the midst of a reorganization, and shed also heard that one of our staff members was concerned about getting his expenses reimbursed, even though hed submitted only a week ago. Cheryl had the impression that our company was a mess.

Cheryl had come out of an extremely structured law firm and had walked into a very chaotic situation. Shed been the only one hired from more than 500 applicants, and well over 40 people were interviewed for the position. When she was hired, I was pretty confident she would be earning at least $50,000 over the next months. Part of her job description was to make sense of the chaos not only in our company, but in the actual job she would be starting. Her job would involve taking up to 40 phone calls per day, writing at least four lengthy letters each week, meeting with lots of people and taking calculated risks with the chaos around her. Obviously chaos was not tolerable for her. The temporary disorganization in our company frightened her away. Despite the fact that we were growing at a meteoric pace, Cheryl interpreted the disorganization we were experiencing as something to be alarmed about. In her world, like in many of our worlds, organization and order is a requirement for feeling secure in a job. This is one of Cheryls rules. There is no such thing as a secure job, and there is no such thing as a secure life. Its all a game, and you never know when youre going to win or lose, or exactly how the game is going to be played. The only way companies can grow and change is if they subject themselves to constant change and chaos. This is not just true for companies. Its true for individuals as well. Our company has gone through numerous periods of reorganization throughout the years. What always happens inevitably is that the new company emerges stronger than the previous one, and a year or two later, we may reorganize again. Think about the changes youve experienced in your own life. Hasnt this almost always proven to be true? Companies are like complex organisms that adapt to different environments, just like people. We are constantly re-organizing to take on the world and changing when we need to. Observations About Order and Chaos I am going to digress for a moment because I would like to make some observations about some things Ive noticed throughout my life that are relevant to your life and career. This may at first appear to be a digression into a topic unrelated to your job search. However, I can assure you that it will shortly begin to make sense. I also know that I may offend some people, but this is a risk Im willing to take because you can learn a lot from what I am about to say. I had the privilege of growing up in essentially two types of upper-middle class neighborhoods. One neighborhood, and the school within it, consisted of people I would say had families that had lived in this country for hundreds of years. I refer to it as an
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established neighborhood. The other neighborhood and school consisted of people who were more recent immigrants to the United States, but were still pretty well off. What I noticed in the culture of the more established people was that there was not a lot of emotion. Things always seemed very ordered, and they were inflexible when it came to new ideas. People dressed more or less the same way they had for decades. The front yards of the homes were very uniform and nothing was ever ostentatious or creative. Houses were well ordered and uncluttered. Inside of the homes it was generally very quiet. People kept to themselves, and were careful and measured about most things they said and did. They were extremely suspicious of outsiders. They did not take many risks and did not feel comfortable with change. There was suspicion about anything that was not the way it had always been or was expected to be. There were firm rules that did not change or evolve. People in this environment had the same problems people have anywhere, but no one would ever discuss such things, and issues were aggressively covered up and avoided. People would often know about each others problems, but this was always very secretive and discussed behind closed doors. In the less established neighborhoods, things were more chaotic. There was an energetic exchange of information and ideas. People spoke more honestly and were up front about what was going on. They wore the latest fashions and changed styles easily. There was more emotion, probably in part due to the fact that extended families often lived together. People were more accepting and less rigid. They were louder and more expressive, and didnt seem to care as much about what other people thought of them. The houses were messier, and I would say there was a lot more chaos in these environments. People in these environments also had problems, but they would talk openly about it with a lot of people. Friends and family members would console them and debate the problem, and the problem would almost always eventually be resolved, with everyone ending up stronger in the long run from having dealt with the problem. Nothing was hushed up, for the most part, and everything was dealt with head on. The most important thing about the juxtaposition of these environments is this - that the people coming out of the environments with the most chaos were by and large more successful. They went to the best colleges. They did better on standardized tests. They were happier and had fewer substance abuse problems. They were in better physical shape, and more balanced psychologically. They seemed to ultimately enjoy life much more than the people from the other environment.

Looking back on everyone I knew from both environments, I can say unequivocally that the people from the more rigid environment had more problems and less fulfilling lives. This is a hugely controversial, sweeping generality to make, but it is a pattern that I witnessed. I think this had everything to do with the rules people had created for themselves. The need to adhere to rigid rules made people miserable, while those with more flexible rules were able to adapt in response to their environments. Here are some important points about how companies and individuals function: Newer groups and companies tend to function with less order than older systems and companies, and are more open to change. This enables them to adapt and grow. Older and more established groups and companies tend to function with more order than younger groups and companies, and resist change. Resisting change hurts them and prevents them from growing and improving. This makes sense. The longer an ethnic or religious group is in the United States, the more ordered it is likely to become. The longer a company or other group is in existence, the more ordered it too is likely to become. Groups, companies and other organizations have the tendency to become more ordered the longer they are around. The issue is that this increased order begins, at some point, to hold the group back. I love studying auto companies, and its interesting to note that the auto companies that have done the best in the United States are not the more established ones. Companies like General Motors at one point were the epitome of order. They were the subjects of numerous management studies by people like Peter Drucker as to how ordered companies could function. Look at what happens with this order, however. The more order there is, the less the organization learns and adapts in response to new information from its environment. The organization gets static and does not change when the world around it is changing. Procedures take hold and people try to protect things to make sure they stay a certain way. Eventually this order hurts the organization and it falls in upon itself because it is not interacting properly with its environment. The order that was meant to protect the company can eventually force the company either to collapse on itself and die, or reorganize into a stronger (more likely smaller) company that is interacting better with its environment. The reorganized company will be able to provide
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products and services that people actually want at a given point in time. This process repeats itself with every company out there. Order meets chaos, and the company either responds to the chaos by becoming stronger, or it disbands and dies. I have witnessed the difference between established and un-established groups within law firms. When you walk into some firms, you can practically hear a pin drop. The environment is extremely quiet and ordered. In these environments, no one typically talks about the problems the firm is having. There is very little exchange of information. No one knows much about what is happening beyond their very narrow niche within the firm. There are other law firms -- almost always newer and less established -- in which there is a tremendous amount of activity and energy. The firm may be getting tons of new clients and may be figuring out how to make sense of everything that is happening. The firm may be growing at an aggressive pace. But eventually, the firm (like other groups) will become organized. As it becomes organized, much of the chaos that formerly characterized it will fall away. Imagine what General Motors, Google and Microsoft must have been like in their early days! All systems have a tendency to eventually move towards organization. One of the basic laws of thermodynamics is that there is always a certain amount of energy lost in converting energy into work. During the industrial revolution of the th century, physicists thought that a perfectly efficient engine could be produced that would convert all of the fuel put into it into mechanical energy without any loss of heat. According to the second law of thermodynamics however, this is not possible, because any heat engine will invariably lose some heat input as friction, heat radiation and exhaust. Because no heat engine can be perfectly efficient, the implication of this second law is that unless energy is added in some way, the engine will become disordered and break down. The measurement of the inefficiency in the process and the loss of energy is called entropy. Entropy is a fairly easy concept to understand. If you have a gasoline engine and add fuel to it, when you start the engine, some energy will be lost, in other words, not all the fuel that is burned will be converted into running the engine. The engine will give off heat that is not translated into power. The piston will cause friction within the engine, and this will eventually cause the piston to break down. Unless some new energy is added in the form of new part or an overhaul, the engine will eventually cease to function. A house will eventually rot away and turn to dust if it sits there long enough without sufficient maintenance and upkeep. A political party will eventually disband without effective leadership. So will a company.

All systems and all machines eventually break down unless energy is added to them. For more than a hundred years, scientists have wondered how it was possible that (a) despite the entropy predicted by the second law of thermodynamics (b) the world and its groups appear to be moving towards increased order. For example, life has evolved on earth into a state of increasing order. Different species have arisen that are suitable for their environments. People have become increasingly sophisticated in how they organize themselves, and are evolving and growing. How can this be true, scientists wondered, when the tendency of the universe is for everything to break down and become less ordered? Entropy is one of the fundamental concepts of physics, and the conflict between this and the world to move towards order was something very difficult for scientists to understand. In , Noble Prize-winning Belgian chemist, Ilya Prigogine proved his hypothesis that order emerges not in spite of chaos, but because of chaos. Prigogine was interested in why systems are increasingly going towards order and becoming more complex when there is entropy, and the universe is consistently losing energy and tending towards disorder and chaos (expanding and becoming increasingly disordered). What Prigogine proved was that evolution and growth occur when a system successfully takes in energy from its environment and dissipates that energy into the environment. In order to successfully dissipate energy into its environment, however, systems need to reorganize themselves once the input from the environment exceeds the systems ability to dissipate the resulting entropy. The most important point of Prigogines study was his finding of what occurs when the input begins to exceed the ability of the system to dissipate the necessary entropy. At this point the system will become unstable and at some point the input will be enough to push the system over the edge. At that point, if the energy input becomes enough that the system is about to break down, it will reach what he calls a bifurcation pointa point at which (1) the system either totally breaks down and no longer exists as an organized system, or (2) it reorganizes itself in a new way able to meet the increased energy input. If the system reorganizes itself into a system that can handle the increased level of energy input from its environment, the result will be a more complex system than the one that existed before. This new system will be more resilient and functional and will have a greater ability to dissipate entropy. If the energy input increases again beyond the ability of the new system to handle it, it will reorganize again or dissipate entropy. This is the process by which evolution happens. Everything grows and evolves in this manner. People are constantly taking in energy in the form of food, information, light, air, water and stimulation from people and objects in their

environments. Simultaneously, people are dissipating energy in the form of heat, waste products, carbon dioxide and the activities they are involved in, whether it be movement, speech, or influencing other objects in their environment. The more input and stimulation you receive, the more likely you too will reach the point of bifurcation. It is this point where you choose to either fall apart or reorganize at a higher level, and this will be the turning point of your life. How does this apply to Cheryl, the employee who left after just hours with our company? Not surprisingly, Cheryl was someone whose life had been very controlled and ordered. She probably grew up in established environments with established parents, attending established schools and then working in established law firms. She was like the law firm that remains static and portrays extreme order to the outside world. Cheryl was met with an incredible amount of chaos in her work environment that could have pushed her to grow and become more able to deal with stress. Learning to deal with this chaos could have made her rich if she had understood how chaos could have helped her grow. The best thing about chaos is that it rapidly forces reorganization. The reorganization that comes out of this gives us the capacity to handle more chaos in the future and also enables us to function at a higher level. The more input and the more insanity we can handle, the better off we can be. This is also one reason you see some of the best executives in the world doing ridiculous things like trying to break records in balloons, sailboats, rockets or climbing mountains. They are pushing themselves to a new level of stress and force their minds to reorganize at a higher level. So where does this leave you and your job search? If youve recently lost a job or are unhappy in your job, you are receiving input from your environment that is changing your worldview and forcing you to adapt. You are being given the option to either fall apart or reorganize at a higher level. When the world changes and bad things happen, we are being given a tremendous opportunity to become more sophisticated and better at everything. What are you planning on doing? I had asked Cheryl as we chatted late into the evening the night before. I need something that feels more stable and is more predictable, she told me. I did not want to get too far into it with her, but this told me that she had made the decision to take herself out of an environment that was going to force her to grow and change. She had been given a tremendous opportunity to grow, and instead had taken herself out of the game.

Chaos is a Gift One of my greatest strengths is my ability to inject chaos into any business with which I am involved. Once chaos is injected into a system, opportunities for expansion are endless. It is for this reason I believe that I have been able to thrive in every conceivable economic environment. When the economy is good, the companies I lead do well, and when the economy is bad the companies I lead also do well. I think I must have learned this from my mother. Everything was always incredibly chaotic for her. There was one problem after another constantly coming up, but I realize now that she used chaos to her advantage, and I learned that the ability to create and manage chaos is one of the most formidable skills anyone can have. If you understand how to work with chaos, you will always experience success in your career. When I was growing up there was a very uptight man named Karl who lived a few doors down from my house. From the time I was or so, Karl watched me grow my asphalt business from the back of a Yugo into an operation with numerous trucks and employees that was doing more residential asphalt sealing than any other company in the suburbs of Detroit. For years, I would say hello to him in the morning as he was taking walks, and I would frequently notice him looking at my equipment. Karl had been an architect before he retired. I had seal-coated all of his neighbors asphalt for years and they had been happy with the work. Each year when I would stop by to talk to him about his asphalt, however, he would not allow me to do it. He was familiar with how I worked because he watched me at the neighbors and appeared to be impressed by how quickly I would do their asphalt. Each year he would talk to me about his asphalt, but never hired me. When Karl looked at my equipment, he always made one remark or another about how I was not maintaining it properly. He would tell me I had not cleaned my tools properly, and constantly watched to make sure that I didnt spill anything and that I was very careful. He demanded to know all about the materials I used, and researched it to make sure that they were the best possible materials for the job. For years, he appeared to be studying me to see if I had what it took to do what was no more than a $00 driveway-sealing job. At the height of my career as an asphalt sealant contractor, I was doing as many as 5 driveways a day. I got so good at it that my crew and I would pull up to a house, and using an array of incredibly sophisticated equipment, we would have virtually any driveway done in 5 to 0 minutes. Because my prices were so good, I could go into a neighborhood and do every single house on some streets. People knew me, and my work was trusted.
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This is why I was amazed one day when I came home and could smell asphalt sealer coming from a few doors down. When you are in the business of asphalt sealing, you can smell asphalt sealer for miles (I have this ability to this day). I walked over to Karls house and could not believe my eyes. There was a brand new pickup truck with a small tidy little asphalt tank behind it. There were a couple of guys sealing the driveway. They looked like engineers neat and tidy without a single drop of asphalt sealer on their clothes. They were using small little brushes and approached the driveway as if it was an artists canvas rather than a slab of asphalt (I typically did my work with a brush that was at least 4 feet across, but these guys were using small paint brushes). I had never seen anything like it. It was the most anal-retentive asphalt sealing operation I had ever seen. I had no idea who these guys were, but the entire situation looked comical. My god! I asked them. How long have you been doing this? Six hours, one of them said, not even making eye contact with me. I was astonished. This driveway would not have taken me longer than -4 minutes at most. I noticed that theyd also done all sorts of precautionary measures that must have taken them hours. For example, they put newspaper with masking tape all over the garage so the sealer wouldnt get on the garage in case of a spill or accident. The guys were wearing protective booties over their shoes. For the life of me, I could not imagine how these guys could make a living doing this. There was not a drop of asphalt sealer anywhere on their equipment. It was as if they were performing surgery. Do you guys do this all the time? I asked them. Yes. Where do you do business? All over Detroit. How many driveways do you do in an average week? Two or three. I couldnt believe it. Later I asked a neighbor, How much did those guys charge? Around $50. she said.
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They charged more than twice what I did, but it took them five times longer. In addition, they had come out to Karls house to give an estimate, sent him one, and then waited for him to call them. By contrast, I typically just showed up at peoples homes and asked if they wanted me to do the work. The quality of the work would have turned out the same, but would have not been as measured or done with as much caution. Karl was seeking to have the work done with extreme precision, and after a long time searching, had found people who would do things according to his rules. He was interested in bringing extreme order to the process of what was occurring, but in the end it cost him a fortune for the same results. There are never good long-term benefits to incredible order. You need to have disorder to see opportunities and grow. Compared to Karls crew, I created an incredible business using disorder and dominated the market. We are constantly faced with chaos and disorder. People want predictability, and they want things to work a certain way. The search for order often results in missed opportunities, and the inability to tolerate chaos can harm us. The best ideas and the best processes come directly out of chaos, and we can use chaos to our advantage. People who are constantly seeking order -- like Cheryl and Karl -- are short-changing themselves.

CHATER 6
YOUR JOB Is A MIND GAME ITs ALL ABOUT BELIEF sYsTEMs
I spent the summer following my first year of law school working at the Department of Justice (the DOJ) in Washington, DC. The entire summer and the events leading up to it resulted in one of the strangest experiences I ever had. After I got the job with the DOJ, I was required to undergo a security clearance with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In addition to calling a lot of people I knew in the past, and after asking them a bunch of questions, the FBI also required me to get a physical exam and submit to a drug test. I went in for the physical in the late spring when I was studying for my final exams. It was like something out of a Frankenstein movie. Inside the doctors office was a skeleton hanging by a wire and the entire office was very disorganized. He started telling me strange stories about grisly things like a decapitation case he had been involved with at the morgue. The doctor looked like a mad scientisthis hair was disheveled and his comments were tangential. I was the last patient of the day on a Friday afternoon, and the doctor had to let me out of the building because everyone was gone for the day. On Saturday I went to the library to study at around 5 p.m. and didnt return home until around :0 a.m. When I got home there was a message on my answering machine. It was received about 45 minutes previously, at :45 a.m. I assumed it was a jilted ex-girlfriend and I prepared myself for high drama. Instead, I heard this: Hello, this is the doctor who did your physical on Friday. It is important that I speak with you right away. Please call me immediately. Your exam was fine. This is about something far more urgent. He left no number, and I searched frantically for the number of the clinic. I could not imagine why the doctor would be calling me at such a strange hour. I called the clinic and an answering machine picked up. I did not leave a message. On Sunday I called again and the machine picked up again. I still did not leave a message. On Monday I came home from the library around noon to grab lunch and called the clinic again. This time someone did pick up. I asked to speak with the doctor. Who is this!? the person on the other end of the line demanded. He left me a message early Sunday morning, I told her.

Thats impossible, she said. He was found dead this morning in the office. He had been dead since Friday night. This was the start of my bizarre summer at the DOJ. A few days into my job at the DOJ, my boss, an important government official appointed by the President, told me that hed heard I was living in a skid row hotel and offered to let me live at his house if I watered his lawn and fed his bird. At the time I was paying $00 or so a week to stay at the hotel, which was the cheapest place I could find. I tolerated it fine for a while, until I went to the icemaker one day and saw a bum peeing in it. I remember circulating that story around the DOJ. News of this event was probably what prompted my boss to offer me a free place to live. My boss wanted me to live in his home while he and his family traveled through Europe for the summer. I took up residence in his basement, where I was surrounded by boxes and a collection of liquor bottles. Needless to say, conditions in the basement were far better than the skid row hotel. There were lots of things I disliked about working with the DOJ. In addition to the supernatural death experience that occurred with the doctor and the time I spent in the skid row hotel, I was now living with a bird in a basement surrounded by liquor bottles. My job was strange as well. I worked in a huge building with scarcely any windows. The pay was horrible and my co-workers did not appear happy (there are numerous different divisions within the DOJ, so perhaps this was not the norm; however, I found the entire experience thoroughly unpleasant.) One of the strangest things about my experience there was the group of people I shared an office with. Every day a very large woman would come in with a man who looked no more than 20 years old, and they would sit in the office with me all day. They spent the majority of their time just sitting, eating and looking at me. There were no computers on their desks and I never saw them on the phone. As far as I knew, they did nothing. I was involved in research projects that made no sense to me. One of them involved a bunch of hypothetical questions about nuclear powered airplanes exploding over subdivisions in North Carolina. The job, the people, Washington, DC none of it was very appealing, and many of the people I was working with seemed like zombies. Late one night while living at my boss house, the phone rang and I rushed upstairs from the basement to grab it. On the other end of the phone was a relative of mine I had not spoken to in some time who was working overseas. There was a delay in his voice because he was working in Poland and he was calling on what sounded like a satellite phone.
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What chatted for a while, and I told him that I was not interested in working for the government. The pay was low and that the work was not that exciting, and was, in fact, bizarre. I will never forget what he said to me. Isnt this the most you can expect out of your life? If you do this, you will have really succeeded. This was definitely not what I wanted in my life. My relative was saying that this was the best I could do, and this was not the reference Id wanted to hear. My idea of what it meant to be a lawyer was much more glamorous than this. Had I chosen to believe this relative and accept his assessment, I might have spent my life doing something I did not enjoy. How many people have done this with their careers and their lives? Its scary to think about. I am providing all this detail about this experience because I very quickly created a mental reference for myself whereby the worst possible thing that could happen to me was to work for the government. I had such a bad experience that I came to believe I needed to expect something far different for myself. My dream had formerly been to work for the government. After this experience, working for the government was the last thing I ever wanted to do. Certainly working for the government offers incredible opportunity, but our mental references control how we think about things. People (like my relative) provide us with references about how we choose to view our lives, and we can either accept them or deny them. Naturally, I left the job, and when I got back to law school in the fall, I made sure I did everything possible to get a great job with a law firm. I tried to get as far away from a government career as I possibly could. So, I ask you to consider this how have you allowed yourself and your career to be shaped by early experiences? In your career, have you been so turned off by certain early experiences that your version of the world and your place in it is different from what it needs to be? How are you allowing early interpretations of the world to shape and control your destiny? The most important things we have in our lives are these references. What determines the quality of our lives is how we evaluate the situations that we are in. I formed beliefs about what the government was like and used this to propel myself away from it. The references we have for the way the world is will impact everything that happens to us and will shape our lives The people who achieve the most in the world are the people who are empowered by, and not dragged down by, mental imprints. One of the best things we can

do is allow our references to empower us in a positive way. People who achieve the most in the world and in their lives do so in response to the references they hold in their minds. Our references do not need to be things that have happened in the past. They can also be references we set up for our futures. When Sony first started marketing radios in the United States in the middle of the 1950s, Bulova offered to purchase 00,000 units, but insisted they be marketed under the Bulova brand name. This was the largest order Sony had ever received and would give the floundering company money to grow and prosper. At the time, Sony co-founder Akio Morita barely had any money. He called Sony headquarters in Japan from the United States and told them about the order. They encouraged Morita to take the order, but Morita was firm that he did not want to accept the order and told headquarters that he was not going to take it. Headquarters thought he was crazy. When Morita told Bulova about his decision, they stated, Our company name is a famous brand name that has taken over fifty years to establish. Nobody has ever heard of your brand name. Why not take advantage of ours? Morita remained steadfast in his views and refused to accept the order. His rejoinder to Bulova was, Fifty years ago, your brand name must have been just as unknown as our name is today. I am here with a new product, and I am taking the first step for the next fifty years of my company. Fifty years from now I promise that our name will be just as famous as yours is today. The references we create for ourselves control our destinies. The filters through which we view the world have a stunning effect on what ends up happening to us. Our beliefs and values come from the references we give ourselves. We use references to give us certainty about the way things are. When Thomas Edison was designing the light bulb and failing again and again, he did not say Aw, whats the use? Instead, he told himself he was one step closer to creating the light bulb. Each time he failed, he used failure as a reference to show he was getting closer to his goal. Completely the opposite of what most people would do. What would you do? We succeed in life by creating references that empower us and dont drag us down. In my job with the government, I could have taken my early experience to mean that there was something supernatural about me working there and that people would come to my aid, such as my boss who offered me a free place to live. I could have decided that I was working on the most incredible projects of all time; projects that would shape national policy. I could
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have told myself that my experience could lead to me being the president of the United States. I could have easily given my experience that meaning. You can do the same thing with your work experiences and your life experience if you let those experiences empower you. What becomes real is the meaning you give your life and your experiences. When you look at your past in a way that empowers you, every day is a new opportunity for growth. When you look at your past in this manner, you may realize that the worst days of your life were actually your very best. Link a different meaning to your experiences so you can be stronger. When I was growing up, I was exceptionally good at soccer. At one point I was so good that I was not allowed to play on regular teams and was on a special team for all of Detroit that traveled around playing different teams in other parts of the state. After a couple years, however, I lost all interest in soccer and sports in general. The pressure was too much for me. Too much was expected of me, and the game was no longer fun. It was so competitive and brutal that I felt bad about myself after every game. Because I had great talent, I was expected to be exceptional. After a while, I intentionally stopped doing well at soccer and sabotaged myself. I did not play as hard as I could and started to fail at the game. My life was never the same. I stopped playing after that and started making friends with the kinds of kids who had a tendency to get into trouble. I was escaping life as an athlete, and it really made no sense. Have you ever stopped doing something you were talented at? If so, the chances are very good that you stopped doing it because you allowed yourself to form a different meaning of what it was. We view things through the lenses that we choose. Everyone looks at the world based on the experiences that they have had in the past and what those experiences mean to them It is important not to let your past get in the way of your future. I want to encourage you to stand guard at the door of your mind. Do not let your past represent something negative that hurts you in the present. None of us have had perfect life experiences. There is something inside of you, however, that holds you back from reaching for the stars in your career, regardless of how capable you are. How different would the memories of high school have been for me if I had allowed myself to be a star soccer player? How different would your present be if you knew that you were capable of greatness and accepted nothing but the best for yourself, like Morita of Sony? There is no limit to your life except the limits you impose on it, and the past is a powerful lesson that makes you better and stronger. Never allow yourself to be limited by your own mind.

Guerilla Job Warfare

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Guerilla Job Warfare

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UP THE LADDER IN A DOWN ECONOMY

An Employees Guide To Corporate Climbing in Tough Economic Times

Book Five: Guerilla Job Warfare

UP THE LADDER IN A DOWN ECONOMY

AN EMPLOYEEs GUIDE TO CORPORATE CLIMBING IN TOUGH ECONOMIC TIMEs

Book Five: Guerilla Job Warfare

Introduction Your Job Is a Game: Make Your Opponents External

How You Handle Chaos Determines success Or Failure

Your Job is a Mind Game Its All About Belief systems

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