16 Questions for Free Agents

Posed by Seth Godin:

• Who are you trying to please?
• Are you trying to make a living, make a difference, or leave a legacy?
• How will the world be different when you've succeeded?
• Is it more important to add new customers or to increase your interactions with existing ones?
• Do you want a team? How big? (I know, that's two questions)
• Would you rather have an open-ended project that's never done, or one where you hit natural end points? (How high is high enough?)
• Are you prepared to actively sell your stuff, or are you expecting that buyers will walk in the door and ask for it?
• Which: to invent a category or to be just like Bob/Sue, but better?
• If you take someone else's investment, are you prepared to sell out to pay it back?
• Are you done personally growing, or is this project going to force you to change and develop yourself?
• Choose: teach and lead and challenge your customers, or do what they ask...
• How long can you wait before it feels as though you're succeeding?
• Is perfect important? (Do you feel the need to fail privately, not in public?)
• Do you want your customers to know each other (a tribe) or is it better they be anonymous and separate?
• How close to failure, wipe out and humiliation are you willing to fly? (And while we're on the topic, how open to criticism are you willing to be?)
• What does busy look like?

The Career Manifesto

Michael Wade shares :

1. Unless you’re working in a coal mine, an emergency ward, or their equivalent, spare us the sad stories about your tough job. The biggest risk most of us face in the course of a day is a paper cut.

2. Yes, your boss is an idiot at times. So what? (Do you think your associates sit around and marvel at your deep thoughts?) If you cannot give your boss basic loyalty, either report the weasel to the proper authorities or be gone.

3. You are paid to take meaningful actions, not superficial ones. Don’t brag about that memo you sent out or how hard you work. Tell us what you achieved.

4. Although your title may be the same, the job that you were hired to do three years ago is probably not the job you have now. When you are just coasting and not thinking several steps ahead of your responsibilities, you are in dinosaur territory and a meteor is coming.

5. If you suspect that you’re working in a madhouse, you probably are. Even sociopaths have jobs. Don’t delude yourself by thinking you’ll change what the organization regards as a “turkey farm.” Flee.

6. Your technical skills may impress the other geeks, but if you can’t get along with your co-workers, you’re a litigation breeder. Don’t be surprised if management regards you as an expensive risk.

7. If you have a problem with co-workers, have the guts to tell them, preferably in words of one syllable.

8. Don’t believe what the organization says it does. Its practices are its real policies. Study what is rewarded and what is punished and you’ll have a better clue as to what’s going on.

9. Don’t expect to be perfect. Focus on doing right instead of being right. It will simplify the world enormously.

10.If you plan on showing them what you’re capable of only after you get promoted, you need to reverse your thinking.