Building Successful Careers

All languages use clichés and idioms and English is certainly no exception. We will select some clichés you may see and hear in the business world Have a Chip on the Shoulder When one has a chip on his shoulder, it means he is ready to fight. You may want to avoid this situation. Here’s another chip cliché: The Chips are Down Literally in the game of poker it means when you have placed your bet (with your chips), you cannot pull them back and change it. So when the chips are down means things are urgent and you have to deal with them.

A blender has sharp blades, always moves very fast. It spins and forces everything around it into a high speed circular movement; it breaks everything into finite pieces. An engine moves one direction, drives everyone on board to that direction. The question is, are you a blender or an engine to your organization? Are you a sharp leader who drives everyone around you crazy, chops up their ideas and sense of direction? Or are you the engine, who drives your team in one direction and helps them to reach their goals?

Don't just command your people, develop them. Don’t just manage your people, mentor them.

The latest version of the "Did You Know?" video created by Sony for a meeting of their executives in June of this year. Link: http://release.theplatform.com/content.select?pid=x7aVOMrlfkkijQwcLllwk6WjB5JE0zrF

We all see the catastrophic economical meltdown and expect a long winter ahead of us. Many people lost their jobs and many lost hope in rapid career growth in the near future. What should we do? Companies are looking for a winning strategy to survive in this roller coaster business environment. They are revising their business plans and redefining processes. This same strategy applies to all working professionals who run their careers as a business. They should re-evaluate and re-plan their careers, redefine current daily tasks to be more competitive and gain the ability to win when the market turns around. What we do today defines what we become tomorrow. Transformation starts today and carries through each day whenever you decide to do things differently and more strategically. Let's first understand who we are today. Log your activities for a whole week and classify your activities into the following categories: Short term 1) Daily operational short term tasks 2) Temporary assig

1) Do you prepare your questions and suggestions according to the agenda? Yes: 2, No: 0 2) Do you insert your agenda into official meeting agenda? Yes: 1, No: 0 3) Do you talk to host and make sure your items will be discussed during the meeting? Yes: 1, No: 0 4) Do you talk to other stakeholders before the meeting and get their buy-in on your issues? Yes: 1, No: 0 5) Do you ask questions, re-phrase others and summarize during the meeting? Yes: 1, No: 0 If you score <2,>4, you are effective

1) Do you publish your meeting agenda 2+ days before the meeting? No: -1, Yes: 1 2) Do you talk to key stakeholders before the meeting to cover key issues?No: -1, Yes: 1 3) Do you constantly get surprises from the meeting outcome?No: 0, Yes: 1 4) Do you engage each participant during the meeting?No: 0, Yes: 1 5) Do you setup video or telephone conferencing for remote participants?No: 0, Yes: 1 6) Do you engage remote participants by asking for their opinions?No: 0, Yes: 1 7) Do you make long discussions or less important issues offline topics?No: 0, Yes: 1 8) Do you make action items with deadlines and be sure someone agrees to "own" the issue during the meeting? No: -1, Yes: 2 09) Do you send participants the meeting minutes with clear action items within 24 hours? No: -1, Yes: 2 If you score <6, you are not effective If you score 6-9, you are ok host If you score > 9, you are effective