MANAGING YOUR CAREER

The most important step in managing your career is to recognize it is YOUR career and accept personal responsibility for managing your career.

Your career success, no matter how you define it, is entirely yours to control.  The choices you make, on both the macro level (i.e., marketing as a profession, packaged goods as the competitive field on which to practice your profession, the specific companies for which you choose to work), and the micro level (the day-to-day business decisions you make which create your track record of accomplishments and achievements) propel your career upward.  Or don't, depending on the choices you make.

Regardless of the professional discipline or the field on which it is practiced, every career has three stages:  Learning, Doing, and Leveraging.  These are logically sequential.  Before we can do, we must know what to do and how to do it.

The Learning Phase is the first few years after graduation, up to the Brand Manager level in packaged goods.  During this time, you are doing more learning about your profession than you are managing and decision-making.  This is the time to have a specific target list of all of the elements of knowledge required for success in marketing and to seek out projects and assignments to ensure you get this learning.  By the time you are a Brand Manager, you want to have demonstrated mastery of:

*Strategy and Positioning

*Consumer Communication

-  Advertising

   * Copy

   * Media

-  Promotion

   * Consumer

   * Trade

   * Professional (physician, pharmacist, dentist, etc.)

-  Packaging

*Product

-  Product development

-  Packaging

*Business Management

-  Analysis and forecasting

-  Market research

   * Custom

   * Syndicated

-  Pricing

The Doing Phase is when you apply your knowledge to positive effect in the marketplace.  You have a clearly defined set of responsibilities and your role is to increase volume, share, and profit for the shareholders.

The Leveraging Phase is when your role shifts again -- to being a leader of doers -- with responsibility for setting goals, establishing missions, creating a climate for success for the organization, providing resources; in sum, teaching and helping others to do.

Managing and leading your own career development within your current company, or ensuring your marketability beyond your current employer, is similar to managing your business.  You should have an objective (or a series of time-phased objectives); a strategy and plan for reaching your objective(s); and diagnostic tools for objectively measuring your progress towards achieving your objective(s).

If you know what your ultimate long-term goal is, backwards planning, (starting from that target and working back to where you are now) is a straightforward way to lay out your career path.  This is very useful as a guide for you in seeking learning experiences that move you towards your objective.  It also provides you the benchmark against which to measure your progress, and to evaluate alternatives as you make career decisions.

Many people in the early stages of their career have not yet finalized their "ultimate" goal.  That's fine.  It suggests setting intermediate goals which, when achieved, position you to have a range of alternatives to choose from for the next phase of your career.

With these long-range and/or intermediate skills and experiences identified, you need to add to your personal inventory of abilities to best qualify you for your next move forward.  (We're always happy to discuss this with you at any time.)

For many people, especially given how busy they are, when things are going well and they are happy with their current situation, making the time to regularly review their personal goals and progress towards them usually falls lower on the priority list than it should.

We advise everyone to acquire and practice the discipline of reviewing their goals, the path they are following toward their goals, and their progress along this path, quarterly.  It doesn't take long, especially if the first time you commit your thinking to writing.  Have the self-confidence to be ruthlessly objective with yourself (you don't need to share this with anyone else) in evaluating your own strengths and opportunities for improvement.  You can't begin to improve in an area until you first recognize you need to.  List all of the skills or knowledge you need to acquire and demonstrate mastery of to qualify for greater responsibility, and develop a plan to get there.

As a part of this quarterly self-inventory, list all of your major accomplishments, contributions, and achievements.  It is important that you recognize how much difference you are really making on your business.  The most important determinant of success is continuous achievement, and you want to be able to demonstrate your value to the organization with specific accomplishments.  (It will also make it easier to write a resume down the road!)

As your marketing career continues to progress, there are some truisms to be aware of in considering moves. While there are always exceptions to every rule, these observations have been consistent enough over time to merit serious consideration.  It is typically much easier to move from:

*Bigger to smaller

*"Better" to "lesser" credentials

*Packaged goods to non-packaged goods

*"Classic" packaged goods to "non-classic" packaged goods

*Line to staff

*Manufacturer to vendor/supplier/agency

*Goods to services

It has been our pleasure to get to know you.  We look forward to a positive relationship with you throughout your career.  We always welcome the opportunity to act as a sounding board or information resource as you manage your career.

BEST WISHES FOR SUCCESS AND HAPPINESS IN ALL YOU DO!