The road to achievement and recognition in corporate America is hard. You need to have the stuff to survive and the smarts to pull from empty when it gets harder. I attended a ribbon-cutting a few months ago, and a fellow trustee leaned over and said, “At this stage in your career you should not be working this hard.” From my seat, it gets harder, but maybe it is because I have been doing it wrong. 
A few years ago, I took a chance to join a small company where I was charged with building a world-class sales training organization. My experience in teaching, sales, and marketing make this a perfect fit and a career opportunity. What I neglected to ask was, “Will I have any support, people or budget?”. I can hear your audible gasps, and yes, I was wrong. Maybe next year.
With no options, I dug in. Designing curriculums, creating presentations, and teaching the classes. Trips to Walmart loading water into my car for sales classes saving the company money were not out of my scope. I was a team player and going to knock down the walls to prove it. I loved every single thing about it.
A year later, I was able to secure someone to help with contracts, logistics, and even a little presentation development and delivery. The company exploded with record-breaking numbers and began hiring at a fanatic pace. I added 2 Instructional Designers and expanded the architecture of the program. But I was drowning under the workload. My requests for help were ignored, so I pushed myself harder. Weekends disappeared as did nights and early morning exercise. Yet, I was a team player, so I kept going. Pleas to management were met with, “We are going to expand your department, but we don’t know the capacity yet.” My input was ignored. I dug deeper.
Then the phone call came, “Hey, I want to give you a heads up that we are going to bring in someone else to run the program. We really need to elevate it. Of course, you can apply.” I was speechless. The smack shook me to the core.
But this is how it works. If you don’t spend a reasonable amount of time telling people what you are doing, they don’t know. Doing your job is only part of it. I had spent years doing the job for the company but not doing the job for me.
During this process, I have met people who carve out time in their day to blog. They network with peers and initiate introductions. They get their head out of the “company” work and work on “their” work. I will not make this mistake again and I hope you learn from my mistakes.
foursetsofeyes 