How to Break Out of a Career Rut

I spent part of Labor Day talking with friends, many of whom have fallen on hard times. With 14 million unemployed Americans, and millions more squeaking by on part-time income, it's time to try something remarkably different and learn to create opportunities. Blathering about politics is a luxury that people can't afford right now.

There is a way you can attract so many opportunities, that you'll never have the time to take advantage of them all. My Tribal Leadership co-authors and I have taught this technique to thousands of people, resulting in expanding businesses, creating new ventures and new careers. This technique is based in thousands of years of theory and trial-and-error in military science, and was validated in one of the largest studies ever conducted on culture and organizational performance.

Step one: Identify what you have, not what you don't.
A few years ago, I was in South Africa conducting research and interviews for The Three Laws of Performance. In a remote part of the country, I met a man who called himself "one of the most blessed people alive." He was illiterate, and his home was a cardboard box covered in aluminum siding from a dump that he used to keep the rain away. This was a number of years ago, when much of the country believed that people got AIDS from HIV testing. He had not been tested, but he lived in a community where the rate of the virus was about 30%. Coming from the United States, I couldn't understand how he thought of himself as "blessed." To me, he was poor, borderline homeless, lacked sanitation, might be infected with a deadly disease, and couldn't read. I learned more from this man than from most CEOs, and hopefully, you'll learn from his story, as well.

He explained that a relative had sent him a smartphone, and thanks to free wireless Internet, he was able to access more information than the most educated people just a decade ago. Since he couldn't read, he would get help from friends and download audio files to his phone. He was especially fond of free audio book downloads.

In talking with him, he knew more about world affairs than many professors I've met. He used his knowledge about all sorts of things to get a job with a major employer in the area, and his good-natured spirit helped him get a promotion to supervisor. He had also attracted the attention of a local teacher, who was helping him learn to read.

Most people focus on what they don't have: a job, a college education, an MBA, time with a big employer, a record of being employed for the last three years. From the perspective of military science, this is a costly mistake. Generals and admirals focus on what they have-troops, technology, morale, and intelligence. Their focus on what they have isn't based in optimistic thinking, or any other platitudes. If you walked up and encouraged them to think positively, they'd probably order you removed (and rightly so). Their job is to win a battle, and for that, they need to stay focused on the facts, not on their opinion about the facts. The assets you have are facts. What you think you should have, or what you believe is holding you back is pure opinion, and it will hold you back.

So if you want to start the cycle that builds opportunities, make a long list of the assets you do have. Count the "hard" ones-money, your employment status, technology, etc. Also identify the "soft" assets-your passions, "crazy good at" skills, the people you know and who know you. The only sin in identifying your assets is to skip or generalize. Don't say "people," identify the people, and what makes each one valuable.

Step two: Use your assets to build more assets.
The man in South Africa came with a suggestion, and he wouldn't leave until he had a handshake agreeing to it. He asked me to please release audiobooks for free, since he couldn't afford to pay for them. But he promised that anything he learned he'd pass on to those around him many times over.

Notice what he did. He used three of his assets-a personable nature, his infectious enthusiasm, and a brief encounter with a writer-to try to secure a new asset: a new supply of audio material he could use to further educate himself. He left with a handshake.

Years later, thinking of this man, my Tribal Leadership coauthors, thanks in large part to Robert Richman (now with Zappos Insights) and Tony Hsieh, we released the audiobook for free, under a de facto creative commons license. It's on servers all around the world. We don't have stats on how many times the book has been downloaded, but even a conservative estimate says it's one of the most downloaded business books in history. I'm sorry to say I've lost touch with this man, but can only hope he was one of the first to download the audiobook that his request made free.

Notice what happened-as this man expanded his assets, he also expanded ours. The more you grow what you have, the more others around you will also have.

Here are some simple ways you can build your assets:

1. Use your "crazy good at" skills to meet an influential person, and find a way to make that encounter useful for them. The result will be a new person in your network.
2. Find an area you know a lot about, and spend the next few months becoming an expert in it. One of my mentors once said, "if you read a book a week on any one topic, at the end of the year, you'll know more about that topic than many of the people who wrote those books." The result is a new knowledge asset, and bragging rights you can use to attract attention, and possibly a new and better job.
3. Find a skill you have, and offer to use it in exchange for advice. If you have any technical abilities, these are gold in today's economy. At worst, you'll expand your knowledge. At best, you'll get a new person in your world that might introduce you to other people.

If every American followed the steps in this blog post to the letter, we'd end NationSuck in about three months.

Here's my challenge: over the next week, write down every single opportunity that presents itself to you. Then, spend a month using steps one and two, and repeat the week of opportunity noticing. If you don't see a large increase in quantity and quality the second time around, contact me and I'll buy you a Venti latte at Starbucks. And no, I'm not kidding. Send all latte requests to me at dlogan@marshall.usc.edu.

The three steps are all you need.

But there is a fourth, a sort of extra credit that will boost the effectiveness of what's here. The fourth step is to teach this three-step technique to one other person. If you do that, your assets and opportunities will expand ever faster, and you may do something remarkable in the life of another person. Nothing is more moving than when someone contacts you years later, and remembers something you did for that person, and tells you that you changed everything. That's the best asset of all.

And in case the man from South Africa reads this blog, thank you. You changed my life, and your story has changed the lives of thousands.

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Photo courtesy jabberwocky381, CC 2.0.