Getting Ahead In The 21st Century

Author : Joe Love
Change is the most important single factor affecting every part of your life. The sooner and the better you learn to cope with change and turn it to your advantage, the more successful, effective, and happy you will be in everything you do.Today, we are experiencing change at a rate never before imagined in history. Anything on the market today is already obsolete. It is already being replaced by something that is newer, better, or cheaper. In the Industrial Age products had a life of several years or more. Today, in the Information Age, products have a life of several months.As soon as a company comes out with a successful product or service, it will be copied almost immediately by another company that will bring it to the market and attempt to sell it by cutting cost, increasing the service, or both.What does this mean to you? It means that every product, process, idea, or service that you are engaged in today is in the process of being replaced by someone, somewhere, doing it better, faster, or cheaper.In the Industrial age people could graduate from college and expect to get a good job, and as long as they performed the work well could expect to keep their job until they retired. In the Information Age of today a college graduate can expect to have as many as fourteen different jobs before he or she reaches retirement.It is no longer the responsibility of an employer or the government to provide you with security, healthcare, or retirement. It is up to you. Everything that affects the business world affects you as well. Every innovation, discovery, and paradigm shift in modern business is as applicable to you as a person as it is to a multibillion dollar corporation. The men and women who get ahead and are successful in the 21st century will be those who are continually looking around for ideas and insights that they can use to be faster, more flexible, and more effective in their work on a day-to-day basis.Just as successful service companies are close to their customers, you must be the kind of person who gets along extremely well with your customers both inside and outside of your company. Customer intimacy at the corporate level means that you are positive, sensitive, service-oriented, easy to get along with, and continuously helpful to the people in your work life.You must become a market leader. To do this in the 21st century, you must dedicate yourself to becoming very good at what you do, doing it in an excellent fashion, and maintaining high-quality relationships with the people around you. This combination will help you master, rather than becoming a victim of our changing world.You can dramatically improve the quality of your life by thinking through what your core values are and then committing yourself to live consistently by those values, no matter what the external circumstances may be.Your can determine what your core values are by asking yourself some important questions: What kind of reputation do you have in your marketplace? What kind of reputation would you like to have sometime in the future? What is your philosophy and what are your beliefs? Write out the answers to these questions and put them into a personal mission statement. A mission statement is a future-tense description of the kind of person that you would ideally like to be in three to five years.These core values and the mission statements should become the operating principles for everything you do. For example, if people, excellence, and integrity are your core values, then you should commit all your resources to living consistently with them.Here are five things you can do that will help you take charge of your career while you're working for an organization:• Look for your boss's toughest problems, and make yourself part of the solution.• Learn to work in teams.• Build a network of contacts inside and outside of your company.• Volunteer to lead a task force.• Always do something that contributes to a positive change in the organization.Change is happening so rapidly around you than ever before, therefore there are more options available to you now than every before. Since it is more likely that you are going to be doing something completely different in a few years anyway, you should begin thinking today about where you want to be in the future. You should rethink and plan your entire career.You should build your career in stages. Starting with a company that supports learning, and then move to a growth organization, spend a few years there, and while you're working there, plan what you want to do in the long run. Always remember that the company's success is identical with that of the people who work there.People who are successful and move ahead in the 21st century will be those who don't do a lot of things but instead do a few things extremely well. You have to see yourself as an active participant in the dynamic world around you and take full control of your own destiny.You have to take control of your life, or this new fast changing world will just pass you buy and leave you behind. Your greatest security in the 21st century will be your ability to grow, change, and adapt. It's never too early or too late to begin.Copyright©2006 by Joe Love and JLM & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.Joe Love draws on his 25 years of experience helping both individuals and companies build their businesses, increase profits, and achieve total success. He is the founder and CEO of JLM & Associates, a consulting and training organization, specializing in personal and business development. Through his seminars and lectures, Joe Love addresses thousands of men and women each year, including the executives and staffs of many businesses around the world, on the subjects of leadership, achievement, goals, strategic business planning, and marketing.Reach Joe at: joe@jlmandassociates.comRead more articles and newsletters at: http://www.jlmandassociates.com
Keyword : success, achievement, self development, jobs, career success, personal success, business success,