For those of you who have been following me, you'd have seen a couple of my pragmatic approaches to some of life's challenges, I'm a strong believer that pure logic can solve the majority of problems, in this post I'll break down my pragmatic view on achieving your career goals,, some of these points may seem very logical to you... well that's really the point.

A little about my career path

Before I delve into the details of this approach, I think it's only right that you get to know me a little better.

I Graduated from college in 2005, my first job was for a small tech company pulling cables across empty office buildings, laying out the IT infrastructure, it was a tough, dirty job, many hours, I was there for around 3 months, I left when the director decided to take on jobs for the National Telecoms provider in South Africa installing ADSL connections in peoples homes across Johannesburg, I once found myself in a nuclear waste facility installing CCTV cameras, digging deep holes with my collegues, placing huge poles inside which will hold these IP cameras, lets just say it wasn't what I had in mind when chose to specialise in IT.

In 2006 I worked for a software reseller as their local IT administrator, but the title on my contract was "IT Manager", I was the only IT person in an office of around 12 employees, I used this post to learn as much as possible about managing and maintaining servers.

Later in 2006 the software reseller was acquired by a UK based company which actually owned the software we were selling, they had a small presence already in Johannesburg, after several meetings with the new emploer I realized I was slowly drifting away from technical hands on work and more into paperwork, budgets and bureaucracy.

2007 I found a new job where I would be working at several clients as the technical accounts manager, the IT point of contact between my company and the clients, this was an amazing job, great company. After a couple of years I craved more, the trouble with working in South Africa is that most of the global companies which are in South Africa are branch offices, and working at branch offices wouldn't really get me the "Global Company" experience I craved, that and my career options were somewhat limites due to South Africa having a pretty racist government enforced hiring policy called BEE (Black Empowerment Equity) which basically means (from memory) if you or any of your clients/suppliers do any work directly or indirectly with the South African government you need to either be a Black owned company or have more than than 80% black employees to function legally. This is unfortunately the "penance" the white population is paying for the number of years the country spent in apartheid, although I was far to young to even remember apartheid so I was never sure what I had to do with it. anyway... I digress.

End of 2008 I left to Great Britain, one way ticket with my best friend and cousin, if you want to know more about that story read my introduction. I found a consulting job working as Senior Support, later got a permanent placement at a client (pharma company), eventually spotted an interesting position advertised in Business Intelligence at my clients offices, got it, 3 years later here I am.

Convince yourself you are already in your next position

I meet alot of people which behave as if they've come to the finishing line of their careers, I'd talk with them and see no light shining through their eyes when they talk about work, they'd openly say how the next step up would mean somebody senior would need to leave and apparently nobody is planning on leaving, so there goes the motivation right?

Look if you honestly want to "throw in the towel" and feel like there isn't any fight left in you then so be it, work your "dead end job" get paid your salary each month and be happy that you can still feed your family, but if there's still some fire left to burn inside of you start tearing down those barriers to your progression immediately. Humans are built for the struggle, if we weren't built for the struggle we would have died out many many years ago in nature yet we survived though era's of famine, disease and genetic disposition.

A pragmatic way to keep moving forward in your career would be to convince yourself you've already accepted the promotion to that new position, behave as if you have the job you want and if you can't just assume these responsibilities make sure that you understand what your new position would hope to achieve and do everything in your ability to make that happen.

I find that approaching career progression in this way makes it much easier for opportunities to present themselves, maybe it's in the form of a course the company could send you on that you would later benefit from or maybe its that you may need to stand in for someone who's on hoilday(learning new skills), slowly but surely this exposure will net you the skills and maturity you need for that next step up, and when you ready you'll know, do it right and your employee might not even have a choice in the matter of your career progression.

Image is powerful

You might think that this new trendy bearded pony tail on men is cool, everyone's doing it, you should be able to have any hairstyle you want and the look you prefer so why not grow some hair on your face and cover your body in ink?

I have nothing against tattoos, tattoos tell a story, you can tell alot about a person from their choice of tattoos, the truth of the matter is sometimes that kind of personal overshare doesn't really fit well when your trying to advance a professional career.

Other than in the handful of industries (music, art, theatre etc...), the look you trying to pull off might be a strong influencing factor that's limiting your career progression, from my personal experience, taking good care of personal image, projecting confidence in your walk and demonstrating organization, structure and cleanliness can go a long way in most careers.

It's mainly about being approachable, this is one of the most overlooked invaluable skills available today. Being more approachable means meeting more interesting people, I'm not only talking about meeting clients, I'm talking about the professional connections you may have missed out on throughout the years due this pursuit of your individual identity in society.

If you want to progress faster in your career focus on your professional image, even if its only while you are on the clock, you have time to be unique when your at home, at work you are representing your company, do that properly and you'll soon claim your rewards.

"If you are the smartest person in the room you are in the wrong room"

Lets say you find yourself talking to a group of "acquaintances", you look around and decide there just any interesting conversation to be had, lets say you're trying to share information about cryptocurrencies and blockchain but people are looking at you with confused faces, not the slightest of interest in this game changing technology, you managed to get one reaction out of someone and it was something like "Bitcoin? is that the darkweb stuff, I stay far away from the darkweb."

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If you truly are the smartest person in the room why are you still there? If you are that smart you should be aware that the only way to keep growing and progressing in life if to be around people who you can learn from. If you are never challenged you will stagnate. Continuing to develop all your vast areas of knowledge means surrounding yourself with people smarter than you are, people who are more charismatic, funnier, more technologically advanced, more adept at social media, more analytical …Oh, you get the idea. Make this a general practice as well as a specific one. By specific I mean to define an area you want to grow in then find people to connect with who are better at it than you are.

One other point – Those who walk around congratulating themselves on being the smartest person in the room may have an ego that is blocking their ability to grow. Even if you are the master teaching the student there is something you can learn from the one looking to you for knowledge. Everyone has something to teach and it is possible to learn something from every person with whom you come into contact with. Looking to everyone as a source of knowledge is the true way to grow. Plus who really cares who is the smartest in the room today, when someone smarter is bound to come along tomorrow. Those who are focused on being/becoming/reclaiming the title as the smartest person in the room fail to see and capitalize on all the incredible opportunities there are to gain from the others sharing the room instead of wasting all their energy on a meaningless designation
<ref:https://www.quora.com/Who-can-this-quote-be-attributed-to-If-youre-the-smartest-person-in-the-room-youre-in-the-wrong-room>

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Surround yourself with smart people who share similar interests, challenge yourself to soak up enough knowledge as possible, this is part of the pragmatic and logical approach to developing your career.

It's not just your employer, its your business.

You'll come across many people who have the inclination to say negative things about their workplace, how they've been treated unfairly, how they're being overworked, underpaid... we've all been there, we've all said these sorts of things about our workplace at some point.

If your planning on progressing your career you're going to have to adjust your perception slightly, no matter how unfair your employer treats you it's not a "me vs them" scenario, one of the biggest struggles employers face today is finding people who can think of the company as their own, most people leave school to earn some high profile accreditation and then feel entitled to have every opportunity handed to them, they feel like the company is earning millions of dollars a day while they don't even see a fraction of a percent of that.

It's hard for employers to share their vision of where they'd like to see their business in 5-10 years, especially when the employees they're trying to share this with are in a constant battle and lack the motivation to care.

If you can put yourself in the shoes of the CEO, Owner, Director and find a way to justify why certain decisions have been made, try to understand these decisions completely, defend them at any opportunity you get (in your personal and professional lives) and it wont be long before those around you identify that your goals are inline with your employers... your business! With a shared vision your employer/manager/director will likely turn to you when when faced with future decisions and once you find that your opinion becomes of significant value career progression will soon follow.

Conclusion

Society is complicated. We spend a lot of our time trying to stand out and establish our identities, yet society has a set of unwritten guidelines based on "fitting in", being approachability, professional image, people networking. The key to following these rules is pragmatism, take a step back, remove your emotional connection to your priorities, shuffle your priorities in order of what's more important to you and take an unbiased logical view on what it's really going to take to start working on this list.

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