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Career Tips - Issue # 25 (Oct. 2005) FREE weekly newsletter dedicated to your career development. You'll need less than 10 minutes to read this newsletter. The Value of Values About 18 years ago, two fresh engineering graduates (from the same college) joined an automobile company. Upon joining, they had to go through an orientation programme, which included visits to two manufacturing plants MA and MF, and to a research centre RF. All three facilities were located in different towns. The manufacturing plants were noisy, dirty and full of workers. The research centre was an elegant glass building, neat and office like. After the orientation, the two guys were asked where they would like to work: MA, MF or RF. Guy A opted for the manufacturing plant MA and guy B opted for the research centre RF. How did they make such important career decisions? When A asked B, "Why did you choose RF?" he replied, "Well, it seems like a nice place to work as compared to the plants." When B asked A the same question, A replied, "Out of the three, MA is the closest to my home town." Right or wrong, they had little choice but to make the decisions they made. Something unknown to them was driving their decisions: their VALUES. Values are a set of "personal beliefs" about what's important, right or good. We carry our values with us all the time. Values range from things like money, prestige and power to more subtle stuff like independence, learning and challenge in work. Values are different from needs. We all need money, but we may place different value over money. Why are values important? Values influence our decisions. B made his decision because he valued the serene, neat and sophisticated environment of the research centre over everything else. And A, of course, valued the distance between his place of work and home as the most important criteria. Both had different values and landed up making different decisions and eventually, taking different career paths. >>CAREER TIP:Without our realisation, our values (what we believe is important, good or right) drive our career (and other) decisions as well as influence our level of satisfaction/dissatisfaction. So, if you value, say, prestige, you'd be automatically drawn to work, positions or companies that offer prestige. But if you value "time with family" as the most important thing, you'd tend to avoid a highly prestigious job that requires you to travel 20 days in a month. If you value "challenge," you'd be highly satisfied in a job where you're thrown into challenging situations. Carlos Ghosn has recently become the CEO of two companies that are 9,771 miles and eight times zones apart: Nissan (Japan) and Renault (France). This job, however, may not be suitable for someone else who values "relaxed working." The main catch here is that most of us roughly know what's important to us (money, prestige, time with family, growth, independence, nice working atmosphere, etc.), but we often don't know the order of our values (hierarchy). As a result, we either feel confused about making career moves or if we do make a move, we may (unknowingly) make a move based on a lower level value and sacrifice a higher level value. That's self-invitation to dissatisfaction. It pays to know what's important to us and in what order. Peter Drucker used to be a successful investment banker in 1930s, but he left that work after realising that he valued "people" more than "money." He ended up becoming one of the most respected management thinkers. As for the two guys, A & B, I know both of them. A is now writing this newsletter, sitting thousands of miles way from his home town (and still longing to be there) and B is working in China--in a manufacturing plant! Note: If you wish to get a list of common values (from which you can choose), I can send it you. Let me know if you're interested. Atul Mathur FORWARD IT: Would you like to share what you've just read with any of your friends? Click below to send a link to your friend. To SUBSCRIBE to this newsletter, send a blank e-mail to:subscribe Career Tips ***Copyright 2005 Atul Mathur*** |
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