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Starting a career in today’s economy may be a frightening thing. What if you have made the wrong choice? Where will your industry be in 20 to 30 years? Will you be able to sustain yourself throughout your life until retirement, or will the next industry see your profession collapse? These are important questions young people should be asking themselves because the American work market has changed over the decades.

200 years ago most of the people in our nation were farmers or fishermen who supported themselves. They did not have to go far to find food or a place to live. But as the industrial revolution took shape the need for workers, managers, clerks, and transportation specialists grew. And as industry grew and more families accumulated great wealth the demand for travel to foreign lands increased. Passenger ships were developed.

All of these industries provided life-long security, but as we moved into the 20th century things began to change. After World War II change accelerated and many “company men” found they were no longer able to spend their lives working for a single company. By the 1960s large corporations often closed down unprofitable operations, putting many people ou of work. By the 1980s it was becoming commonplace for people who had spent 20-30 years in an industry to move on. One such person was former AMR Travel Services President Nicholas Bredimus, who in the 1980s started his own company to provide software services to the airline industry.

Nicholas Bredimus‘ career has been documented on many Web sites. His second career was probably more influential than his first. As a software developer and consultant Nicholas Bredimus went on to help the airline industry transform how its ticketing systems were managed and implemented. His work in the airline software industry occasionally brought Nicholas Bredimus to the forefront of airline news stories of the day.

Had he known when he started out that he might have made a career change mid-life, what would Nicholas Bredimus had chosen to do? Maybe he would have followed the same path anyway. If you are just starting your career now however you should give thought to where you want to be in 20-25 years. You don’t have to make the decision today but over the next few years you should give thought to how you may want to handle that mid-career transition. That will put you one step ahead of everyone else.

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The fact that we exist means that we routinely have to defeat life’s obstructions. It seems that the more we develop technology and paths to create things more rapidly, the more panic attacks (anxiety–treatment.info) increase. We should examine this further. Some might believe that progress in technology would contribute to easing the strain. Nevertheless, anxiety and depression appear worse now than they ever were in the past. Chances are that in past times, it was not mannerly to discuss these topics. For sure that is not the same nowadays. Fact is, if you engage in any TV watching, I’m sure you’ve witnessed some sort of ad for a medicine, which provides panic attacks treatment (http://panicattacks-help.net).

These issues are rising to the surface and being discussed openly. It does not matter if it is a phobic disorder of huge crowds or a sleep disorder, scientists are always coming up with different ways to fix it. Receiving quite a bit of their attention is panic attacks and depressive disorder. When I ponder the notion of depression, I think of an individual who has of late suffered the loss of a loved one or someone who is impaired in such a way that prevents them from carrying on normally. In most situations this is not the case. Many folk are weighed down by the burden of anxiety and depressive disorder for other reasons. Some of which are not even known. The food we consume could easily be a reason. Peculiarly, contentment with life is elusive to most individuals.

Adolescents, as associated with this issue, are of a particular interest. Panic attacks and depression appears to be hitting them more than anyone these days. Granted, being a teenager is rough in some aspects, and unbelievably simple in others. Some teenagers may claim that it is all bad. We all were teens at least once. We have not forgotten our experiences. However, panic attacks were not part of my teen experience. Who knows what has happened in the last ten years. Anxiety attacks should not be a part of childhood. In point of fact, anxiety and depression should be much less frequent than it is altogether.

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Defining corporate values is a useful exercise. It is part of the communication process where you invest in alignment of teams. Even though different teams or departments will each have their own tasks and responsibilities, you want them to share some same principles. For example;

• “We are …to please our customers…without them nothing else matters.”

Corporate values should be balanced yet communicate a certain direction, so they should be selective. You should select four to six of such corporate values. Three would be a minimum to be able to balance attention; more than six would mean that your company doesn’t make real choices.

• “We commit to personal excellence & self-improvement…we draw strength from performance evaluations…striving to excel and improve in all aspects of business.”

Corporate values communicate both to the external world as to the internal organization. Because of their communicative power, they should be credible. Each value should be clear; the description of the value should match the heading;

“Professionalism
We respect our members, vendors, competition, and each other.”

Is professionalism the same as respect and does the description cover the value to communicate?

Before you use the corporate values for external communication, you should check them internally. You should use them as an additional management tools in the area of taking decisions and setting priorities. They should be helpful to your internal organization, because they express the “how” in addition to “What”.

This takes time. So before getting them out in the open, select a single corporate value to start with, elaborate the description and use it. Then, add more values until your organization is confident to communicate them externally.

To support the discipline of using the corporate values and to increase credibility, you should not only concentrate on periods of change. Use them also in team-building sessions or when dealing with complex decisions.

© 2006 Hans Bool

Hans Bool is the founder of Astor White a traditional management consulting company that offers online management advice. Astor Online solves issues in hours what normally would take days.
Check our free (corporate values) assessments & tools

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If you’ve spent any time with consultants from large firms
(especially in the ’90’s), then you heard some of the buzz
words and phrases heard in offices across the U.S.; phrases
such as get our arms around this, paradigm shift,
reinvent the wheel, and any verbing of a noun (such as “incent“) was typically heard in many conference rooms.

Many of these phrases were not meaningful to those who heard
them. Employees need to understand the phrases of management
before they believe it. And they need to believe it before
they will do something about it.

In coaching, a basic question is, “What’s important?”
Employees who don’t hear or understand what is really
important will decide for themselves what’s important
and will act and work accordingly.

The management of a large department store thought they
communicated to their employees that the most important
part of their job was customer service. However, upon
surveying the salespeople, they found that a majority of the employees
believed their most important task was protecting the
inventory. Why did they think so? Because they received
many memos from management regarding loss of inventory
and security. Communications about customer service were
not nearly as numerous.

Is there a system in place at your business (for the
company or the department) in which employees are
informed about the goals of the business and how their
job helps the company reach those goals? Do they know
how they will be rewarded for their contribution?
Do they understand it?
Do they believe it?
Will they take action?

Clear communication is a must and a key to that action.
It involves knowing your audience, having a strategy,
clarifying steps, and measuring the results.

Know your Audience

Who are your people? What will they respond to positively?
Find out what they consider to be relevant. If it doesn’t
match what you consider to be relevant, then take time to
re-shape relevancy and the company. Whom do they believe
is credible when that person communicates? How do they
respond to various types of communication?

Have a Strategy

Strategize a communications plan to emphasize
“what’s important”. Rather than simply send out memos,
brochures, and fliers to tell people stuff, plan your
strategy first. Does it make sense? Does it clearly
emphasize what you’re wanting to communicate?

Clarify the Steps

Is there some action that you want employees to take?
Make certain that within your strategy there are places
where action steps are clearly defined. Keep the level
of English at a grade level that makes sense for the
audience. For example, for a general audience that has
a wide-range, a 7th grade to 8th grade level is good.
(Most newspapers are written at this level. Microsoft
Word will tell you the grade level of your writing in
“Readability Statistics” at the end of the spell check
routine as “Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level”, if you turn on
“readability statistics”.)

Communicate the benefits of the actions you want the
employees to take. This includes both the benefits to
the company or department and the benefits to the
individual employee.

Measure the Results

How did you do in your communications effort? Have someone
create a survey that draws out the results (the raw truth).
Did employees understand it?
Did they believe it?
Do they still believe it?
Did they take action?
Was it appropriate action?

The responses will measure how your communications helped
to change behavior and, in some circumstances, if
performance improved (if that was a goal).

In conclusion, following this outline of knowing your audience, having
a communication strategy, clarifying the steps with your
audience, and measuring the results, will ensure that
your communications plan gives you the results you
want.

© 2005 Borgeson Consulting, Inc.

Glory Borgeson is a business coach and consultant, and the president of
Borgeson Consulting, Inc. She specializes in helping small business owners
(of 500 employees or less) to increase their Entrepreneurial IQ, which
leads to increased profit and decreased stress. Whether an entrepreneur is at the top
of his game like any top athletes you can think of today, or a rookie just
starting his business, Glory works with the entire spectrum of entrepreneur.
Top athletes have a coach; why not you?

Click here for Borgeson Consulting, Inc.

This article was originally published in The Business Express, Borgeson’s
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