MICHAEL-

“Your career is literally your business,” said, Theodore Levitt, author and educator.
These are challenging times … and tough times.
What makes the situation so much more difficult is the way people handle these tough times. Like others, the possibility of downsizing and company lay-offs is REAL.
The key question that each of us should be asking is: “What am I going to do?”
Be careful not to shift responsibility of job preservation or career enhancement on someone else. And that, my fellow agents, is a dangerous position to take. In “Choose Greatness For Your Life Today,” I read, “We must stop (seeking to blame) external people and forces in our lives and begin consciously choosing appropriate responses.”
So I ask you, are you taking responsibility for yourself, your job, and your future? Or are you simply sitting on the sidelines, hoping things work out? A call to action: Take responsibility for making good things happens.
As writer Sara Henderson says, “Don’t wait for a light to appear at the end of the tunnel. Stride down there … and light the bloody thing yourself.”
So what are the appropriate responses to these challenging, insecure times? (Here comes the “born” instructor in me…)
1. Focus on your replacement value?
*If you’re ever going to have control over your career, you must have an answer to each question. They are as follows:
a) What am I going to do to increase my value in the market place?
b) What am I going to do to demonstrably increase my value to my current employer? Or to my clients and customers?
c) What am I going to do to increase my value to prospective future employers?
d) What am I going to do to make myself so valuable that I’m the least likely to be cut or the last to be cut?
2. Stop the excuses
* “There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than achievement.” These people will never turn into great success stories.
3. Refuse to settle for “good enough.”
*Focus on 5 things that will make you more valuable to your employer or your customers.

Michael