WWW.ORGSTHATMATTER.COM WHAT REALLY MATTERS FOR YOUNG PROFESSIONALS
How to get started with two practices to accelerate your career!
GARY RYAN
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What Really Matters For Young Professionals – How to get started with two practices to accelerate your career!
by Gary Ryan
Published by Organisations That Matter Pty Ltd
Level 8, 350 Collins Street
Melbourne, Victoria 3166
AUSTRALIA
Phone +61 3 8676 0637
E-mail: gary@orgsthatmatter.com
Copyright © 2009 Gary Ryan, Organisations That Matter®
Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism, or review as permitted under the
Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission from the
publisher.
All effort was made to render this ebook free from error and omission. However, the author, publisher, editor,
their employees or agents shall not accept responsibility for injury, loss or damage to any person or body or
organisation acting or refraining from such action as a result of material in this book, whether or not such injury,
loss or damage is in any way due to any negligent act or omission, breach of duty, or default on the part of the
author, publisher, editor or their employees or agents.
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Who should read this ebook?
Congratulations! You already have an advantage over your career competitors because
you have chosen to read this ebook. You are just over 20 pages away from commencing a
journey that WILL enhance your employability which, in turn, WILL accelerate your career
progresses. However, this FREE ebook does come with a catch. The two practices shared
within the following pages of this FREE ebook are not just for reading. They are for
DOING. Even if you decide not to read the more comprehensive ‘What Really Matters For
Young Professionals – How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career!’, you will
benefit from this short, FREE ebook.
Think about what an increased speed of career advancement means for you. Think about
the money, the greater control over your time, the capacity to live more of the lifestyle
that you desire. If you really want those things, then read this ebook AND ‘do’ this ebook.
The only reason why the practices in this FREE ebook may seem hard to do is because
many people DON’T do them. When you try the practices and if people say, “Oh, that
won’t work!”, take it as a complement and a challenge. The two practices outlined in this
FREE ebook work precisely because many other people don’t DO them. Take the time to
put them into practice and master them; you won’t regret it.
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Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers has suggested that successful people have spent
10,000 hours of practice mastering their talents. That seems like a lot of practice, doesn’t
it! The secret for these people is that they have sought out and found many, many
OPPORTUNITIES to practice. They seek out ways to learn and develop. They don’t sit back
and wait for opportunities to come to them. In fact, they CREATE opportunities to
practice, just like you can. Practice, of course, involves making mistakes. Making mistakes
equals an opportunity to learn. Without practice you don’t make mistakes, and without
mistakes you don’t learn, and without learning, your career will get, well, stuck! You know
this is true. Just like a gymnast falls off the high bar when attempting their first
somersault, or a child falls of a bike when riding without training wheels for the first time
or you spell a word incorrectly in your first spelling contest, mistakes are important for our
learning.
However, a HUGE benefit of this ebook is that each of the two practices provided include
step by step approaches to minimise your mistakes. I’m not suggesting that you won’t
make any mistakes, but I am suggesting that if you do they will be more strategic. That
is, the lessons that you’ll learn from making mistakes when implementing the two
practices will enhance your understanding of the strategies so that you will, in fact,
master them more quickly. As you master the two practices more quickly, your career will
progress more quickly in the direction that you want it to go. Later, you may decide to
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learn the other 13 practices which will exponentially enhance your employability and
career prospects.
In this context, this FREE ebook has been designed for people who are early in their
careers and may have less than four years work experience. As a relatively recent entrant
to the world of employment many opportunities are likely to present themselves to you.
Since 2002 I have been providing development services for Young Professionals. While
technology and our world have changed over that time, a number of core concepts and
practices have remained important for career advancement. This FREE ebook includes two
of the 15 of the most important practices that you can use to enhance your employability
over the first few years of your career. The extra 13 strategies are included in the ebook
‘What Really Matters For Young Professionals – How to master 15 practices to accelerate
your career!’.
My intention is to help you to make the best of your early years in employment. This
ebook along with our e-learning programs is one way to ensure that you leverage your
development so that you create the career(s) that you desire. For information regarding
our e-learning programs, please visit Organisations That Matter.
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Both chapters are relatively short and contain explicit strategies and advice with regard to
answering the question, “How do I...?”.
The sooner that you start to adopt and action the two practices outlined in this book, the
sooner you will enhance your capacity to create the career that you desire. So, I
encourage you to start now; don’t delay your development for one second longer!
This FREE ebook supports a series of ebooks that include:
What Really Matters For Undergraduate Students
How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career!
What Really Matters For Post-Graduate Students
How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career!
What Really Matters For Young Professionals
How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career!
What Really Matters For Aspiring Organisational Leaders
How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career!
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Thank You
Thank you for downloading this ebook. I know that you will receive a lot of value from it.
Please respect our copyright. This means that you have our permission to copy and share
this ebook, providing that you do not change it in any way. Encourage others to download
it as well.
Finally, I am always eager to hear from you regarding the benefits that you have received
from reading this ebook, what you think could be improved and what strategies you
believe could be included in our next edition of the full version of this ebook, What Really
Matters For Young Professionals – How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career!.
Enjoy!
Gary Ryan
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Table of Contents
Introduction - Leveraging your employability skills for career success ......................................................... 1
Ten Skills to Enhance Your Employability and career success ....................................................................... 2
Practice No.1: Own Your Organisation’s Values ...................................................................................................... 5
Practice No.2: Understand Your Mental Models ..................................................................................................... 12
Seven questions about work based mental models ......................................................................................... 17
Final Thoughts .................................................................................................................................................................... 20
.
What Really Matters For Young Professionals – How to master 15 practices to accelerate your
career! .................................................................................................................................................................................... 21
About Gary Ryan ................................................................................................................................................................ 23
Bonus Offer! ............................................................................................................................................................................. 24
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What Really Matters for Young Professionals
Introduction - Leveraging your employability skills for career success
Employability skills are a range of generic skills that, irrespective of your technical
With more and more expertise are considered by employers to be critical skills for high level performance.
people throughout the
Employability skills are also known as 'transferable skills', 'employee attributes' and/or
world gaining academic
qualifications, the point 'key competencies'. Some universities also use the term, ‘graduate attributes’. The level
for differentiation and of expertise that you are expected to have in relation to these skills is related to the level
individual competitive
of the job for which you are applying or striving to achieve. As an example the level of
advantage stems from
how a person has communication skills expected of a prospective CEO are different to those of a part time
continued to develop supermarket check-out operator.
their employability skills
With more and more people throughout the world gaining academic qualifications, the
point for differentiation and individual competitive advantage stems from how a person
has continued to develop their employability skills. Some people believe that it is
important to develop their employability skills so that they can obtain a job. Once they
have a job, then they believe that they no longer have to worry about developing these
skills. This thinking is flawed. Jobs are no longer guaranteed for life and employees must
continue to develop their employability skills if they wish to remain employable (hence the
term, 'employability skills'). Seeking opportunities through on-the-job learning or through
training and development experiences are critical to maintaining high employability while
you have a job.
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What Really Matters for Young Professionals
Ten Skills to Enhance Your Employability and career success
1 Teamwork: The ability to work in a team
2 Communication: The ability to effectively communicate with a wide variety of people
3 Problem solving: The ability to solve problems both individually and in the context of a team
4 Leadership: The ability to positively influence and lead other people in the achievement of
organisational objectives
5 Planning & organisation: The ability to effectively manage your time and the resources that
are available to you
6 Life-long learning: The ability to demonstrate on the job learning and your approach to life-
long learning
7 Vision: Having a personal vision and understanding how your work integrates with the
achievement of your vision
8 Numeracy: The ability to understand and use numbers for business purposes, including the
capacity to create and read graphs
9 Self-management: The ability for self-management across a wide variety of life activities
10 Service excellence: The ability to provide high levels of service in the way that you perform
your work
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The benefit of maintaining a high level of employability while having a job, is critical from
the perspective of increasing your chances for promotion. Also, a high level of
I have formed a view employability correlates with high performance. High performance is one of the most valid
that there is never a
situation where what you job security strategies that an employee can implement. While there are no guarantees in
are doing or have done is this world, an assumption that I am comfortable making is that if all things are equal and
'just a job' an organisation has an equal choice between letting a poor performer or a high performer
go, the poor performer will nearly always be asked to leave first.
Consciously developing employability skills is an important process that many people
forget to do. In our work with young professionals we often hear them refer to their part
time experiences like this, "I was just an administration assistant", or, "I just worked at a
gas station." Having performed many menial jobs throughout my youth and
undergraduate studies, I have formed a view that there is never a situation where what
you are doing or have done is 'just a job'. All jobs create the opportunity in some way,
even if only small, to develop employability skills. The same is true for full time
employment.
The two practices outlined in this FREE ebook are collectively unique. You will not find
these strategies packaged in this way for you anywhere else. Each strategy includes
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What Really Matters for Young Professionals
approaches that you may have heard about before but did not know how to put into
practice. Ultimately, this is an ebook that you should ‘do’ and not just ‘read’!
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What Really Matters for Young Professionals
Practice No.1: Own Your Organisation’s Values
This chapter addresses concepts and strategies that relate to the following employability
skills:
Self-management
Vision
Teamwork
These days most organisations have a set of organisational values. Sometimes they are
represented in the form of a Code of Conduct or in a statement regarding a set of
principles. Usually these values can be discovered on the organisation's website and in
various organisational publications. On occasion the values are physically displayed on the
walls of the corporate offices.
Having a set of existing organisational values can be very different to living a set of
organisational values. The difference lies in whether or not the people in the organisation
actually use the values in their day to day work. Organisations can significantly enhance
the use of their values by creating structures that support their day to day use.
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Some examples include:
Using the values as a basis for behavioural questions in an interview process
Having systems to recognise people for behaving in alignment with the values
Promoting people for their demonstrated alignment to the organisational values in hand
with their technical abilities
Exiting people from the organisation who demonstrate over time that they do not share
the organisation's values
Some examples include:
1) The primary (elementary) school that my children attend have a set of values that exist
under a ‘You can do it!’ slogan. These values are used every Monday at the school
assembly as part of a recognition program for appropriate behaviour by the children.
Often more than 20 students are publicly recognised for something that they did that
demonstrated the schools ‘You can do it!’ slogan in practice. An added special touch to the
awards which also provides extra meaning is that the student leaders read out the awards
which have been written by their teachers. The structure that they follow is as follows,
"This award goes to Johnny Brown for persistence. He worked really hard on his writing
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What Really Matters for Young Professionals
and kept trying until he got it correct." The award provides a concrete example of what is
meant by ‘Persistence’ which enables the students to develop a practical understanding of
how their school values work. I'm not sure, but I hope that the school uses these values
in their recruitment processes as well as in recognising the work and contribution of the
teachers.
2) A financial institution with whom we work has a clear set of organisational values and
each value has a very clear set of behaviours that demonstrate how the value should be
practiced. As an example, one of their values is, "We will be open and honest". Some of
the behaviours that support this value include, "We tell it like it is (no spin); we speak up
and we are open to other points of view" etc. etc. The benefit of having explicit behaviours
linked to each value is that they significantly enhance the shared understanding of what
the value means. Honesty can mean a lot of different things to different people, which is
why it is important to clarify what is meant by each value within your organisation.
3) A sporting team uses their values for feedback, both for administrators and the players
alike. Using the values and their supporting behaviours as the basis for the feedback,
team members go through a process where they are informed of the behaviours that they
should cease, commence and continue. (The context of the feedback is to help the person
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receiving the feedback to be the best that they can be to help the organisation achieve
the success it desires). A process such as this brings the values to life as people have to
...if you personally agree consider their real day to day behaviour in the context of the organisation's values.
with your organisation's
values, then it is your
My experience is that too often an organisation does have a set of values, but the people
personal responsibility to
do everything that you within the organisation do not take personal responsibility for them. Instead, the people
can to support the defer responsibility for the values to 'the organisation' (a 'thing') or to the most senior
values through your own
people in the organisation. Personally I have never understood why someone would defer
behaviour
or deflect responsibility for the values especially when, after reading them, most people
seem to say something like, "Oh yes, I can live with these values." I completely
understand that it is more difficult when an organisation hasn't created a set of structures
to support their values for the people in the organisation to keep them alive, but it still
doesn't explain why some people say the following, "Oh, such and such doesn't
demonstrate the values, so the values are a load of crap, which is why I don't do them
either!". My suggestion is that if you personally agree with your organisation's values,
then it is your personal responsibility to do everything that you can to support the values
through your own behaviour.
So what might be a personal structure that you could put in place to help you bring your
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organisation's values to life? Many of you may be familiar with the interview preparation
technique known as the STAR storytelling technique that is fully described in the ebook
‘Accelerating Careers For Young Professionals – How to master 15 practices that really
matter!’. The same storytelling technique can be used for your organisational values. Take
each value and /or the behaviours associated with each value and ask yourself, "What is a
genuine STAR story of mine that demonstrates this value in use?". If you had a 'bank' of
stories that you had collected over time, imagine your confidence when going into an
interview for a promotion.
Interestingly, the very reason why you may be going in for the interview in the first place
may be that others may have witnessed your support of the organisation's values over
time which may have been a significant contributing factor to you being identified for the
promotion!
If your organisation is serious about its values, and if you feel aligned to them, why
wouldn't you prepare such examples? Imagine when you are being interviewed for an
internal promotion. The likelihood is that your possible promotion will be more
significantly linked to your overall organisational alignment than your technical skills
alone. It is unlikely that you would be interviewed if your technical skills weren't
appropriate for the promotion, which leaves your capacity to demonstrate your
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organisational alignment as the most significant factor that will enable you to stand out
from everyone else who is going for the job.
...if you agree with your
organisation's values and Finally and possibly most importantly, if you agree with your organisation's values and
you take personal
you take personal responsibility for them, you will be increasing your capacity to make the
responsibility for them,
you will be increasing right decisions at the right time for the right reasons in your day to day work. This can
your capacity to make also significantly enhance your happiness at work. You will have a high degree of clarity
the right decisions at the
about why you do what you do. While your clarity will continually evolve with your
right time for the right
reasons practical understanding of the values in action, the outcomes may include everything from
increased happiness at work to job promotions.
Implementing this practice is a very simple way to stand out from the crowd.
Having your own, personal stories regarding how you live your organisation’s
values is downright simple, yet very few people do it because they think that the
values are owned by the executives of the organisation. Don’t be like everyone
else. Be different. Be yourself. If you agree with your organisation’s values then
build up a ‘story bank’ of how you have used your organisation’s values in your
day to day decisions. Influential people will recognise your alignment with your
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organisation. In turn, this will increase your employability and more career
opportunities will open up to you.
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What Really Matters for Young Professionals
Practice No.2: Understand Your Mental Models
Like many theories, our This chapter addresses concepts and strategies that relate to the following employability
mental models are useful skills:
in some circumstances
and not in others Self-management
Vision
Life-long learning
Leadership
Problem solving
Mental models are our theories about how we believe the world works. They affect
everything from our personal relationships to the way we behave at work and the future
that we believe that we can create for ourselves. Mental models are extremely powerful
because they affect the way we behave. Sometimes they can cause us to behave in ways
that are incongruent with our personal values, causing considerable internal misalignment.
Many of the challenges of working with our mental models are that they are sub-
conscious, i.e. we don't even know that we have them. Another significant and related
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challenge is that we need our mental models to help us to navigate our way through the
complex world that we live in. Deep seated, our mental models develop over time and
...the question regarding come from our cultures, our family experiences, our religious beliefs, our education and
our mental models is not
our general life experiences. . Just like the theory, "What goes up, must come down" is
whether they are right or
wrong; it is whether or useful on the planet earth, it isn't useful out in space. In space, what goes up just keeps
not they are useful on going!
So the question regarding our mental models is not whether they are right or wrong; it is
whether or not they are useful in helping us achieve whatever it is that we are trying to
achieve.
To illustrate the power of mental models I will use a metaphor. Just like a video camera
can record events from a single perspective, our eyes and ears can also act like a video
recorder. Our personal video recorder is controlled by our mental models. In other words,
our mental models tell our video camera what to see, what to ignore, what to zoom in on
and what to zoom out on. Our mental models can even cause our video recorders to use
an on-the-spot editing function - we can actually add things in and take things out if what
we are seeing doesn't fit with our mental models.
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An example that I have used many times involves P plate drivers (In Australia
probationary car drivers have to display a ‘P’ on their car so that all other drivers know
that they have only recently obtained their driving license). Imagine if a person held a
mental model that all P Plate drivers were terrible drivers. If we were able to 'download'
that person's video footage after they had driven to work, what images of P Plate drivers
do you think that we would see (just like you would see on one of the screens in a TV
studio)? Having asked this question many times with the people with whom I have
worked, their responses are regularly:
- talking on their mobile phone while driving
- text messaging while driving
- tailgating
- changing lanes without indicating
- speeding etc.
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Quite literally the person who held such a mental model would not see any good
behaviour by the P Platers.
Let's now look at a different scene. The person with the mental model that all P Plate
drivers are terrible drivers is leaving a sporting event that had a capacity crowd. The car
park is full and everyone is trying to leave at the same time. A P Plater happens to 'let this
person in' so that they can leave the car park ahead of the P Plater. What video footage
do we believe that we would now see if we were able to download it from the person who
holds the mental model that all P Platers are terrible drivers? Regular responses that I
have received to this question over time include:
• The P Plater's car stalled so he/she didn't let me in, I took the initiative and took the
space when it was available!
• The P Plater was too busy text messaging so I took the space when it became
available!
• The P Plater had turned around to talk to his/her friends and created a space in
front of him/her, so I took it!
Notice that these answers do not recognise the fact that the P Plater 'let them in'.
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If the person did believe that they had been 'let in' instead of having taken the space (as
indicated by the responses above), what do we think we might NOT see on the person's
We see what we want to
video footage of the incident?
see, not necessarily what
is actually there
A very fast response that I usually hear in response to this question is, "The P plate on the
person's car."
Quite literally the P Plate may disappear from the person's footage because it does not
match with their mental model. This is very powerful.
This example demonstrates the power of mental models. They can be so powerful that we
literally do not see things even if they are really there. This highlights the capacity for our
mental models to be flawed. However, many people do not believe that their mental
models could be flawed. Instead they believe that their mental models are not only 100%
accurate reflections of reality, but everyone else should also hold their mental models.
People have mental models about their own race, other races, their own religion and other
religions, etc. etc.. Mental models, when shared can even be used to create support for
countries to go to war.
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In terms of a workplace it is critical that we try to increase our awareness of our mental
models. As many of our mental models are sub-conscious it can take some time to
uncover what we really believe about a workplace.
Seven questions to help you to raise your awareness of work-based mental models
include:
Seven questions about work based mental models
1 What is the most important department in your organisation?
2 When an opportunity is presented to you that involves doing more work or work at a higher
level, what is the first question that you ask?
3 What size office should a senior manager have?
4 Should specific car parks be available for certain staff members, and if so, who should get
them?
5 Who is responsible for the performance of the team within which you work?
6 If you were a manager and you were asked a question and you did not know the answer, what
would be your response?
7 If you ask your manager a question and they don't know the answer to your question (but you
think that they should know the answer given the fact that they are a manager), what would
you think about the competence level of the manager?
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Your answers to the questions above will provide some insight into your own mental
models. Once you discover a mental model it is worth asking yourself, "Why do I think
In terms of high that?" five times in a row (This is known as the Five Whys tool). Eventually your answer to
performance ... it is
the last “Why?" question may reveal your sub-conscious mental model. While this can be
better to discover a
flawed mental model so hard work it is very useful. You may discover that on some issues your mental models are
that you have the flawed.
opportunity to adopt a
more useful one, than to The problem with flawed mental models is that they can get you to choose information
remain ignorant of why
that fits with your mental model. This causes you to quickly jump to conclusions that are,
you believe what you
believe in fact, inaccurate (in ‘Accelerating Careers For Young Professionals – How to master 15
practices that really matter!, see Practice No.10: Slow Yourself Down From Jumping to
Conclusions). You may then take action based on a flawed mental model. Such action can
often make the situation that you are experiencing worse. For example, I once said to a
team member when I was a young manager, "Don't bring me problems unless you have
solutions to them." Problems stopped coming to me. But they weren't being solved either
- the staff just started hiding things from me because I had effectively told them that I
didn't want to know about their problems if they didn't already have a solution to them.
How silly was that! It wasn't that the problems no longer existed I had just made it even
more difficult for the team members to raise them with me.
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In terms of high performance, both on a personal level and in the context of an
organisation, it is better to discover a flawed mental model so that you have the
opportunity to adopt a more useful one, than to remain ignorant of why you believe what
you believe.
Implementing this practice will enhance your employability by enabling you to
become more clear about what you think and why you think it. If you have some
flawed mental models then you will have an opportunity to change them. It is
difficult to change something when you don’t know what it is! In addition,
understanding your mental models will enhance your capacity to ensure that
your mental models, values and behaviour are all aligned. As you behave in an
aligned manner, people at work will notice. You will be respected and trusted.
Gaining respect and building trust are two terrific ways to enhance the speed of
your career progress. Try it out! You’ll discover just how accurate that statement
really is.
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What Really Matters for Young Professionals
Final Thoughts
Employability is often something that people only think about when they are either looking
for a job, or trying to get a promotion. Often, the time when you recognise that you need
to develop your employability skills and/or to capture what you have done is too late to
take real advantage of the development that you have undertaken. Employability skills
development is an on-going, never-ending career pursuit.
Congratulations! Reading this FREE ebook is just one of the many activities that you can
do to enhance your employability and there are many more strategies that I will share
with you in upcoming ebooks and editions of this book to assist you on your journey.
I would love to hear about your challenges, case examples, successes and lessons from
trying to put into practice the two strategies that this ebook advocates. Please feel free to
email me directly at Gary@orgsthatmatter.com. I wish you the very best on your
continuous journey of creating the career that you desire.
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What Really Matters for Young Professionals
What Really Matters For Young Professionals – How to master 15
practices to accelerate your career!
The following 15 practices are included in the ebook:
Practice No.1: Capture Your Stories
Practice No.2: Identify Your Personal Values
* Practice No.3: Own Your Organisation’s Values
* Practice No.4: Understand Your Mental Models
Practice No.5: Lead Through ‘Living’ Your Values
Practice No.6: Create Great Teams By Developing Groundrules
Practice No.7: Respect Organisational ‘Community Spaces’
Practice No.8: Develop Your Understanding of Systems Thinking
Practice No.9: Understand How ‘Structure Drives Behaviour’
Practice No.10: Slow Yourself Down From Jumping To Conclusions
Practice No.11: Effectively Communicate Important Messages
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What Really Matters for Young Professionals
Practice No.12: Recruit Mentors
Practice No.13: Develop a Simple Approach To Service Excellence
Practice No.14: Follow Dee Hock’s Servant Leadership Example
Practice No.15: Manage Your Time!
*These two practices are included in the FREE ebook
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What Really Matters for Young Professionals
About Gary Ryan
Gary Ryan is a consultant, author and speaker who helps organisations, organisational
leaders, graduate employees, graduate students and undergraduate students to be the
very best that they can be. He is passionate about helping organisations to matter to their
people; their stakeholders and customers; their community and their environment.
Through helping employers align what they say with what they do, as well as helping
current and future employees do likewise, Gary believes that he really can help
organisations matter.
Holding several degrees including a Bachelor of Education in Physical Education (1994), a
Graduate Diploma in Human Resource Management (2002) and a Master of Management
(2004), Gary is currently completing a Doctor of Business Administration program at
Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. The more educated that he has become, the
greater the gap between theory and practice he has observed. One of the reasons for
founding Organisations That Matter with Dr Andrew O’Brien was to close this gap. The
intention of this book is to do likewise.
Married with four children Gary also runs marathons to maintain his health and fitness.
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What Really Matters for Young Professionals
Bonus Offer!
The first 20 people to join The Organisations That Matter Learning Network
(http://studentsthatmatter.ning.com) will receive a FREE 15 minute Skype
Mentoring Session with Gary Ryan to learn how to Capture Your Career
Stories.
Enter Promotion Code “otm2009CAPTURE” when joining and Gary Ryan will
contact you to arrange your Skype Mentoring Session valued at AUS$100.
You must be available to conduct your Skype Mentoring Session using Skype
by January 31st 2010 for this offer to be valid.
To take advantage of this limited offer join The Organisations That Matter
Learning Network (http://studentsthatmatter.ning.com) NOW!
24 ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009 www.orgsthatmatter.com