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 3 Common Career Sabotage Mistakes -- And What To Do About Them

3 Common Career Sabotage Mistakes -- And What To Do About Them.

Common Career Sabotage #1 - You've made yourself irreplaceable! You struggled for weeks and months, looking and feeling like an idiot until you figured it out your job! But now, your boss won't promote you because s/he doesn't want to wait another 6 months for someone else to learn your job... Your boss says, "You are critical! You can't be replaced!" So, you get no promotions, and only pitiful raises. You would like to quit, but you need the money. Oh no! You are stuck in a dead-end job. Discouraged. Again! ...NOW what!?!?

Common Career Sabotage #2 - You're overwhelmed! After years of working hard, you become overwhelmed doing more and more of the same thing day after day. They're piling on more responsibility without giving you the authority. You slave 10-16 hours a day. You just can't keep pace anymore. How long are you going to continue running around like a chicken with its head cut off? ...NOW what!?!?

Common Career Sabotage #3 - Coasting! The April 2005 issue of Money Magazine reported that 25% of workers age 35 to 45 - and 50% of those over 45 - have had the same job for more than 10 years! Many of these people are coasting, comfortable, just surviving, just enduring until "retirement." Meanwhile, inflation eats away at your paycheck and retirement funds. Coasting leads to atrophy and passivity. And it feels terrible! Are you just going to lay around like a chicken with its body cut off? ...NOW what!?!? But WAIT... Here's how things get even WORSE! I'm sure one of those common sabotage scenarios was familiar to you. So, you know these kinds of problems only get worse over time. There IS a simple solution... But read below how we get STUCK -- again and again -- if we don't take the RIGHT ACTION! -- You lose track of your career goals. Thus, you don't have an expedient way to integrate the four steps to your success: organizing, planning, developing, and operating your career. You suffer the problems of vague goals, requirements, and activities. -- You agonize over the lack of control of your own workload. This means you suffer slower career development. In turn, you must put up with escalating pressure to do more. -- You don't have a SYSTEM to amplify your skills into extraordinary results to gain recognition and boost your career advancement. Without a SYSTEM, you don't have a reliable way to quickly replace yourself when you're ready to ask for that raise or promotion. There you are, stuck again treading water, going nowhere! Worse, you likely endure daily chaos, ugly politics, and destructive alliances that cripple your effectiveness. What are you going to do? Are you going to jump to a new job to rid yourself of these problems? Your next career "opportunity" might look to you like an escape, a lateral move, or even a promotion. But, guess what! You always enter a new opportunity at the same level that you leave the last one - despite your new title or career. Most people don't know THE easiest and most effective way you can do all this. -- FORGET about making yourself "irreplaceable!" Instead, make yourself "RE-placeable!" --Instead, make yourself upwardly mobile by developing your own Operations Manual so you can train someone else to do your job(s). "WHOA Mike! What the heck is an Operations Manual?" Please let me explain. An "Operations Manual" is simply a document that tells someone how to do a given job. For example, if I hired you for a position in my company, I would hand you that position's Operations Manual so you could WIN at that position from the get-go! People call "Operations Manuals" by many names. You can call it an instruction manual, owner's manual, recipe book, user manual, how-to book, installation manual, etc. Here's what the famous genius who revitalized Japanese industry, W. Edward Deming said: "If you can't describe what you're doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing!" So, for your current job... your Operations Manual would contain the necessary background and steps for doing your job. You could then give it to someone and move on to your next position. Or, you could take a worry-free vacation because your work will be done right - by someone else.

Here's what I say: "Nothing is smarter than describing what you are doing in an Operations Manual that shows others how to do it too! Always do this before asking for a raise or promotion!"

© 2006 Mike Hayden Slightly Famous Author of The Ultimate Career Builder: Turning cold careers into hot opportunities. http://www.SeniorManagementServices.com/ultimate-career-builder.html 

Articles at http://www.SeniorManagementServices.com/ARTICLES-FREE.html

By Mike Hayden

Writers Profile

Mike Hayden is Founder/CEO of Senior Management Services and the Documentation Express in Silicon Valley, CA. Mr Hayden is author of "The Ultimate Career Builder: Turning cold careers into hot opportunities."

Mike@SeniorManagementServices.com

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