Crystal-Barkley Reports

“Me, Inc.” Applied to Your Career

 Where’s someone to look for a dependable friend these days?  Do you sometimes – often – feel you are all alone out there?  You are! – Alone but not lonely.  Everyone has the same dilemma.  Once you accept the fact that surviving in corporate America is directly dependent on your own initiative not what someone else does, you’ll be fine.  In fact, odds are you’ll have a very good time with the adventure.  Corporate America is, of course, made up of a myriad not-for-profit as well as for-profit organizations, so we are all part of it.  But how do you prosper?  What are the tools and strategies?  At Crystal-Barkley, these are assembled under a banner we sometimes call “Me, Inc.,” an approach which enables you to take matters into your own hands.  “Me, Inc.” is actually quite a different way of thinking about yourself.  Most of us have been fooled into believing that other people hold the authority over our futures.  In reality, that is very far from the truth.  It bears taking a close look at reality – our individual situations – to fully realize how empowered we can be. 

Think how subtly and unsuspectingly we may have come to accept that others have control over us – more than they do in truth.  We grow up with parents who, out of necessity, controlled our entire regimen as infants and much of it as youngsters.  It certainly felt as though the school took over where parents left off.  We may have joined young people’s organizations which imposed their codes.  As we grew, the family attached all sorts of expectations.  If we got as far as graduate school, the academic model was held as the oracle.  And, finally, the organization which hired us, held sway over our futures.  Except, of course, that was not actually the case.  It just felt like it! 

All through the years, we have had increasing opportunity to exercise choice – to run ourselves, the corporations Crystal-Barkley calls “Me, Inc.,” in the directions we want.  How we have felt – whether we have genuinely believed we were free to choose – has determined whether our lives are returning to us the psychic rewards so important to our feeling energetic and satisfied.

All human beings need a sense of psychic reward in addition to the monetary reward we expect from work.  Most of us, though, are not accustomed to expecting both.  Satisfaction, plus money – a nice idea, but overly idealistic!  Well, is it?  Take another look.  Study those individuals whose success you admire.  You’re likely to find each one deriving enormous satisfaction from doing the very thing that is earning their bread.  Mozart was in love with his music; Charles DeGaulle – France; Marie Curie – her notion of chemistry; Henry Ford – the automobile; Meryl Streep – truth as revealed in film; that high school English teacher, who taught you so much, - precision; the super achieving account executive you read about – selling; and so forth.

Why not you?

But how?

To get your corporation, “Me, Inc.,” in gear, there are several basic tasks to accomplish.

Learn what your assets are.  And this means just that – your assets, not your liabilities.  No one ever built an enterprise around liabilities – weaknesses – things you’re not good at doing.  Don’t worry about those.  If the situation turns out to require strengths you don’t have, there are ways of rectifying that down the road.  Concentrate, instead, on your skills and talents.  You will find them hiding in your accumulated  experience. Tell people little stories about what you have done and how you did these things.  Ask them to tell you what skills they see exhibited in these examples.  Write down everything.  You can do the same for them in return.  They’ll  love it!

Remember your youngest years, your play and schooling, as well as your work for pay.  Do you know that at Crystal-Barkley, we often discover clients’ most prominent  skills have never been put to “work!” 

Your assets are, also, your health, education and your tangible resources, such as your money, property and any data you may have collected which are pertinent.           

Determine which are your most important assets.  These are the capacities around which you will want to build “Me, Inc.”           

Ask yourself which of your skills and talents you most enjoy – yes, enjoy – using.  Try to remember how you felt when you were actually doing things using these skills.  Make a list with the most enjoyable at the top.

Then, confess privately to yourself at which of these skills you are the best.  Recalling the results you got by using them will help you here.  From this, create your second list.

Now, find the midpoint between each particular skill on the two lists to produce a new list.  For instance, if an item is at point 1 on one list and point 3 on the other, it will end up at position 2.  On this new list, the things you do the best and enjoy the most will be on top.  Those of you who have worked through the Crystal-Barkley process before will be old hands at doing this in an even more sophisticated manner.

The top six to eight skills on your now blended list are the ones to be certain are in prominent demand in your work.  These, together with your health, education and the monetary or property resources you wish to use, will be the foundation or your enterprise.

Come up with a mission statement for “Me, Inc.”  It’s terrific progress to know who you are, but not really enough, is it, until you know what business “Me, Inc.” is in?

This is the point to indulge your fantasies or daydreams.  Resist creeping thoughts of practicality for right now.  Can you remember what the child in you dreamed of becoming – of doing?  Rephrase those dreams out loud.  Write them down.  Try to think of anyone – anywhere who might be gainfully employed doing just that.  Well, maybe it isn’t so silly after all!

Allow yourself to play with these ideas until you are able to construct a statement of what you want to accomplish with your life.  Surely, at least a portion of this can be the object of your work.  Make that the mission statement of "Me, Inc."

Research the market before taking your next work step.  At Crystal-Barkley, we call this surveying.  It’s a way to bring in the information you need in order to successfully launch “Me, Inc.” or gain a greater share of the market or change functions or positions in your present organization.  You research by reading, yes, but in the main by talking with the very people who are now involved in buying or using what you would love to do.  You try out your ideas, test how responsive they seem to these people’s needs and all the while you are looking to see who and where is the most receptive territory for you to put your ideas to work.  You stay away from making the pitch.  Time enough for that later – and safer, too – when you have gathered the requisite information.

Make a proposal to a carefully selected future employer, your present employer, your desired clients or, if you have decided to be entrepreneurial, to a financier.  Tell them what you can accomplish, what the benefits are for them and, finally, how much it will cost.  Be sure to have researched well enough to have identified more than one route to go.  That way, you remain in command of “Me, Inc.”  You will have chosen to merge, for the time being, with another corporation, your employer, or you will have decided to run a separate business entity.  Either way, you will have realized you need not be the victim of corporate America.  You are corporate America.  So, begin the process by

1. realizing that fact – not only with your head, but with your actions;

2. knowing how to take fair measure of your potential and put it to work effectively, perhaps in the same organization where you are now;

3. having a great time making money while you are doing what you most want to do;

4. anticipating economic and organizationally political trends and getting ahead of them; and

5. feeling confident that you can determine the course of your work and life.

  Oh! One more thing! Keep us posted on your progress.