CHAPTER 1
TAKING CONTROL:
It's Harder Than You Think

I'll never forget the date: September 4, 1984. There I was in my Brooks Brothers suit and my shiny new wing tips, carrying the hard-sided leather briefcase that was empty except for a handful of pens and pencils. Having grown up in a small town in Kansas, I'd never been in a skyscraper office building before I went on job interviews. But as a graduate of the University of Southern California and having passed the CPA exam, I was fortunate enough to receive several job offers from accounting and consulting firms. When I walked through the heavy oak door of Peat Marwick Mitchell (today's KPMG), I felt like I'd arrived-until I met all the others.

There were 125 of us in that year's class of new hires, and that was just in the Los Angeles office. Then they gave us the speech: Within two years, 50 percent of us would be gone-and even more within four years. Only one or maybe two of us would ever make partner.

Things started to change with the first assignment: Global merger? Massive restructuring? Takeover attempt? Nope-moving boxes.

I heard others complain, but I had worked summers in college as a mover-although not in a suit that I couldn't afford to get dirty. I moved boxes all week, from office to office and between floors. When I was done with the boxes, I was given a phone book and a 10-key calculator and told to add the rows of phone numbers to sharpen my 10-key skills. Ridiculous busywork? For sure. But I did it without complaint because that's what I was asked to do.

EARLY ON, I NOTICED HOW CERTAIN PEOPLE AT THE CONSULTING FIRM STOOD OUT BECAUSE THEY JUST "DID IT." THEY HAD "HUSTLE."

Early on, I noticed how certain people at the consulting firm stood out because they just "did it." They had "hustle." Over the years, I've noticed how hustle and hunger quash pedigree every time-even if someone is an Ivy League graduate or has a PhD. It's been shown that people who have to scramble in their careers not only do well (and often better than their pedigreed peers), but they learn from their failures and end up in a career that yields greater satisfaction. If things are too easy or if privilege opens all the doors, the result can be misery and discontent-no matter how much money you earn.

All my young life, I hustled: delivering newspapers, painting houses, working construction-you name it. It wasn't that we were poor; it's just that we didn't have any money. There is something about seeing, as a kid, all the furniture being repossessed and taken from the house that chills your bones. That image reminds me daily of where I came from and, more importantly, who I am.

My first real assignment at KPMG was doing inventory in a cavernous warehouse. My trial by fire was accepting (and drinking) a cup of coffee from the warehouse manager in a dirty mug he pulled straight out of the sink. As if to sanitize it a little, he ran the mug under the faucet for two seconds and used his fingers to wipe off the dirt. In doing this, I earned the respect of that warehouse manager, who saw that I wasn't just another college grad who wouldn't get his hands dirty. I had done this type of work before, from crawling over pallets to scaling piles of boxes.

Flash-forward nine years after that first job: I was among fewer than a handful of people from my Los Angeles "class" at the firm who made partner. Flash-forward 23 years to 2007: I became CEO of Korn Ferry. So much has changed in that time-successes and failures, all lessons I've embraced.

At the top of the lesson list: take control. You can't expect others to get you ready for the next job or open the door to the next opportunity. You have to do it yourself. Second, stay humble, because humility supports lifelong learning. Third, you gotta have hustle.

THE PATH TO HUSTLE: TAKING CONTROL

Here's the caveat: I can't teach you hustle. If you don't have it, if you've never had it, there's nothing I can do for you. (And nobody else can, either.) That may sound harsh, but the brutal truth is, nobody can put in what nature left out. And even if you have it, hustle is hard to sustain throughout your entire career. People sometimes slow down at certain points and then have to get their mojo back later.

So, to keep that fire in your belly, you'll need a plan-you'll need to take control of your career. Here's an obvious analogy: if someone told you that within two years you'd have a heart attack, you'd probably make some big changes immediately. It's a no-brainer, because that kind of prognosis isn't just a wake-up call, it's a "shake-up" call. Nothing is as important as your health.

But what about the health of your career? What if you knew you were going to be fired in a year? Surely you'd make some big changes.

Too often, though, people get complacent. They settle into a rut until one day they wake up and discover that their company has been acquired, their boss has been fired, or they're being downsized. They're out of a job-and out of luck, because they have no idea what to do.

Or they do the opposite. While job-hopping is no longer a negative, they're making leaps without looking. They're bored, they want a change, something pays a little more-so they move. But they never stop to ask: Am I really learning anything?

Whether you're lethargic or you're constantly moving, you need to take control. Think of your career as a long game composed of many short moves. No one is going to do it for you, making sure that you're progressing with each step and job change along the way. It's all on you.

WHAT DRIVES YOU?

Let's be honest here: taking control of your career is hard work-and you're doing it largely on your own. You can't wait for your employer to guide your career development. And if you're making job changes every few years, even if your employer had a development plan for you, you probably aren't staying anywhere long enough for it to take root and pay off.

To keep learning and expanding on your own, you need to be highly motivated. Otherwise, it's too easy to get complacent and coast. The antidote is to be truly energized by what you do.

"Gus" had spent his whole life on the circus crew. For 60-some-odd years, Gus cleaned up after the elephants, a sweaty, dirty job that involved some (pardon the pun) heavy lifting. One day, the circus owner stopped by the elephant yard.

"Gus," he said, "isn't it time you retired?"

"What?" Gus replied with a shocked expression on his face. "And give up show business?"

Every job involves some degree of shoveling you-know-what: the problems, challenges, and difficulties (people and otherwise) that are endemic in any workplace. As a CEO, I can tell you there's as much shoveling at the top as there is at the bottom; it's just different "stuff." Nobody escapes it. The daily grind, though, is really just the dues we all have to pay to do what we truly love-like Gus, shoveling behind the elephants to be part of the show.

So ask yourself: What motivates me? Don't say money. Research shows time and again that it really isn't most important. Don't get me wrong, compensation matters, and it must be fair. (We have a whole chapter devoted to how to ask for more money.) But there is so much more to consider than just your current title and salary.

THE THREE COMPONENTS OF MOTIVATION

Motivation has a deeply scientific basis. One of our firm's early thought leaders, the late David McClelland, published seminal books that addressed motivation: The Achieving Society (1961), Human Motivation (1973), and several others. In his breakthrough work, McClelland identified three motivators that have the biggest effect on behavior in the workplace:

Which of these three describes you? Does the desire for achievement (mastery) get you out of bed each morning? Is it affiliation (relationships and belonging to a group)? Or is it the desire for power (influence)? You may feel a mix of all three, but one is probably more prominent than the others. Plug into that motivation and find opportunities to experience it in what you do every day. This will increase your engagement as you take control of your career development. (And in the role of a manager, as we'll discuss in Chapter Eight, "Managing for the First Time," knowing which of these components motivates your team members will help you inspire them.)

As you tap into your intrinsic motivators, you'll naturally feel more engaged and inspired. It will show in what you do every day. People will gravitate toward you. Your attitude will lift the altitude of the entire team-or maybe even the entire organization. People will want to engage with you and be part of your team, because let's face it, everybody wants to be around a winner. And you will advance along the...