Page 218 - Roy W. Rice - CEO Material How to Be a Leader in Any Organization-McGraw-Hill (2009)

You Manage Your Career and Don’t Let Others Do It • 199

By the six-month mark, you need to have some wins that improved
productivity, increased sales, or something that added value. Exceed
expectations.
Do not spend time fighting over a better corner office, new furni-
ture in the office, or other signs that you’ve arrived.

I always needed effective people more than I had effective people who
needed to be noticed. I had to settle for lame lots of times.

Understand the Role of Human Resources in Your Career

If you look at them as a value-added partner, trust their expertise, cham-
pion their initiatives, and don’t just come to them when you need them,
human resources will do you no harm. Human resources, handled well,
in conjunction with senior management, aid in your career progression
internally. You still need to be at the helm of the activity, whether deal-
ing with human resources inside or outside your organization.
They are just people like you, human, compassionate, and typically
driven by fairness, but they have to follow the rules and regulations of the
company and adhere to state and federal guidelines. Their goal is to get
the best from their employees. If you buck the system the way the com-
pany needs to achieve results, you create a problem for them and there-
fore for yourself.

We are not the breeding ground for monsters [spoken by a human
resources executive].

So be very nice to human resources. Extend common courtesies:
Don’t be late for, cancel, or change meetings at the last minute or ignore
deadlines for material requested.
Don’t dismiss them or ignore them until you need them. They have
a very long memory.
Don’t count on them to pull you up from above or push you up from
below. Theirs is a different role.

I never wanted to make money just for money, I needed to learn.
I was a project manager for the space flight program at LTV. It was a
powerful and great job. There were project engineers at my level, but