Getting to Next: Lessons to Help Take Your Career to the Next Level

GETTING TO

NEXT

Lessons to Help Take Your Career to the Next Level

PERSONAL ESSAYS, VOLUME I

Cash Nickerson

CNM PRESS

Copyright © 2015 by Cash Nickerson

Smashwords Edition

This book is dedicated to those lens shapers who cause me to see things differently; to see connections that I could not have made without their input and impact. It is a group too large to mention and I am not sure I even remember them all. But many are in this book and its essays. From Forrest Krutter, who taught me how to write a memo and advise clients, to the monk who explained the meaning of death. We all have these shapers in our lives, beginning first with our parents. I am so lucky to have had incredible parents, not by way of financial means, but by way of love and support. My father loved to make me think and while he is no longer physically with us, his questions and questioning still are. So here is to the lens shapers who affect how and what we see as we contemplate: What Next?

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CAREER BEGINNINGS

Beware the Bucket List of Life!

Six Learning Tips from a Six-Month-Old

A Value to Boredom in the Workplace

Finding Your Fortune: The 7 Career Phases

Unleash Your Back-to-School Mentality

FOR LEADERS AND FUTURE LEADERS

Why I Still Attend Summer Camp at 55

My Flight With a Monk

Let Us Fix It: Leaders, Start With Ourselves

The Only Resolution You Need for 2015

A Tribute To My First Mentor

TRENDS

Duck and Cover! Jobs, Innovation, and the Loss of Jobs

Get a Job! Finding the Hunter and Gatherer Within

Social Media and the Erosion of Compromise

Careers, Retirement, and Mortgages

REFLECTIONS

What I Learned From My 30th Law School Reunion

Who Invented the Wall

When We Leave the Home of the Brave

Ode to Bill McCabe

Ode to a High School Chum

Epilogue: Getting To Next

Acknowledgements

Biography

INTRODUCTION

In this era of longevity, I view myself as halfway through a planned 60-year career. The essays I have assembled here were written in 2014, during the 30th year of a career that has included positions as an in-house lawyer at one of the largest companies in the United States, Union Pacific Railroad, as well as a marketing executive and general manager for the same company. Other career choices have included an associate and then partner position at Jenner & Block. They’re a large Chicago-based law firm. I’ve invested ten years as an entrepreneur in the world of human resources and involved myself in the early dot-com days. Finally on my resume is an 11 plus-year tenure, helping to build one of the largest engineering and IT staffing firms in the United States, PDS Tech, Inc.

The collection of essays is designed around several key topics. In the first Career Beginnings, there are five essays—that while helpful to anyone at any stage—focus on the early years of one’s career. No matter where you are in your career path, these essays will help you think about beginnings. The next set of essays, For Leaders and Future Leaders, is helpful for those who aspire to lead, and those who are leading already. The Trends section focuses on social media and demographic tendencies that can encourage you to think about your career differently. And, finally, Reflections includes essays I wrote after a significant life event, such as the death of a friend or a visit to a thought-provoking part of the world.

I chose an essay format so that the advice is conveyed in a more conversational manner and can be read in small doses, at a leisurely pace. There are endless books about careers with do this and do that lists of exercises. While there is actionable advice in many of these essays, simply reading them for pleasure will result in change. You’ll be better off having absorbed their intended messages. You also may benefit from advice in the essays that I didn’t intend when I wrote them—like all reading, they are subject to interpretation. If you do find a nugget I didn’t mention, do drop me a note at [email protected]. I would love to hear from you.

Finally, you needn’t read these essays in any particular order. People ask me which are my favorites. I like them all, and they speak to me in different ways at different times. I hope these essays will inspire readers to get to the next level, and that you fondly recall them from your e-reader or the paperback version with a smile.

Cash Nickerson

Austin, Texas

February 2015

Beware the Bucket List of Life!

JUNE 16, 2014

If you are graduating from college this year, or have graduated recently, congratulations! As a country, we need more college graduates and we need to find a way to help young people complete their education. Our future as a country rides on it.

While graduation is seen as a celebration of achievement, I suggest you view it as a beginning. As a beginning, it is a first—one of many firsts you will encounter. And as you look for a job and start a new phase in life, you may be tempted to make checklists and bucket lists of everything you want to accomplish. However, I submit to you, that a life of check lists and bucket lists, while the popular way to live these days, is in fact, an empty life. Throw away your lists and start really living—learn how to breathe.

We live in a world where first is a religion if not an outright obsession. From the dawn of our personal awareness, our first everything is celebrated. Our first step, our first word, our first haircut, our first bath, our first shoes are recorded in scrapbooks and now in a variety of high-tech devices and online forums. In today’s era of social media, there are no private firsts, as Facebook has made scrapbookers out of most all of us. Your graduation, 33 years after mine, will be far better documented. I think I have a few pictures and a yearbook somewhere in a file called, Memorabilia.

The first worship process begins at a very young age with competitions on the athletic field or as school starts. You are supposed to come in first wearing your first pretty shorts and shoes on a soccer field that has just been re-sodded. Children achieving first place are rewarded with blue ribbons and tall trophies. For the rest of the participants? Perhaps they get a red or white ribbon or just a t-shirt that acknowledges they were present. But first is what matters.

And it does not end there, of course, as we celebrate our first love with every artist imaginable. Lyrics such as the first time ever I saw your face, it feels like the very first time, and on and on. The list celebrating the first time is endless.

There are many implications to the worship of firstness, not the least of which is the sense that firstness cannot be repeated. First impressions happen only once, by definition. How convenient. While the worship of firstness is not exclusive to the U.S., it is certainly perfected here. This is the consequence of being a relatively young country.

So what are the downsides of firstness? It tends to favor first achievements and