Stuck between mediocrity and excellence

When you are someone that typically fits in anywhere, it's hard to accept the fact when you don't fit in somewhere. A lot of thoughts - not all positive - tend to run through your mind: It it me? What's wrong with me? Am I incompetent? How did I get through the past decade of my professional life?  Was I really someone at my old firm? I'm not so sure anymore. It's entirely my fault. I'm just not communicating effectively.  Oh my god. This is my life. How do I explain this to my kid and parents? Once you get past the point of having an anxiety attack and AFTER you let everything go, you'll begin to realize that it's not really you, it's the environment that you are in. Unfortunately, you may begin to reject the environment before it ultimately rejects you.  Here's the thing. You know - within 48 hours of starting a job - whether you fit or not. AS SOON AS YOU KNOW that you don't fit - you have 2 choices; try to make it work,...

A while back I wrote about the vision of  up and to the right. Ignore the fact that it could mean revenue over time -- to quote a former colleague of mine. (I can't take credit for that one). In a local consulting model, I think the following conditions exist.  Resources need / have to be generalists. A jack of all trades and master of none if you will.  Resources that have specific expertise need to have expertise that is industry agnostic. What I mean is that there are less opportunities to define an acquisition strategy for a telecommunications company than there are to write something in HTML 5.  The work will naturally leans towards being more execution oriented vs. adviser oriented -- unless you spend an inordinate time at the client getting to know its business from the inside. So now it gets interesting. What happens when the doer becomes a source of knowledge? What happens when the donkey gets a seat at the table? In other words, what happens wh...

I was watching a Minute with Maxwell where he talks about getting Unstuck . He says to get unstuck, you have to go back to where you are stuck. In other words, too many people try to run away. The irony is that the more you run, the more stuck you end up becoming.  One of the ways to get unstuck is to recognize the environment that you are in. For example, in Wreck-It Ralph when Felix and Calhoun were stuck in the Nesquik sand, instead of trying to jump out - which only accelerated their descent - they recognized that the Laffy Taffy could save them and worked the system, no matter how painful it was. From experience, there is nothing to be gained from fighting the system. In the words of one of my favorite people / characters, The Rock,  Don't do what I didn't do. Recognize the environment. Work within that structure. Don't try and fight it. Find experiences that improve your reputation or brand. If any of that feels wrong, then it's probably time to make that ...