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WWW.ORGSTHATMATTER.COM                                         WHAT REALLY MATTERS FOR YOUNG PROFESSIONALS 
 




                                       How to get started with two practices to accelerate your career!  
                                                                 GARY RYAN 
    i                       ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009    www.orgsthatmatter.com 
     
What Really Matters For Young Professionals – How to get started with two practices to accelerate your career!
    by Gary Ryan

    Published by Organisations That Matter Pty Ltd

    Level 8, 350 Collins Street

    Melbourne, Victoria 3166

    AUSTRALIA

    Phone +61 3 8676 0637

    E-mail: gary@orgsthatmatter.com



    Copyright © 2009 Gary Ryan, Organisations That Matter®

    Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism, or review as permitted under the
    Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission from the
    publisher.

    All effort was made to render this ebook free from error and omission. However, the author, publisher, editor,
    their employees or agents shall not accept responsibility for injury, loss or damage to any person or body or
    organisation acting or refraining from such action as a result of material in this book, whether or not such injury,
    loss or damage is in any way due to any negligent act or omission, breach of duty, or default on the part of the
    author, publisher, editor or their employees or agents.




    i                       ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009    www.orgsthatmatter.com 
     
 
                                                          

    Who should read this ebook?
    Congratulations! You already have an advantage over your career competitors because
    you have chosen to read this ebook. You are just over 20 pages away from commencing a
    journey that WILL enhance your employability which, in turn, WILL accelerate your career
    progresses. However, this FREE ebook does come with a catch. The two practices shared
    within the following pages of this FREE ebook are not just for reading. They are for
    DOING. Even if you decide not to read the more comprehensive ‘What Really Matters For
    Young Professionals – How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career!’, you will
    benefit from this short, FREE ebook.

    Think about what an increased speed of career advancement means for you. Think about
    the money, the greater control over your time, the capacity to live more of the lifestyle
 
    that you desire. If you really want those things, then read this ebook AND ‘do’ this ebook.

    The only reason why the practices in this FREE ebook may seem hard to do is because
    many people DON’T do them. When you try the practices and if people say, “Oh, that
    won’t work!”, take it as a complement and a challenge. The two practices outlined in this
    FREE ebook work precisely because many other people don’t DO them. Take the time to
    put them into practice and master them; you won’t regret it.



            ii                       ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009    www.orgsthatmatter.com 
 
                                                      
Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers has suggested that successful people have spent
10,000 hours of practice mastering their talents. That seems like a lot of practice, doesn’t
it! The secret for these people is that they have sought out and found many, many
OPPORTUNITIES to practice. They seek out ways to learn and develop. They don’t sit back
and wait for opportunities to come to them. In fact, they CREATE opportunities to
practice, just like you can. Practice, of course, involves making mistakes. Making mistakes
equals an opportunity to learn. Without practice you don’t make mistakes, and without
mistakes you don’t learn, and without learning, your career will get, well, stuck! You know
this is true. Just like a gymnast falls off the high bar when attempting their first
somersault, or a child falls of a bike when riding without training wheels for the first time
or you spell a word incorrectly in your first spelling contest, mistakes are important for our
learning.

However, a HUGE benefit of this ebook is that each of the two practices provided include
step by step approaches to minimise your mistakes. I’m not suggesting that you won’t
make any mistakes, but I am suggesting that if you do they will be more strategic. That
is, the lessons that you’ll learn from making mistakes when implementing the two
practices will enhance your understanding of the strategies so that you will, in fact,
master them more quickly. As you master the two practices more quickly, your career will
progress more quickly in the direction that you want it to go. Later, you may decide to


        iii                       ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009    www.orgsthatmatter.com 
 
                                                     
learn the other 13 practices which will exponentially enhance your employability and
career prospects.

In this context, this FREE ebook has been designed for people who are early in their
careers and may have less than four years work experience. As a relatively recent entrant
to the world of employment many opportunities are likely to present themselves to you.


Since 2002 I have been providing development services for Young Professionals. While
technology and our world have changed over that time, a number of core concepts and
practices have remained important for career advancement. This FREE ebook includes two
of the 15 of the most important practices that you can use to enhance your employability
over the first few years of your career. The extra 13 strategies are included in the ebook
‘What Really Matters For Young Professionals – How to master 15 practices to accelerate
your career!’.


My intention is to help you to make the best of your early years in employment. This
ebook along with our e-learning programs is one way to ensure that you leverage your
development so that you create the career(s) that you desire. For information regarding
our e-learning programs, please visit Organisations That Matter.




        iv                       ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009    www.orgsthatmatter.com 
 
                                                     
Both chapters are relatively short and contain explicit strategies and advice with regard to
answering the question, “How do I...?”.


The sooner that you start to adopt and action the two practices outlined in this book, the
sooner you will enhance your capacity to create the career that you desire. So, I
encourage you to start now; don’t delay your development for one second longer!




This FREE ebook supports a series of ebooks that include:

What Really Matters For Undergraduate Students
How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career!

What Really Matters For Post-Graduate Students
How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career!

What Really Matters For Young Professionals
How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career!

What Really Matters For Aspiring Organisational Leaders
How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career!




        v                       ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009    www.orgsthatmatter.com 
 
                                                     

Thank You
Thank you for downloading this ebook. I know that you will receive a lot of value from it.

Please respect our copyright. This means that you have our permission to copy and share
this ebook, providing that you do not change it in any way. Encourage others to download
it as well.

Finally, I am always eager to hear from you regarding the benefits that you have received
from reading this ebook, what you think could be improved and what strategies you
believe could be included in our next edition of the full version of this ebook, What Really
Matters For Young Professionals – How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career!.

Enjoy!
Gary Ryan

 




        vi                       ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009    www.orgsthatmatter.com 
 
                                                                                
Table of Contents 

How to leverage your employability skills for career success ............................................................................ 1 
   Ten Skills to Enhance Your Employability and career success ....................................................................... 2 
Practice No.1: Discover how to own your organisation’s values  ...................................................................... 5 
                                                             .
Practice No.2: Discover how what you think affects what you see ............................................................... 12 
   Seven questions about work based mental models ......................................................................................... 17 
Final Thoughts  .................................................................................................................................................................... 20 
              .
What Really Matters For Young Professionals – How to master 15 practices to accelerate your
career! .................................................................................................................................................................................... 21 
About Gary Ryan ................................................................................................................................................................ 23 
Bonus Offer! ............................................................................................................................................................................. 24 




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                              How to leverage your employability skills for career success
                              Employability skills are a range of generic skills that, irrespective of your technical
  With more and more          expertise are considered by employers to be critical skills for high level performance.
 people throughout the
                              Employability skills are also known as 'transferable skills', 'employee attributes' and/or
world gaining academic
qualifications, the point     'key competencies'. Some universities also use the term, ‘graduate attributes’. The level
 for differentiation and      of expertise that you are expected to have in relation to these skills is related to the level
 individual competitive
                              of the job for which you are applying or striving to achieve. As an example the level of
 advantage stems from
    how a person has          communication skills expected of a prospective CEO are different to those of a part time
  continued to develop        supermarket check-out operator.
their employability skills 
                              With more and more people throughout the world gaining academic qualifications, the
                              point for differentiation and individual competitive advantage stems from how a person
                              has continued to develop their employability skills. Some people believe that it is
                              important to develop their employability skills so that they can obtain a job. Once they
                              have a job, then they believe that they no longer have to worry about developing these
                              skills. This thinking is flawed. Jobs are no longer guaranteed for life and employees must
                              continue to develop their employability skills if they wish to remain employable (hence the
                              term, 'employability skills'). Seeking opportunities through on-the-job learning or through
                              training and development experiences are critical to maintaining high employability while
                              you have a job.


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    Ten Skills to Enhance Your Employability and career success

    1     Teamwork: The ability to work in a team

    2     Communication: The ability to effectively communicate with a wide variety of people

    3     Problem solving: The ability to solve problems both individually and in the context of a team

    4     Leadership: The ability to positively influence and lead other people in the achievement of
          organisational objectives

    5     Planning & organisation: The ability to effectively manage your time and the resources that
          are available to you

    6     Life-long learning: The ability to demonstrate on the job learning and your approach to life-
          long learning

    7     Vision: Having a personal vision and understanding how your work integrates with the
          achievement of your vision

    8     Numeracy: The ability to understand and use numbers for business purposes, including the
          capacity to create and read graphs
 
    9     Self-management: The ability for self-management across a wide variety of life activities

    10 Service excellence: The ability to provide high levels of service in the way that you perform
          your work




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                            The benefit of maintaining a high level of employability while having a job, is critical from
                            the perspective of increasing your chances for promotion. Also, a high level of
   I have formed a view     employability correlates with high performance. High performance is one of the most valid
   that there is never a
situation where what you    job security strategies that an employee can implement. While there are no guarantees in
are doing or have done is   this world, an assumption that I am comfortable making is that if all things are equal and
        'just a job'        an organisation has an equal choice between letting a poor performer or a high performer
                            go, the poor performer will nearly always be asked to leave first.



                            Consciously developing employability skills is an important process that many people
                            forget to do. In our work with young professionals we often hear them refer to their part
                            time experiences like this, "I was just an administration assistant", or, "I just worked at a
                            gas     station."      Having       performed         many       menial   jobs    throughout       my   youth   and
                            undergraduate studies, I have formed a view that there is never a situation where what
                            you are doing or have done is 'just a job'. All jobs create the opportunity in some way,
                            even if only small, to develop employability skills. The same is true for full time
                            employment.

                            The two practices outlined in this FREE ebook are collectively unique. You will not find
                            these strategies packaged in this way for you anywhere else. Each strategy includes



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approaches that you may have heard about before but did not know how to put into
practice. Ultimately, this is an ebook that you should ‘do’ and not just ‘read’!




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Practice No.1: Discover how to own your organisation’s values

This chapter addresses concepts and strategies that relate to the following employability
skills:

          Self-management

          Vision

          Teamwork

These days most organisations have a set of organisational values. Sometimes they are
represented in the form of a Code of Conduct or in a statement regarding a set of
principles. Usually these values can be discovered on the organisation's website and in
various organisational publications. On occasion the values are physically displayed on the
walls of the corporate offices.



Having a set of existing organisational values can be very different to living a set of
organisational values. The difference lies in whether or not the people in the organisation
actually use the values in their day to day work. Organisations can significantly enhance
the use of their values by creating structures that support their day to day use.



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    Some examples include:

    Using the values as a basis for behavioural questions in an interview process

    Having systems to recognise people for behaving in alignment with the values

    Promoting people for their demonstrated alignment to the organisational values in hand
    with their technical abilities

    Exiting people from the organisation who demonstrate over time that they do not share
    the organisation's values



    Some examples include:

    1) The primary (elementary) school that my children attend have a set of values that exist
    under a ‘You can do it!’ slogan. These values are used every Monday at the school
    assembly as part of a recognition program for appropriate behaviour by the children.
    Often more than 20 students are publicly recognised for something that they did that
    demonstrated the schools ‘You can do it!’ slogan in practice. An added special touch to the
    awards which also provides extra meaning is that the student leaders read out the awards
    which have been written by their teachers. The structure that they follow is as follows,
    "This award goes to Johnny Brown for persistence. He worked really hard on his writing



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and kept trying until he got it correct." The award provides a concrete example of what is
meant by ‘Persistence’ which enables the students to develop a practical understanding of
how their school values work. I'm not sure, but I hope that the school uses these values
in their recruitment processes as well as in recognising the work and contribution of the
teachers.


2) A financial institution with whom we work has a clear set of organisational values and
each value has a very clear set of behaviours that demonstrate how the value should be
practiced. As an example, one of their values is, "We will be open and honest". Some of
the behaviours that support this value include, "We tell it like it is (no spin); we speak up
and we are open to other points of view" etc. etc. The benefit of having explicit behaviours
linked to each value is that they significantly enhance the shared understanding of what
the value means. Honesty can mean a lot of different things to different people, which is
why it is important to clarify what is meant by each value within your organisation.


3) A sporting team uses their values for feedback, both for administrators and the players
alike. Using the values and their supporting behaviours as the basis for the feedback,
team members go through a process where they are informed of the behaviours that they
should cease, commence and continue. (The context of the feedback is to help the person



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                             receiving the feedback to be the best that they can be to help the organisation achieve
                             the success it desires). A process such as this brings the values to life as people have to
...if you personally agree   consider their real day to day behaviour in the context of the organisation's values.
 with your organisation's
  values, then it is your
                             My experience is that too often an organisation does have a set of values, but the people
personal responsibility to
  do everything that you     within the organisation do not take personal responsibility for them. Instead, the people
     can to support the      defer responsibility for the values to 'the organisation' (a 'thing') or to the most senior
values through your own
                             people in the organisation. Personally I have never understood why someone would defer
         behaviour 
                             or deflect responsibility for the values especially when, after reading them, most people
                             seem to say something like, "Oh yes, I can live with these values." I completely
                             understand that it is more difficult when an organisation hasn't created a set of structures
                             to support their values for the people in the organisation to keep them alive, but it still
                             doesn't explain why some people say the following, "Oh, such and such doesn't
                             demonstrate the values, so the values are a load of crap, which is why I don't do them
                             either!". My suggestion is that if you personally agree with your organisation's values,
                             then it is your personal responsibility to do everything that you can to support the values
                             through your own behaviour.



                             So what might be a personal structure that you could put in place to help you bring your


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    organisation's values to life? Many of you may be familiar with the interview preparation
    technique known as the STAR storytelling technique that is fully described in the ebook
    ‘Accelerating Careers For Young Professionals – How to master 15 practices that really
    matter!’. The same storytelling technique can be used for your organisational values. Take
    each value and /or the behaviours associated with each value and ask yourself, "What is a
    genuine STAR story of mine that demonstrates this value in use?". If you had a 'bank' of
    stories that you had collected over time, imagine your confidence when going into an
    interview for a promotion.

    Interestingly, the very reason why you may be going in for the interview in the first place
    may be that others may have witnessed your support of the organisation's values over
    time which may have been a significant contributing factor to you being identified for the
    promotion!


    If your organisation is serious about its values, and if you feel aligned to them, why
    wouldn't you prepare such examples? Imagine when you are being interviewed for an
    internal promotion. The likelihood is that your possible promotion will be more
    significantly linked to your overall organisational alignment than your technical skills
    alone. It is unlikely that you would be interviewed if your technical skills weren't
    appropriate for the promotion, which leaves your capacity to demonstrate your


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                             organisational alignment as the most significant factor that will enable you to stand out
                             from everyone else who is going for the job.
 ...if you agree with your
organisation's values and    Finally and possibly most importantly, if you agree with your organisation's values and
      you take personal
                             you take personal responsibility for them, you will be increasing your capacity to make the
  responsibility for them,
   you will be increasing    right decisions at the right time for the right reasons in your day to day work. This can
   your capacity to make     also significantly enhance your happiness at work. You will have a high degree of clarity
the right decisions at the
                             about why you do what you do. While your clarity will continually evolve with your
  right time for the right
           reasons           practical understanding of the values in action, the outcomes may include everything from
                             increased happiness at work to job promotions.


                             Implementing this practice is a very simple way to stand out from the crowd.
                             Having your own, personal stories regarding how you live your organisation’s
                             values is downright simple, yet very few people do it because they think that the
                             values are owned by the executives of the organisation. Don’t be like everyone
                             else. Be different. Be yourself. If you agree with your organisation’s values then
                             build up a ‘story bank’ of how you have used your organisation’s values in your
                             day to day decisions. Influential people will recognise your alignment with your




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organisation. In turn, this will increase your employability and more career
opportunities will open up to you.




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                           Practice No.2: Discover how what you think affects what you see

Like many theories, our    This chapter addresses concepts and strategies that relate to the following employability
mental models are useful   skills:
 in some circumstances
    and not in others                Self-management

                                     Vision

                                     Life-long learning

                                     Leadership

                                     Problem solving

                           Mental models are our theories about how we believe the world works. They affect
                           everything from our personal relationships to the way we behave at work and the future
                           that we believe that we can create for ourselves. Mental models are extremely powerful
                           because they affect the way we behave. Sometimes they can cause us to behave in ways
                           that are incongruent with our personal values, causing considerable internal misalignment.


                           Many of the challenges of working with our mental models are that they are sub-
                           conscious, i.e. we don't even know that we have them. Another significant and related



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                            challenge is that we need our mental models to help us to navigate our way through the
                            complex world that we live in. Deep seated, our mental models develop over time and
...the question regarding   come from our cultures, our family experiences, our religious beliefs, our education and
our mental models is not
                            our general life experiences. . Just like the theory, "What goes up, must come down" is
whether they are right or
 wrong; it is whether or    useful on the planet earth, it isn't useful out in space. In space, what goes up just keeps
    not they are useful     on going!



                            So the question regarding our mental models is not whether they are right or wrong; it is
                            whether or not they are useful in helping us achieve whatever it is that we are trying to
                            achieve.


                            To illustrate the power of mental models I will use a metaphor. Just like a video camera
                            can record events from a single perspective, our eyes and ears can also act like a video
                            recorder. Our personal video recorder is controlled by our mental models. In other words,
                            our mental models tell our video camera what to see, what to ignore, what to zoom in on
                            and what to zoom out on. Our mental models can even cause our video recorders to use
                            an on-the-spot editing function - we can actually add things in and take things out if what
                            we are seeing doesn't fit with our mental models.




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    An example that I have used many times involves P plate drivers (In Australia
    probationary car drivers have to display a ‘P’ on their car so that all other drivers know
    that they have only recently obtained their driving license). Imagine if a person held a
    mental model that all P Plate drivers were terrible drivers. If we were able to 'download'
    that person's video footage after they had driven to work, what images of P Plate drivers
    do you think that we would see (just like you would see on one of the screens in a TV
    studio)? Having asked this question many times with the people with whom I have
    worked, their responses are regularly:



    - talking on their mobile phone while driving

    - text messaging while driving
 
    - tailgating

    - changing lanes without indicating

    - speeding etc.




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Quite literally the person who held such a mental model would not see any good
behaviour by the P Platers.

Let's now look at a different scene. The person with the mental model that all P Plate
drivers are terrible drivers is leaving a sporting event that had a capacity crowd. The car
park is full and everyone is trying to leave at the same time. A P Plater happens to 'let this
person in' so that they can leave the car park ahead of the P Plater. What video footage
do we believe that we would now see if we were able to download it from the person who
holds the mental model that all P Platers are terrible drivers? Regular responses that I
have received to this question over time include:

    •   The P Plater's car stalled so he/she didn't let me in, I took the initiative and took the
        space when it was available!
    •   The P Plater was too busy text messaging so I took the space when it became
        available!
    •   The P Plater had turned around to talk to his/her friends and created a space in
        front of him/her, so I took it!


Notice that these answers do not recognise the fact that the P Plater 'let them in'.




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                            If the person did believe that they had been 'let in' instead of having taken the space (as
                            indicated by the responses above), what do we think we might NOT see on the person's
We see what we want to
                            video footage of the incident?
see, not necessarily what
is actually there 
                            A very fast response that I usually hear in response to this question is, "The P plate on the
                            person's car."


                            Quite literally the P Plate may disappear from the person's footage because it does not
                            match with their mental model. This is very powerful.


                            This example demonstrates the power of mental models. They can be so powerful that we
                            literally do not see things even if they are really there. This highlights the capacity for our
                            mental models to be flawed. However, many people do not believe that their mental
                            models could be flawed. Instead they believe that their mental models are not only 100%
                            accurate reflections of reality, but everyone else should also hold their mental models.


                            People have mental models about their own race, other races, their own religion and other
                            religions, etc. etc.. Mental models, when shared can even be used to create support for
                            countries to go to war.




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    In terms of a workplace it is critical that we try to increase our awareness of our mental
    models. As many of our mental models are sub-conscious it can take some time to
    uncover what we really believe about a workplace.
    Seven questions to help you to raise your awareness of work-based mental models
    include:

    Seven questions about work based mental models
    1   What is the most important department in your organisation?

    2   When an opportunity is presented to you that involves doing more work or work at a higher
        level, what is the first question that you ask?

    3   What size office should a senior manager have?

    4   Should specific car parks be available for certain staff members, and if so, who should get
        them?

    5   Who is responsible for the performance of the team within which you work?

    6   If you were a manager and you were asked a question and you did not know the answer, what
        would be your response?

    7   If you ask your manager a question and they don't know the answer to your question (but you
        think that they should know the answer given the fact that they are a manager), what would
        you think about the competence level of the manager?




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                           Your answers to the questions above will provide some insight into your own mental
                           models. Once you discover a mental model it is worth asking yourself, "Why do I think
     In terms of high      that?" five times in a row (This is known as the Five Whys tool). Eventually your answer to
   performance ... it is
                           the last “Why?" question may reveal your sub-conscious mental model. While this can be
   better to discover a
flawed mental model so     hard work it is very useful. You may discover that on some issues your mental models are
    that you have the      flawed.
 opportunity to adopt a
more useful one, than to   The problem with flawed mental models is that they can get you to choose information
remain ignorant of why
                           that fits with your mental model. This causes you to quickly jump to conclusions that are,
  you believe what you
          believe          in fact, inaccurate (in ‘Accelerating Careers For Young Professionals – How to master 15
                           practices that really matter!, see Practice No.10: Slow Yourself Down From Jumping to
                           Conclusions). You may then take action based on a flawed mental model. Such action can
                           often make the situation that you are experiencing worse. For example, I once said to a
                           team member when I was a young manager, "Don't bring me problems unless you have
                           solutions to them." Problems stopped coming to me. But they weren't being solved either
                           - the staff just started hiding things from me because I had effectively told them that I
                           didn't want to know about their problems if they didn't already have a solution to them.
                           How silly was that! It wasn't that the problems no longer existed I had just made it even
                           more difficult for the team members to raise them with me.




                           18                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009       www.orgsthatmatter.com  
What Really Matters for Young Professionals
                                                                                                        
 
In terms of high performance, both on a personal level and in the context of an
organisation, it is better to discover a flawed mental model so that you have the
opportunity to adopt a more useful one, than to remain ignorant of why you believe what
you believe.




Implementing this practice will enhance your employability by enabling you to
become more clear about what you think and why you think it. If you have some
flawed mental models then you will have an opportunity to change them. It is
difficult to change something when you don’t know what it is! In addition,
understanding your mental models will enhance your capacity to ensure that
your mental models, values and behaviour are all aligned. As you behave in an
aligned manner, people at work will notice. You will be respected and trusted.
Gaining respect and building trust are two terrific ways to enhance the speed of
your career progress. Try it out! You’ll discover just how accurate that statement
really is.




19                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009       www.orgsthatmatter.com  
What Really Matters for Young Professionals
                                                                                                        
 
Final Thoughts
Employability is often something that people only think about when they are either looking
for a job, or trying to get a promotion. Often, the time when you recognise that you need
to develop your employability skills and/or to capture what you have done is too late to
take real advantage of the development that you have undertaken. Employability skills
development is an on-going, never-ending career pursuit.

Congratulations! Reading this FREE ebook is just one of the many activities that you can
do to enhance your employability and there are many more strategies that I will share
with you in upcoming ebooks and editions of this book to assist you on your journey.

I would love to hear about your challenges, case examples, successes and lessons from
trying to put into practice the two strategies that this ebook advocates. Please feel free to
email me directly at Gary@orgsthatmatter.com. I wish you the very best on your
continuous journey of creating the career that you desire.




20                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009       www.orgsthatmatter.com  
What Really Matters for Young Professionals
                                                                                                        
 
What Really Matters For Young Professionals – How to master 15
practices to accelerate your career!
The following 15 practices are included in the ebook:

Practice No.1: Learn how to capture your stories

Practice No.2: Identify your personal values

* Practice No.3: Discover how to own your Organisation’s values

* Practice No.4: Discover how what you think affects what you see

Practice No.5: How lead by ‘Living’ your values

Practice No.6: How to create great teams by developing groundrules

Practice No.7: Learn to respect organisational ‘Community Spaces’

Practice No.8: Develop your understanding of systems thinking

Practice No.9: Discover wow ‘Structure drives behaviour’

Practice No.10: Learn how to slow yourself down from jumping to conclusions

Practice No.11: How to effectively communicate important messages



21                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009       www.orgsthatmatter.com  
What Really Matters for Young Professionals
                                                                                                        
 
Practice No.12: Recruit mentors

Practice No.13: Develop a simple approach to service excellence

Practice No.14: Follow Dee Hock’s ‘Servant Leadership’ example

Practice No.15: Discover four quadrants to better manage your time!

*These two practices are included in the FREE ebook




22                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009       www.orgsthatmatter.com  
What Really Matters for Young Professionals
                                                                                                            
     

    About Gary Ryan
    Gary Ryan is a consultant, author and speaker who helps organisations, organisational
    leaders, graduate employees, graduate students and undergraduate students to be the
    very best that they can be. He is passionate about helping organisations to matter to their
    people; their stakeholders and customers; their community and their environment.

    Through helping employers align what they say with what they do, as well as helping
    current and future employees do likewise, Gary believes that he really can help
    organisations matter.

    Holding several degrees including a Bachelor of Education in Physical Education (1994), a
    Graduate Diploma in Human Resource Management (2002) and a Master of Management
    (2004), Gary is currently completing a Doctor of Business Administration program at
    Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. The more educated that he has become, the
    greater the gap between theory and practice he has observed. One of the reasons for
    founding Organisations That Matter with Dr Andrew O’Brien was to close this gap. The
    intention of this book is to do likewise.

    Married with four children Gary also runs marathons to maintain his health and fitness.




    23                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009       www.orgsthatmatter.com  
What Really Matters for Young Professionals
                                                                                                            
     
    Bonus Offer! 




    The first 20 people to join The Organisations That Matter Learning Network
    (http://studentsthatmatter.ning.com) will receive a FREE 15 minute Skype
    Mentoring Session with Gary Ryan to learn how to Capture Your Career
    Stories.



    Enter Promotion Code “otm2009CAPTURE” when joining and Gary Ryan will
    contact you to arrange your Skype Mentoring Session valued at AUS$100.
 
    You must be available to conduct your Skype Mentoring Session using Skype
    by January 31st 2010 for this offer to be valid.

    To take advantage of this limited offer join The Organisations That Matter
    Learning Network (http://studentsthatmatter.ning.com) NOW!




    24                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009       www.orgsthatmatter.com  

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What Really Matters For Young Professionals - How to get started with two practices to accelerate your career! (eBook)

  • 1.     WWW.ORGSTHATMATTER.COM  WHAT REALLY MATTERS FOR YOUNG PROFESSIONALS    How to get started with two practices to accelerate your career!   GARY RYAN  i                       ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009  www.orgsthatmatter.com   
  • 2. What Really Matters For Young Professionals – How to get started with two practices to accelerate your career! by Gary Ryan Published by Organisations That Matter Pty Ltd Level 8, 350 Collins Street Melbourne, Victoria 3166 AUSTRALIA Phone +61 3 8676 0637 E-mail: gary@orgsthatmatter.com Copyright © 2009 Gary Ryan, Organisations That Matter® Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism, or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission from the publisher. All effort was made to render this ebook free from error and omission. However, the author, publisher, editor, their employees or agents shall not accept responsibility for injury, loss or damage to any person or body or organisation acting or refraining from such action as a result of material in this book, whether or not such injury, loss or damage is in any way due to any negligent act or omission, breach of duty, or default on the part of the   author, publisher, editor or their employees or agents. i                       ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009  www.orgsthatmatter.com   
  • 3.        Who should read this ebook? Congratulations! You already have an advantage over your career competitors because you have chosen to read this ebook. You are just over 20 pages away from commencing a journey that WILL enhance your employability which, in turn, WILL accelerate your career progresses. However, this FREE ebook does come with a catch. The two practices shared within the following pages of this FREE ebook are not just for reading. They are for DOING. Even if you decide not to read the more comprehensive ‘What Really Matters For Young Professionals – How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career!’, you will benefit from this short, FREE ebook. Think about what an increased speed of career advancement means for you. Think about the money, the greater control over your time, the capacity to live more of the lifestyle   that you desire. If you really want those things, then read this ebook AND ‘do’ this ebook. The only reason why the practices in this FREE ebook may seem hard to do is because many people DON’T do them. When you try the practices and if people say, “Oh, that won’t work!”, take it as a complement and a challenge. The two practices outlined in this FREE ebook work precisely because many other people don’t DO them. Take the time to put them into practice and master them; you won’t regret it. ii                       ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009  www.orgsthatmatter.com 
  • 4.        Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers has suggested that successful people have spent 10,000 hours of practice mastering their talents. That seems like a lot of practice, doesn’t it! The secret for these people is that they have sought out and found many, many OPPORTUNITIES to practice. They seek out ways to learn and develop. They don’t sit back and wait for opportunities to come to them. In fact, they CREATE opportunities to practice, just like you can. Practice, of course, involves making mistakes. Making mistakes equals an opportunity to learn. Without practice you don’t make mistakes, and without mistakes you don’t learn, and without learning, your career will get, well, stuck! You know this is true. Just like a gymnast falls off the high bar when attempting their first somersault, or a child falls of a bike when riding without training wheels for the first time or you spell a word incorrectly in your first spelling contest, mistakes are important for our learning. However, a HUGE benefit of this ebook is that each of the two practices provided include step by step approaches to minimise your mistakes. I’m not suggesting that you won’t make any mistakes, but I am suggesting that if you do they will be more strategic. That is, the lessons that you’ll learn from making mistakes when implementing the two practices will enhance your understanding of the strategies so that you will, in fact, master them more quickly. As you master the two practices more quickly, your career will progress more quickly in the direction that you want it to go. Later, you may decide to iii                       ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009  www.orgsthatmatter.com 
  • 5.        learn the other 13 practices which will exponentially enhance your employability and career prospects. In this context, this FREE ebook has been designed for people who are early in their careers and may have less than four years work experience. As a relatively recent entrant to the world of employment many opportunities are likely to present themselves to you. Since 2002 I have been providing development services for Young Professionals. While technology and our world have changed over that time, a number of core concepts and practices have remained important for career advancement. This FREE ebook includes two of the 15 of the most important practices that you can use to enhance your employability over the first few years of your career. The extra 13 strategies are included in the ebook ‘What Really Matters For Young Professionals – How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career!’. My intention is to help you to make the best of your early years in employment. This ebook along with our e-learning programs is one way to ensure that you leverage your development so that you create the career(s) that you desire. For information regarding our e-learning programs, please visit Organisations That Matter. iv                       ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009  www.orgsthatmatter.com 
  • 6.        Both chapters are relatively short and contain explicit strategies and advice with regard to answering the question, “How do I...?”. The sooner that you start to adopt and action the two practices outlined in this book, the sooner you will enhance your capacity to create the career that you desire. So, I encourage you to start now; don’t delay your development for one second longer! This FREE ebook supports a series of ebooks that include: What Really Matters For Undergraduate Students How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career! What Really Matters For Post-Graduate Students How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career! What Really Matters For Young Professionals How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career! What Really Matters For Aspiring Organisational Leaders How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career! v                       ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009  www.orgsthatmatter.com 
  • 7.        Thank You Thank you for downloading this ebook. I know that you will receive a lot of value from it. Please respect our copyright. This means that you have our permission to copy and share this ebook, providing that you do not change it in any way. Encourage others to download it as well. Finally, I am always eager to hear from you regarding the benefits that you have received from reading this ebook, what you think could be improved and what strategies you believe could be included in our next edition of the full version of this ebook, What Really Matters For Young Professionals – How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career!. Enjoy! Gary Ryan   vi                       ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009  www.orgsthatmatter.com 
  • 8.        Table of Contents  How to leverage your employability skills for career success ............................................................................ 1  Ten Skills to Enhance Your Employability and career success ....................................................................... 2  Practice No.1: Discover how to own your organisation’s values  ...................................................................... 5  . Practice No.2: Discover how what you think affects what you see ............................................................... 12  Seven questions about work based mental models ......................................................................................... 17  Final Thoughts  .................................................................................................................................................................... 20  . What Really Matters For Young Professionals – How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career! .................................................................................................................................................................................... 21  About Gary Ryan ................................................................................................................................................................ 23  Bonus Offer! ............................................................................................................................................................................. 24  vii                       ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009  www.orgsthatmatter.com 
  • 9. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     How to leverage your employability skills for career success Employability skills are a range of generic skills that, irrespective of your technical With more and more expertise are considered by employers to be critical skills for high level performance. people throughout the Employability skills are also known as 'transferable skills', 'employee attributes' and/or world gaining academic qualifications, the point 'key competencies'. Some universities also use the term, ‘graduate attributes’. The level for differentiation and of expertise that you are expected to have in relation to these skills is related to the level individual competitive of the job for which you are applying or striving to achieve. As an example the level of advantage stems from how a person has communication skills expected of a prospective CEO are different to those of a part time continued to develop supermarket check-out operator. their employability skills  With more and more people throughout the world gaining academic qualifications, the point for differentiation and individual competitive advantage stems from how a person has continued to develop their employability skills. Some people believe that it is important to develop their employability skills so that they can obtain a job. Once they have a job, then they believe that they no longer have to worry about developing these skills. This thinking is flawed. Jobs are no longer guaranteed for life and employees must continue to develop their employability skills if they wish to remain employable (hence the term, 'employability skills'). Seeking opportunities through on-the-job learning or through training and development experiences are critical to maintaining high employability while you have a job. 1                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 10. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     Ten Skills to Enhance Your Employability and career success 1 Teamwork: The ability to work in a team 2 Communication: The ability to effectively communicate with a wide variety of people 3 Problem solving: The ability to solve problems both individually and in the context of a team 4 Leadership: The ability to positively influence and lead other people in the achievement of organisational objectives 5 Planning & organisation: The ability to effectively manage your time and the resources that are available to you 6 Life-long learning: The ability to demonstrate on the job learning and your approach to life- long learning 7 Vision: Having a personal vision and understanding how your work integrates with the achievement of your vision 8 Numeracy: The ability to understand and use numbers for business purposes, including the capacity to create and read graphs   9 Self-management: The ability for self-management across a wide variety of life activities 10 Service excellence: The ability to provide high levels of service in the way that you perform your work 2                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 11. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     The benefit of maintaining a high level of employability while having a job, is critical from the perspective of increasing your chances for promotion. Also, a high level of I have formed a view employability correlates with high performance. High performance is one of the most valid that there is never a situation where what you job security strategies that an employee can implement. While there are no guarantees in are doing or have done is this world, an assumption that I am comfortable making is that if all things are equal and 'just a job'  an organisation has an equal choice between letting a poor performer or a high performer go, the poor performer will nearly always be asked to leave first. Consciously developing employability skills is an important process that many people forget to do. In our work with young professionals we often hear them refer to their part time experiences like this, "I was just an administration assistant", or, "I just worked at a gas station." Having performed many menial jobs throughout my youth and undergraduate studies, I have formed a view that there is never a situation where what you are doing or have done is 'just a job'. All jobs create the opportunity in some way, even if only small, to develop employability skills. The same is true for full time employment. The two practices outlined in this FREE ebook are collectively unique. You will not find these strategies packaged in this way for you anywhere else. Each strategy includes 3                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 12. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     approaches that you may have heard about before but did not know how to put into practice. Ultimately, this is an ebook that you should ‘do’ and not just ‘read’! 4                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 13. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     Practice No.1: Discover how to own your organisation’s values This chapter addresses concepts and strategies that relate to the following employability skills: Self-management Vision Teamwork These days most organisations have a set of organisational values. Sometimes they are represented in the form of a Code of Conduct or in a statement regarding a set of principles. Usually these values can be discovered on the organisation's website and in various organisational publications. On occasion the values are physically displayed on the walls of the corporate offices. Having a set of existing organisational values can be very different to living a set of organisational values. The difference lies in whether or not the people in the organisation actually use the values in their day to day work. Organisations can significantly enhance the use of their values by creating structures that support their day to day use. 5                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 14. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     Some examples include: Using the values as a basis for behavioural questions in an interview process Having systems to recognise people for behaving in alignment with the values Promoting people for their demonstrated alignment to the organisational values in hand with their technical abilities Exiting people from the organisation who demonstrate over time that they do not share the organisation's values Some examples include:   1) The primary (elementary) school that my children attend have a set of values that exist under a ‘You can do it!’ slogan. These values are used every Monday at the school assembly as part of a recognition program for appropriate behaviour by the children. Often more than 20 students are publicly recognised for something that they did that demonstrated the schools ‘You can do it!’ slogan in practice. An added special touch to the awards which also provides extra meaning is that the student leaders read out the awards which have been written by their teachers. The structure that they follow is as follows, "This award goes to Johnny Brown for persistence. He worked really hard on his writing 6                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 15. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     and kept trying until he got it correct." The award provides a concrete example of what is meant by ‘Persistence’ which enables the students to develop a practical understanding of how their school values work. I'm not sure, but I hope that the school uses these values in their recruitment processes as well as in recognising the work and contribution of the teachers. 2) A financial institution with whom we work has a clear set of organisational values and each value has a very clear set of behaviours that demonstrate how the value should be practiced. As an example, one of their values is, "We will be open and honest". Some of the behaviours that support this value include, "We tell it like it is (no spin); we speak up and we are open to other points of view" etc. etc. The benefit of having explicit behaviours linked to each value is that they significantly enhance the shared understanding of what the value means. Honesty can mean a lot of different things to different people, which is why it is important to clarify what is meant by each value within your organisation. 3) A sporting team uses their values for feedback, both for administrators and the players alike. Using the values and their supporting behaviours as the basis for the feedback, team members go through a process where they are informed of the behaviours that they should cease, commence and continue. (The context of the feedback is to help the person 7                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 16. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     receiving the feedback to be the best that they can be to help the organisation achieve the success it desires). A process such as this brings the values to life as people have to ...if you personally agree consider their real day to day behaviour in the context of the organisation's values. with your organisation's values, then it is your My experience is that too often an organisation does have a set of values, but the people personal responsibility to do everything that you within the organisation do not take personal responsibility for them. Instead, the people can to support the defer responsibility for the values to 'the organisation' (a 'thing') or to the most senior values through your own people in the organisation. Personally I have never understood why someone would defer behaviour  or deflect responsibility for the values especially when, after reading them, most people seem to say something like, "Oh yes, I can live with these values." I completely understand that it is more difficult when an organisation hasn't created a set of structures to support their values for the people in the organisation to keep them alive, but it still doesn't explain why some people say the following, "Oh, such and such doesn't demonstrate the values, so the values are a load of crap, which is why I don't do them either!". My suggestion is that if you personally agree with your organisation's values, then it is your personal responsibility to do everything that you can to support the values through your own behaviour. So what might be a personal structure that you could put in place to help you bring your 8                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 17. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     organisation's values to life? Many of you may be familiar with the interview preparation technique known as the STAR storytelling technique that is fully described in the ebook ‘Accelerating Careers For Young Professionals – How to master 15 practices that really matter!’. The same storytelling technique can be used for your organisational values. Take each value and /or the behaviours associated with each value and ask yourself, "What is a genuine STAR story of mine that demonstrates this value in use?". If you had a 'bank' of stories that you had collected over time, imagine your confidence when going into an interview for a promotion. Interestingly, the very reason why you may be going in for the interview in the first place may be that others may have witnessed your support of the organisation's values over   time which may have been a significant contributing factor to you being identified for the promotion! If your organisation is serious about its values, and if you feel aligned to them, why wouldn't you prepare such examples? Imagine when you are being interviewed for an internal promotion. The likelihood is that your possible promotion will be more significantly linked to your overall organisational alignment than your technical skills alone. It is unlikely that you would be interviewed if your technical skills weren't appropriate for the promotion, which leaves your capacity to demonstrate your 9                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 18. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     organisational alignment as the most significant factor that will enable you to stand out from everyone else who is going for the job. ...if you agree with your organisation's values and Finally and possibly most importantly, if you agree with your organisation's values and you take personal you take personal responsibility for them, you will be increasing your capacity to make the responsibility for them, you will be increasing right decisions at the right time for the right reasons in your day to day work. This can your capacity to make also significantly enhance your happiness at work. You will have a high degree of clarity the right decisions at the about why you do what you do. While your clarity will continually evolve with your right time for the right reasons  practical understanding of the values in action, the outcomes may include everything from increased happiness at work to job promotions. Implementing this practice is a very simple way to stand out from the crowd. Having your own, personal stories regarding how you live your organisation’s values is downright simple, yet very few people do it because they think that the values are owned by the executives of the organisation. Don’t be like everyone else. Be different. Be yourself. If you agree with your organisation’s values then build up a ‘story bank’ of how you have used your organisation’s values in your day to day decisions. Influential people will recognise your alignment with your 10                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 19. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     organisation. In turn, this will increase your employability and more career opportunities will open up to you. 11                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 20. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     Practice No.2: Discover how what you think affects what you see Like many theories, our This chapter addresses concepts and strategies that relate to the following employability mental models are useful skills: in some circumstances and not in others Self-management Vision Life-long learning Leadership Problem solving Mental models are our theories about how we believe the world works. They affect everything from our personal relationships to the way we behave at work and the future that we believe that we can create for ourselves. Mental models are extremely powerful because they affect the way we behave. Sometimes they can cause us to behave in ways that are incongruent with our personal values, causing considerable internal misalignment. Many of the challenges of working with our mental models are that they are sub- conscious, i.e. we don't even know that we have them. Another significant and related 12                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 21. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     challenge is that we need our mental models to help us to navigate our way through the complex world that we live in. Deep seated, our mental models develop over time and ...the question regarding come from our cultures, our family experiences, our religious beliefs, our education and our mental models is not our general life experiences. . Just like the theory, "What goes up, must come down" is whether they are right or wrong; it is whether or useful on the planet earth, it isn't useful out in space. In space, what goes up just keeps not they are useful on going! So the question regarding our mental models is not whether they are right or wrong; it is whether or not they are useful in helping us achieve whatever it is that we are trying to achieve. To illustrate the power of mental models I will use a metaphor. Just like a video camera can record events from a single perspective, our eyes and ears can also act like a video recorder. Our personal video recorder is controlled by our mental models. In other words, our mental models tell our video camera what to see, what to ignore, what to zoom in on and what to zoom out on. Our mental models can even cause our video recorders to use an on-the-spot editing function - we can actually add things in and take things out if what we are seeing doesn't fit with our mental models. 13                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 22. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     An example that I have used many times involves P plate drivers (In Australia probationary car drivers have to display a ‘P’ on their car so that all other drivers know that they have only recently obtained their driving license). Imagine if a person held a mental model that all P Plate drivers were terrible drivers. If we were able to 'download' that person's video footage after they had driven to work, what images of P Plate drivers do you think that we would see (just like you would see on one of the screens in a TV studio)? Having asked this question many times with the people with whom I have worked, their responses are regularly: - talking on their mobile phone while driving - text messaging while driving   - tailgating - changing lanes without indicating - speeding etc. 14                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 23. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     Quite literally the person who held such a mental model would not see any good behaviour by the P Platers. Let's now look at a different scene. The person with the mental model that all P Plate drivers are terrible drivers is leaving a sporting event that had a capacity crowd. The car park is full and everyone is trying to leave at the same time. A P Plater happens to 'let this person in' so that they can leave the car park ahead of the P Plater. What video footage do we believe that we would now see if we were able to download it from the person who holds the mental model that all P Platers are terrible drivers? Regular responses that I have received to this question over time include: • The P Plater's car stalled so he/she didn't let me in, I took the initiative and took the space when it was available! • The P Plater was too busy text messaging so I took the space when it became available! • The P Plater had turned around to talk to his/her friends and created a space in front of him/her, so I took it! Notice that these answers do not recognise the fact that the P Plater 'let them in'. 15                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 24. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     If the person did believe that they had been 'let in' instead of having taken the space (as indicated by the responses above), what do we think we might NOT see on the person's We see what we want to video footage of the incident? see, not necessarily what is actually there  A very fast response that I usually hear in response to this question is, "The P plate on the person's car." Quite literally the P Plate may disappear from the person's footage because it does not match with their mental model. This is very powerful. This example demonstrates the power of mental models. They can be so powerful that we literally do not see things even if they are really there. This highlights the capacity for our mental models to be flawed. However, many people do not believe that their mental models could be flawed. Instead they believe that their mental models are not only 100% accurate reflections of reality, but everyone else should also hold their mental models. People have mental models about their own race, other races, their own religion and other religions, etc. etc.. Mental models, when shared can even be used to create support for countries to go to war. 16                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 25. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     In terms of a workplace it is critical that we try to increase our awareness of our mental models. As many of our mental models are sub-conscious it can take some time to uncover what we really believe about a workplace. Seven questions to help you to raise your awareness of work-based mental models include: Seven questions about work based mental models 1 What is the most important department in your organisation? 2 When an opportunity is presented to you that involves doing more work or work at a higher level, what is the first question that you ask? 3 What size office should a senior manager have? 4 Should specific car parks be available for certain staff members, and if so, who should get them? 5 Who is responsible for the performance of the team within which you work? 6 If you were a manager and you were asked a question and you did not know the answer, what   would be your response? 7 If you ask your manager a question and they don't know the answer to your question (but you think that they should know the answer given the fact that they are a manager), what would you think about the competence level of the manager? 17                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 26. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     Your answers to the questions above will provide some insight into your own mental models. Once you discover a mental model it is worth asking yourself, "Why do I think In terms of high that?" five times in a row (This is known as the Five Whys tool). Eventually your answer to performance ... it is the last “Why?" question may reveal your sub-conscious mental model. While this can be better to discover a flawed mental model so hard work it is very useful. You may discover that on some issues your mental models are that you have the flawed. opportunity to adopt a more useful one, than to The problem with flawed mental models is that they can get you to choose information remain ignorant of why that fits with your mental model. This causes you to quickly jump to conclusions that are, you believe what you believe  in fact, inaccurate (in ‘Accelerating Careers For Young Professionals – How to master 15 practices that really matter!, see Practice No.10: Slow Yourself Down From Jumping to Conclusions). You may then take action based on a flawed mental model. Such action can often make the situation that you are experiencing worse. For example, I once said to a team member when I was a young manager, "Don't bring me problems unless you have solutions to them." Problems stopped coming to me. But they weren't being solved either - the staff just started hiding things from me because I had effectively told them that I didn't want to know about their problems if they didn't already have a solution to them. How silly was that! It wasn't that the problems no longer existed I had just made it even more difficult for the team members to raise them with me. 18                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 27. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     In terms of high performance, both on a personal level and in the context of an organisation, it is better to discover a flawed mental model so that you have the opportunity to adopt a more useful one, than to remain ignorant of why you believe what you believe. Implementing this practice will enhance your employability by enabling you to become more clear about what you think and why you think it. If you have some flawed mental models then you will have an opportunity to change them. It is difficult to change something when you don’t know what it is! In addition, understanding your mental models will enhance your capacity to ensure that your mental models, values and behaviour are all aligned. As you behave in an aligned manner, people at work will notice. You will be respected and trusted. Gaining respect and building trust are two terrific ways to enhance the speed of your career progress. Try it out! You’ll discover just how accurate that statement really is. 19                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 28. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     Final Thoughts Employability is often something that people only think about when they are either looking for a job, or trying to get a promotion. Often, the time when you recognise that you need to develop your employability skills and/or to capture what you have done is too late to take real advantage of the development that you have undertaken. Employability skills development is an on-going, never-ending career pursuit. Congratulations! Reading this FREE ebook is just one of the many activities that you can do to enhance your employability and there are many more strategies that I will share with you in upcoming ebooks and editions of this book to assist you on your journey. I would love to hear about your challenges, case examples, successes and lessons from trying to put into practice the two strategies that this ebook advocates. Please feel free to email me directly at Gary@orgsthatmatter.com. I wish you the very best on your continuous journey of creating the career that you desire. 20                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 29. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     What Really Matters For Young Professionals – How to master 15 practices to accelerate your career! The following 15 practices are included in the ebook: Practice No.1: Learn how to capture your stories Practice No.2: Identify your personal values * Practice No.3: Discover how to own your Organisation’s values * Practice No.4: Discover how what you think affects what you see Practice No.5: How lead by ‘Living’ your values Practice No.6: How to create great teams by developing groundrules Practice No.7: Learn to respect organisational ‘Community Spaces’ Practice No.8: Develop your understanding of systems thinking Practice No.9: Discover wow ‘Structure drives behaviour’ Practice No.10: Learn how to slow yourself down from jumping to conclusions Practice No.11: How to effectively communicate important messages 21                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 30. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     Practice No.12: Recruit mentors Practice No.13: Develop a simple approach to service excellence Practice No.14: Follow Dee Hock’s ‘Servant Leadership’ example Practice No.15: Discover four quadrants to better manage your time! *These two practices are included in the FREE ebook 22                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 31. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     About Gary Ryan Gary Ryan is a consultant, author and speaker who helps organisations, organisational leaders, graduate employees, graduate students and undergraduate students to be the very best that they can be. He is passionate about helping organisations to matter to their people; their stakeholders and customers; their community and their environment.   Through helping employers align what they say with what they do, as well as helping current and future employees do likewise, Gary believes that he really can help organisations matter. Holding several degrees including a Bachelor of Education in Physical Education (1994), a Graduate Diploma in Human Resource Management (2002) and a Master of Management (2004), Gary is currently completing a Doctor of Business Administration program at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. The more educated that he has become, the greater the gap between theory and practice he has observed. One of the reasons for founding Organisations That Matter with Dr Andrew O’Brien was to close this gap. The intention of this book is to do likewise. Married with four children Gary also runs marathons to maintain his health and fitness. 23                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com  
  • 32. What Really Matters for Young Professionals     Bonus Offer!  The first 20 people to join The Organisations That Matter Learning Network (http://studentsthatmatter.ning.com) will receive a FREE 15 minute Skype Mentoring Session with Gary Ryan to learn how to Capture Your Career Stories. Enter Promotion Code “otm2009CAPTURE” when joining and Gary Ryan will contact you to arrange your Skype Mentoring Session valued at AUS$100.   You must be available to conduct your Skype Mentoring Session using Skype by January 31st 2010 for this offer to be valid. To take advantage of this limited offer join The Organisations That Matter Learning Network (http://studentsthatmatter.ning.com) NOW! 24                         ©Copyright Organisations That Matter® 2009     www.orgsthatmatter.com