The following snippet comes from the soon-to-be-wildly-popular career-comedy, How to Self-Destruct: Making the Least of What’s Left of Your Career (And What To Do if You Fail at Failing). Because what’s funnier than the typical career path?
Look for more ways to bring your career to a premature end–as well as surefire alternatives almost no one does–coming soon. In fact, copies will hopefully go on sale by the end of this month on my company website for mid-October delivery.
Here’s a quick self-destruction Q&A from the chapter, “Retiring in Position as a Senior Executive.”
I’d like to be irrelevant. How can I marginalize myself as an executive?
Stay humble.
While Jim Collins’ research shows that the strongest, most effective leaders are often those who demonstrate a combination of deep conviction and personal humility, a quick look around shows that no one willingly follows a humble leader when a good self-promoter is available.So focus on what you were hired to do, and let others worry about who gets credit for things that go right. Avoid political games at all costs, even if it means that someone else ultimately grabs the credit for your own work.
It may take a little longer than you’d like, but this high road definitely leads nowhere, which is exactly where you want to go. At worst, you’ll get a personal note from the CEO admiring your work ethic, reminding you of the fond days when he worked under you and wishing you well now that your red Swingline has been confiscated and you’ve been laid off.
Ask to have everything clarified.
What others look for in you at this level is your ability to handle strategic and political ambiguity. They want you to help them structure an otherwise confusing world, which requires you to know what to do without being told and to be able to successfully turn that knowledge into action.Therefore, ask for as much direction from as many people as you dare. With everyone looking to see how you handle ambiguity, your repeated requests for clarity will send a clear signal that you can’t
Focus on the minutest of details.
What possible value can a plan have if it has a typo in it? What could you ever learn from a book that offers seemingly conflicting advice? How much potential could you hope to find in a person whose tie does not quite match his suit?None, none, and none, obviously!
Picky, hypercritical, annoying. Wear these titles with pride. There is no better way to blind yourself to big ideas and new thinking than by wrapping yourself in an impenetrable cloak of administrivia.
Hire managers with great functional skills and glaring personality problems.
Stack your management team with subject matter experts who lack the leadership abilities to set direction, spot talent, motivate others to work, or communicate clearly. This should be enough to render both yourself and your entire department moot.
FYI: What are the alternatives? Here are a few hints…
On humility: Whether at the office, university, monastery, military base, or Thanksgiving table, there is no escape from politics. This is not because people are evil by nature. It’s because politics is the process of aligning personal and organizational priorities, and negotiating trade-offs when alignment proves impossible. Engage!
On getting clarification: Think proactively! Rather than ask for clarity, ask for feedback on ideas you bring to the table.
On detail-orientation: Stretch! Attention to detail is a factual problem-solving skill, like time management, basic math, and organization. Executive thinking requires a set of conceptual skills, including things like comfort with ambiguity, creativity, and ability to synthesize. Don’t use one’s factual abilities to judge one’s conceptual abilities; the two skill sets have little to do with one another.
On functional experts: Functional expertise is great but insufficient. Do you really want a leader who’s great at the nitty-gritty and nothing else? When you were on the front lines, did you really want your boss up your shorts on every line item of your work–or did you maybe think, “Doesn’t this guy have something better to do than the work I’m allegedly getting paid to do?” In fact, he does. He needs to obtain resources from other parts of the company; build customer relationships; recruit new team members; set direction; represent the team to the broader organization and the market… and generally engage in a set of full time activities that require social, political, and strategic skill sets… not functional ones.
