When I look back at where I began not-so-long ago, as an experienced pair of lab-hands who knew his way around tissue culture transfections and Northern and Western and Southern Blots and immunoprecipitations and routine cloning of genes, I wonder sometimes at the change between what I'm doing now and what I was doing 10 years ago. Then it was figuring out how to normalize my RT-PCR data (this was in the days before TaqMan); now it is figuring out how I'm going to push through a development project that has absolutely no resources (i.e. everyone is too swamped with work to get around to do work on it) and there are days that my Franklin Planner Dilbert pages are mysteriously prescient.
Having been a fan of the Franklin Covey system since the late 1980's (yes they were even popular then), I have found a surprising number of people in business at a great disadvantage - they think they can get by on their smarts (they are organic chemists or molecular biologists or geneticists or what-have-you) and good looks, rather than having a clear set of goals and a system by which they can get to where they want to go.
But the chasm remains - the transition from the bench to business. Looking back I see that this was something that I was evaluated for even before accepting the initial offer. How would I interact with customers? How would I handle their anger, their frustration, their problems? But in that first job, there was so much to learn, so many things to do, and so many people calling calling calling (I was in a call-center, handling on average 25 calls per day). I did well - very well, in fact - so that a wise manager kept up the pace and gave me larger and more interesting projects to work on. Thinking about it, it was that first manager that made a real difference as both a role model and as a mentor. He gave me the impetus to work hard - as hard as I ever have, although admittedly not as hard as during the last three months of my thesis - and the work was recognized, and was soon earning more than I thought I ever could.
Ahh, being able to earn a comforable living. Not being given a comfortable living, but being able to be rewarded in direct proportion to your contribution. Of course there were times I thought there were those who didn't work that hard but were very, very smart, and that their smarts could compensate. Years later I know better - at a certain level all the smarts and experience becomes equilibrated out, and it is an essentially even playing field. This is where people who can both work very hard and work very smart can stand out, and be rewarded accordingly.
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