Dangerous Advice

“If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic!”

Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited

When I received my job at Cisco in 2015, I was more than ecstatic, I was hyped. As a computer science major that never really enjoyed computers or science, I was eager to try my hand in the business world as an analyst.

I couldn’t wait to leverage the minimal marketing knowledge I gained during college to dramatically disrupt the way Cisco did business. I was expecting to be crunching numbers on ROI and building intense spreadsheets with a multitude of forecasting models.

I was quickly clotheslined by reality.

Learning the business world was like trying to tread water in the ocean. A myriad of acronyms like SaaS, PID, and IBP dragged me under while I attempted to fake that I even remotely knew Excel and PowerPoint.

Now, four years later, I’ve been fortunate with having great success at Cisco. And, to the up and coming hopeful, I wanted to share some knowledge.

The knowledge I want to share most likely isn’t typical; it’s not what you’ll hear from the speech at your graduation, and it’s also not what your mother would advise.

It’s not what your manager will inform you on the first day, nor is it what your mentor will instill in you.

The advice I’m about to give is dangerous and should only be accepted by those that are ready to explore the vast edges of where they believe they can go.

I’ve given this advice to every new hire that comes onboard, and I live it everyday. For that, I am often ridiculed.

The advice is this: Once you figure out how to start doing your job, stop doing your job and spend more time wondering.  

As Michael E. Gerber puts it, “The dreaming question, I call it. It’s the question that is at the heart of the work of an Entrepreneur. I wonder. I wonder. I wonder.”

You see, we were taught our whole lives that the way to get ahead is to simply put in the work—and you must. But too often I see peers working so hard without a thought of where they’re trying to go.

We’re hacking away with the axe at the tree, but we don’t know why we need the wood.

Why did you get into this job? Why are you here? For me, it was to make an impact and I can’t make an impact if I’m just chopping wood with a blindfold on.

I need to wonder.

I wonder how I could deliver a more delightful service to my team and stakeholders?  I wonder how I can reduce friction in my team? I wonder what hidden project out there would dazzle my customers?

The unfortunate reality is that new hires and old hires alike believe they were hired to do a job—it’s simply not true. Yes there is a job that you were immediately hired for today and you need to execute with excellence—but the future is uncertain.

The future could take a hard left and leave us looking at a world completely different than how we saw it yesterday.

Your real value and your real purpose is the unique combination of attributes that you bring to the table. It’s your life experiences, your passions, and your flaws; your dreams and ambitions, your rocky past, your uncertain present, and your hopeful future.

A lot of young folk believe being hired into a large company means you’ve become a cog in the machine—But you’re only a cog if you let yourself believe it.

Instead, own your own business—the business of you.

I always come back to this simple line: understand yourself and what you stand for. That’s your brand, and that’s how you show up.

For me, wondering and learning are so deeply part of my brand; yet it seems sitting idle and watching a training are often looked upon very poorly. Perhaps it’s because we over-glorify the worker bee.

The subtle brags about taking a call at 10PM, the, “I just had to work over this weekend,” complaints, and the, “I’ve been in back to back meetings all day”.  

Just to be clear, it’s not about choosing to execute versus dream, it’s understanding that there is a balance that needs to be struck. A dreamer without the execution is naïve, the executor without the dream is blind.

So, for the young early-in-career, if there’s one idea I hope you take with you: dare to wonder, dare to imagine, dare to dream.

Sure, you may miss a deadline and your boss may yell at you. But if you’re missing out on making the true impact only you can bring, then you’re not just doing your company a disservice, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

I told you, dangerous advice.