To have a
meaningful life, you need to have a meaningful purpose, a mission and an
environment where you can fulfill your mission. That means you need a mission
that is good, doable and needed.
My career
as a musician from age 14 to 31 allowed me to work my way through school and it
was just a fun way to earn money. After I graduated, I worked as a musician on
weekends to earn enough to let my wife stay home with the kids. Being a
musician had nothing to do with my “career” plans but it offered a fun balance
to the energy I invested in my early Personnel jobs
My primary
career from age 21 to present has been personnel work leading to become a
corporate personnel director and later as consultant to 45 mostly electronics
manufacturing companies in the Atlanta area.
If your
work isn’t fun, then you’re in the wrong job. The human body is self-healing
and adaptive and so is your brain that provides the engine to power your
life. Just as you pull your hand back
from a fire, you need to pull your life back from the danger of being in the
wrong job or the wrong place or the wrong team.
My mission
was to be a positive change agent. I
identified obvious needs and filled them. I wanted to do this in an
organization that had an obvious purpose that fulfilled specific valid needs.
I
concluded that manufacturing was at the top of the “food chain” and pursued a
management career. I never considered doing anything else.
I knew
that most companies would run their course and either fail or succeed in
continuing to sell products that continued to be in demand. I turned down lots
of jobs and left jobs after I had accomplished what I came there to do.
I never
took a job unless it offered the opportunity to accomplish things. I was
totally accomplishment oriented and curious to learn how everything
worked.
I looked
at each job to determine what they needed and if I got excited about the job,
the team and the place, I took it. I
followed my own interests. I wanted to
do certain things in a certain order. I wanted to improve the operations and
install solid structures, processes and practices in these organizations.
I was
“hands-on” and wrote my own medical plans, responded to discrimination
complaints, read the laws and wrote my own policies and documents and used
lawyers sparingly. I did everything that looked complicated or tricky myself
and set up the process. I didn’t
delegate these tasks until I had the process tight. I selected tests to give
employees and ensured that they had their copy of the results.
I was an
“impact” player. I focused on processes to find waste and eliminated it. I chased unions out of companies and
prevented them from entering companies.
I tightened up the personnel functions, created or enhanced positive
corporate cultures. I pushed to give
production and engineering the right tools. I handled regulatory compliance. I
worked on acquisitions and established foreign subsidiaries. I founded personnel organizations to get
necessary data and didn’t stay in my room. I served as a national officer for
ASPA (SHRM) and served on the board of the American Electronics Association. I
opened my own private consulting practice in 1993.
You don’t
have to be like me. I shared these specifics to give you a blueprint to
identify your own mission. If you can identify your skills, interests,
motivated abilities and aspirations, you can map out what you have done so far
and map out what you want to do next.
Successful people do what they love and turn work into fun.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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