What does it mean to be successful? What is success itself in the context of the corporate world?
It goes without saying that there's neither a right answer to this question, nor a universe truth about success. Thus, everyone who is asked the above-mentioned question will give a different answer.
Taking into consideration that the corporate world differs from the real world, there are numerous rules and norms to follow and social roles to play every day. Defining success in the corporate world, I would stick to Albert Einstein's view on success. He said: “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.” That is who I would like to be – a man or a person of value in a company I will work for, as, being a part of a developing organism, I would like to contribute my achievements to one big achievement of my company. Obviously, I want my personal achievements and contributions to be evaluated by managers accordingly. Speaking in other words, to be 'a man of value' for me is to be a highly-qualified and competent professional, respected both by my colleagues and managers. This is what means for me to be successful.
Therefore, my recipe for being successful in the corporate world consists of several components. First of all, it is constant self-development. We leave in a fast-moving and fast-changing world. No wonder, that any professional area or industry is changing quickly either, introducing new technologies, methods, criteria, a pace of work, and at the same time requiring from specialists new skills and knowledge. Secondly, there's one personal quality, without which success is impossible. It is persistence. It is important because a ladder to success is made not only of achievements and appraisals but of failures too. Thus, a person needs persistence to move further overcoming all difficulties on the way to success. Here goes a third component – understanding that there's no success without failures and difficulties. In fact, a failure is a kind of motivation. Afterwards, there are several personal qualities badly needed for success in the corporate life. The first one is an ability to take responsibility and a risk when needed because there are always situations when there should be a person who will pluck up all his or her courage and will lead the team or a partner through the occurred difficulties. Talking about the team, I would like to mention another ability – ability to work both in a team and alone. Living in the corporate world, one should understand clearly that success is a hard work, including even certain sacrifice like staying longer after work or coming early before work to complete the task. When a specialist can do this sacrifice it means that he or she has a dedication to what he or she is doing, which is another significant component of a recipe of success in the corporate world. To this recipe, I would definitely add a skill to meet the deadlines, which may be a crucial moment on the way to success.
I strongly believe that having all these components together will lead to being successful in the corporate world, or being a ‘man of value', a real professional respected by others in a company or organization. But this my recipe. Probably, someone knows a better one.
