That got me thinking. The typical response about careers is that you are what you do. But Adams is onto something else that is true in all areas of life. Location determines a lot more than most of us think. Location is especially important when you’re looking for a job shortly after college graduation--or when you want to change jobs.
Great career expertise and opportunity exist in a few locations, but are non-existent in other locations.
To be blunt, an info tech career in Silicon Valley has little relationship to an IT career in Nevada or even Florida. These states simply don’t have the IT career quality that Silicon Valley expects and delivers. The same is true of companies. You’re going to learn stuff in Silicon Valley companies that doesn’t ever cross the mind of IT companies in Nevada or Florida. Or take the long-term health care expertise of Minnesota and compare it to that of, say. . . Texas. I have a close friend in Texas ... teaching at Baylor, who has also lived in Minnesota. She’s very familiar with Alzheimer’s care in Texas and also familiar with Minnesota expectations and delivery. As a faculty person in Gerontology she wanted to talk about the long-term care my wife received in Minnesota. Her response was telling: “But I don’t think I want to know. I’ll end up crying.” Still, she wanted the corporate patient delivery materials from my wife’s care center for her Baylor class. The students, she responded, were shocked when comparing Minnesota expectations with those of Texas. “There might be a few upscale facilities in Dallas that offer that,” she responded, “but that would be all.”
Chatting with a recent college grad, I learned that his best friend was finishing his first year at Goldman Sachs in New York. Though his friend had a couple roommates and some time to explore the City, he was quite lonely. “But,” I responded, “with two years at Goldman Sachs he can go anywhere in the world he wants in the financial business.” And that knowledge was what kept him at the firm. Similarly, two years of marketing experience at Proctor & Gamble or General Mills have the same cachet for a person’s future. Those two firms simply have more intelligence and expertise in marketing than 95%--or more--of America’s other firms.
Local firm distinctions
Quality and opportunity, however, can be significantly different between two firms of the same size in the same city. Many recent college grads want to go into small, new, entrepreneurial firms, straight out of college. I’ve found, however, that people often confuse the distinction between the opportunities generated by size versus those generated by quality. Learning and growth opportunity appears in one firm, but can be totally lacking in another firm that looks identical to the first firm—and is the same size. Exceptional strategy or excellent staff may provide for a growth advantage, but lack of these may result in failure for the organization and wasted opportunity for the new employee. Organizational funding, or its lack, adds still another complexity distinguishing one from another.
Identifying a high performance firm where you want to work
A number of recent grads and those looking for new jobs believe they know the company they’re looking for—the unique company where they want to work: a place where they can learn and grow and achieve personal objectives.
I’d suggest that they need to be very discerning about defining where they want to go. To put it another way, I’d be very careful about what defines a high performance company that fits your growth needs best.
For better insight on those firms (read, high performance), I’ve adapted Phil Rosenzweig’s analysis of performance for your store of organizational research data from his superb book, The Halo Effect. You can take his stuff and think through the important matters at your firm of interest.
- Any good strategy involves risk. If you think the strategy of the firm of interest is foolproof, the fool may well be you.
- Execution, too, is uncertain—what works in one company with one workforce may have different result elsewhere.
- Chance often plays a greater role than we think, or than successful managers usually like to admit.
- The link between inputs and outcomes is tenuous. Bad outcomes don’t always mean that managers made mistakes; and good outcomes don’t always mean they acted brilliantly.
- But when the die is cast, the best managers act as if chance is irrelevant—persistence and tenacity are everything.
These ideas don’t guarantee success for your organizational choice. But finding out about them in your firm of choice will improve your chances.
I hope by now you’re getting comfortable with uncertainty. But when the thinking is all over, I’ll go with Robert Rubin on the issue of uncertainty, the choice of firm--and where to put down some work roots. Amusingly, that was where Rosenzweig went for his conclusion, too.
Once you’ve internalized the concept that you can’t prove anything in absolute terms, life
becomes all the more about odds, chances, and trade-offs. In a world without provable truths, the only way to refine the possibilities is through greater knowledge and understanding.
When I went about searching for where to consult, I found firms that emphasized some of the above. But luck also played a big part in my success. The consulting networks in Minnesota were wide open and there happened to be a great number of large, successful Minnesota companies that were searching for consultants like me. Intriguingly, sometimes people in those same companies I chose disagreed about why they were successful and whether their firm was a good place to work. And often their competition weighed in on the issue still differently. For example, I loved consulting at Pillsbury, but some people hated working at Pillsbury.
Where you are is absolutely more important than who you are. Location can drive your career in ways you can only dream about in another location.