Michael Gerber, the small business guru, and author of The E-Myth Revisited, has a favorite question:

“Are you working in your business or on your business?”

If you are doing the former, you are what Gerber calls “the technician,” the person delivering the service or making the product. These are plumbers who start plumbing businesses, accountants who provide bookkeeping services, coaches who have coaching practices. These people are, in the words of Gerber, “doing it, doing it, doing it, busy, busy, busy.”  That usually leads to burnout and limited growth. The entrepreneur’s challenge is to create a system that provides both sustainability and scalability, where the business can eventually run without them.

In coaching leaders inside organizations, I’ve come across a similar question:

“Are you working in your career or on your career?”

If you are an employee doing the former, you are likely heads-down, “doing it, doing it, doing it, busy, busy, busy.”  In two decades of working for large companies, when greeting colleagues with, “How are you?” rarely did I hear a reply that was less than “busy, busy, busy.” There is a misperception that if you are busy, you’ll be rewarded with a secure job.

I should know. In the 90’s, I was a project manager in software development for a large telecommunications company.  One day busy, the next day laid-off. Gone. In those days, workers got severance pay that meant something. My parting check was enough to live on for half a year.  I had enough time to recover from my mistake of being heads down in my career. Today, many laid-off workers get enough to pay for a few rounds of drinks with sympathetic friends, maybe a weekend in Vegas, and not much more.

There are other risks to only working in your career. It’s not just being blind-sided by a lay-off.

• Limited professional growth. With a technician’s mindset, I’m only focused on the job in front of me, the task at hand, the next deadline.  The technician is a more sophisticated version of the assembly line worker. Opportunities pass by with a flashing neon sign and go unnoticed.  Yes, the technician can get promoted—into another job where she is doing it, doing it, doing it. Different work, same mindset.

• Limited personal growth. Different work may stretch me to learn new skills. But does it provide the opportunity to unleash my potential, where my unique talents are fully realized?  Maybe.  Hey, I’m not willing to settle for maybe when it comes to being all that I can be. I’m hoping you aren’t willing to settle, either.  If you are, you can stop reading.

• Putting effort in the wrong places.  Tactical thinking only gets you so far—to the next milestone. Strategic thinking—knowing where your industry is headed, who your best customers are for that new product you are developing, what matters now in the company based on reading the organizational tea leaves—will shape what the milestones are. If I can only see two feet in front of me, I won’t see the Dead End sign on the road that I’m traveling.

What does it mean to work on your career?

First, expand your dreams beyond company bounds.  Working on your career does not mean aiming for a promotion to VP. It requires you to look at your strengths, what you are really good at, and figuring out how to bring more of that into the world.  Notice I said “world,” not company. Why? Because companies come and go. They hire, fire, start-up, grow, go out of business, merge, get acquired. What remains steady is who you are.  Your inherent value in the world does not change.

Working on your career is really big. It’s looking at what you can contribute to the world in a meaningful, impacting way and then going after it. Your dream should be no less than to be known in your industry and discipline as a source of wisdom and expertise. If you can stand it, dream about changing the game in your industry or discipline. Most people make the mistake of aiming too low. Don’t be one of them.

You may be thinking, “But Carol, I’m just trying to make a living. I don’t want to change the world.”  Making a living leads back to being a technician.  Do you really want to be “doing it, doing it, doing it” until retirement?

Okay, now that we’ve got that straight, the second component of working on your career is networking. Create a network that is wide and deep within your discipline. 

What is wide and deep networking in your discipline?  Creating relationships within and across industries with thought leaders in your area of expertise. For example, let’s say you work in IT for a bank. Working on your career would mean connecting with cutting edge practitioners, vendors, academics in IT, not just in the banking industry, but in two other industries that depend on IT.

How does one create these relationships?  Go to conferences and talk to speakers you enjoyed hearing, read blogs and leave comments, publish a paper in a journal or write an article for a trade magazine. In other words, be interested and interesting in the work that you love to do.

Which leads to a third component. Educate yourself.  There’s a saying among writers that if you want to write well, you need to read good stuff. Fill your mind with the best thinkers in your discipline, follow their work, read their articles and have an opinion on what they are saying. Be curious about what’s next by reading widely, both on-line and print sources.

Working on your career makes you more valuable in your company and in the marketplace. It provides you with the type of security that doesn’t come with a job, but which comes from being a thought leader in your area.

Continually stretch the bounds of your work, through rich interaction with both people and ideas. You’ll be rewarded with an aliveness that transcends any promotion you could receive, and a satisfaction steeped equally in what you contribute and who you’ve become.

At this point, you might have a mixture of feelings—fear, excitement, discouragement, wonder. That’s a good thing. It means you are waking up to reality and what’s possible. You’ve lifted your head up to see the landscape more clearly. Going back to the day-to-day trenches will never be the same. Celebrate this new awareness and begin the journey.