A Woman Overcomes a Little Slip That Slowed Her Business Career
Ms. Carole Chehab was born into a loving family in Lebanon which pampered her as the eldest child. She was fortunate to be able to attend the finest schools and receive much encouragement at home. With such a sound foundation, it’s easy to assume that her life would flow effortlessly forward toward her dream of becoming a lawyer.
Stop for a second, however, and consider where she is from . . . Lebanon. Life has been very hard for the Lebanese. During most of her youth, the country was ravaged by a continuing civil war. Residences that she lived in were even hit with missiles while she was away from home.
When Ms. Chehab graduated from high school, the civil war had recently ended. During the war, the government’s baccalaureate exam to decide who could go to a university had been suspended.
Ms. Chehab’s graduation year was the first year the exam was reinstated. The results shocked many. Poor students passed in some cases while good students failed after being marked down severely for trivial errors. Ms. Chehab was one of the latter, failing to make the passing grade by two points in physics.
Not wishing to waste any time, Ms. Chehab found a school where she could study to become an executive assistant, a far cry from her initial plan to practice law. But we all must move on when a little slip happens that shunts us onto one track instead of another.
Because her school work in learning to be an executive assistant was exceptionally good, Ms. Chehab obtained a position as an administrative officer after graduating. In addition to handling many activities for the company, she developed excellent skills in English, French, and Italian to be able to handle correspondence in those languages. She did well and stayed with the company for eight years.
Deciding that she could handle bigger responsibilities, she applied and was hired to become the assistant to one of Lebanon’s most highly regarded CEOs. In that role she handled tasks like ensuring proper implementation of executive decisions, planning and controlling corporate budgets, serving as project leader in a number of areas, and handling correspondence with the firm’s owners and banks.
After performing those duties successfully for five years, Ms. Chehab was ready for a bigger responsibility: Now, she wanted to move into a managerial position with her company. The time had come to earn an MBA. She was happy to find that three universities accepted her as an MBA candidate.
There was a problem. With a busy job that required that she work late, there was no time to attend classes at a Lebanese university. How could she avoid turning that problem into a slip that would cost her another educational and career opportunity?
Ms. Chehab had heard good reports from people who had earned MBA degrees from an online university, Rushmore. After checking out those reports and studying Rushmore, she decided that this school would provide her with the quality, credibility, and good investment she was looking for. She would supplement her MBA studies with seminars in areas where she wanted to build expertise.
Studying online on top of her busy duties at work would be difficult. At the time she started, almost all of her waking hours during the week were devoted to work or commuting.
By writing papers about running her company more successfully, Ms. Chehab developed new skills in applying theoretical knowledge that made her time at work more productive and increased her eagerness to learn more. At work, her accomplishments through these papers earned her recognition, and her responsibilities began to expand.
Because she had been working closely with the CEO, she understood a lot about the company and its markets. She used that understanding to develop powerful strategic insights into new choices for better performance with less risk.
Her world was shaken again, however, when conflict broke out between Israel and Lebanon. Once again, it was dangerous to live in Lebanon. It was difficult to work and her company faced major challenges as business dried up due to war-time conditions. Even if she could find time to work on a paper, there was no guarantee that she would be able to connect to the Internet to send the paper to a professor.
Would this fighting cause another slip? No! Ms. Chehab was well aware that you have to do your best no matter how difficult life is.
A favorite Zig Ziglar quote inspired her: “You want to soar up where the eagles fly, up there far in the sky, where you can touch the sun with your wings, you want people to know you have the ability and skills that take you to your place up there and appreciate you accordingly . . . No matter what . . . Always remember: It is never your aptitude but your attitude that determines your altitude.”
Despite the difficulties, she battled on and earned her degree in two years. Her company was so pleased with her work and academic progress that she was promoted to being the CEO’s Office Manager and Board Coordinator upon graduating.
What’s in the future for Ms. Chehab? For now, she’s enjoying a little respite from working long hours and studying during her limited spare time.
But there’s possibly a Ph.D. in her future. With her attitude, it’s likely that her career will reach new heights.
Ms. Chehab has demonstrated exceptional talent in solving strategic questions. With her skills, it’s likely she’ll be asked to run a business. When such an opportunity comes, I’m sure she’ll be ready for the challenge.
How can you adjust your attitude and skills so that little slips in the past won’t slow down the progress of your business career?
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Learn from the School of Hard Knocks to Gain Business Career Success
One of my college roommates had a brother who was a graduate business student and often visited our rooms. Since one of my possible career choices was to work in business, I asked this business student many questions about his studies and career choices. Everything he said expanded my knowledge and made me more interested in a business career.
This information meant a lot to me because I grew up in a small city where there were only two large employers, the Santa Fe Railway and the U.S. Air Force. Neither organization provided opportunities to learn about executive success in a large corporation.
When I began graduate business studies, I was pretty smug, thinking that I knew just what needed to be done: Get a prestigious degree and wait for highly attractive employers to bid for my services.
Talking with the other business students made me realize that I had a lot to learn about career success. I didn’t even understand what executives did in different industries.
My complacent eyes were opened wide one day when a management consultant from the famous McKinsey firm made a presentation. At the end of the discussion, I asked one of the other students who got to do what this presenter did for a living. My classmate quickly responded, “Strategy consultants.” I asked, “What’s a strategy consultant?” He responded that these were people who worked for McKinsey or The Boston Consulting Group. I remembered those answers and later applied to both firms, not quite knowing what to expect.
Even with all of this knowledge, I was totally unclear about how you went from being a management consultant to having a successful business career working for a large corporation. I guessed that someday a client might hire you. And that’s what did happen to me after I became a strategy consultant.
The key lesson from my experience is that you can have a wonderful education at a university and still lack important knowledge about the most fundamental elements of developing your business career.
Students typically prefer to get information about potential careers from fellow students and professors, but research shows that students and professors provide incomplete information. It’s better to also speak with people who have been developing a career for a decade or so to find out what lessons they learned in the school of hard knocks.
I was recently reminded of this source of information to make more effective business career plans when I corresponded with Dr. Robert Hartinger, a banking executive in Germany who is a Ph.D. graduate of Rushmore University. Dr. Hartinger kindly agreed to share his career experiences and lessons with me so that I could pass them along to you.
Dr. Hartinger started off presuming that the quality of your education was very important to career success. After graduating from his business program at a German university, he soon learned that you have few occasions to apply any of the theoretical knowledge that most schools provide. As a result, new graduates are stuffed full of knowledge and theory that has little relevance to what their employers need.
Instead, degrees qualify people to be considered for certain jobs. Many employers pride themselves on hiring from certain schools and restricting top jobs to those with the most advanced graduate degrees.
Traditional schooling provides few insights into what various industries and types of jobs are like. If students aren’t careful, they’ll seek a type of work that they won’t like. There are two alternatives available:
1. Examine industries and jobs carefully to set the right objectives.
2. Study at a school where you get practical experience in applying theoretical knowledge which gives you a sense of what a career doing that work might be like.
Dr. Hartinger doesn’t rule out the first alternative, but he’s confident that the second one is essential. If possible do both, but at least do the second. From what you learn, he also recommends that you focus on just a few opportunities. Otherwise, your attention and energies will be too widely scattered.
A lot of business success depends on your personality. That’s something that graduate schools often ignore. Outgoing people with pleasing, helpful personalities will do a lot better than grumpy, self-absorbed geniuses who rarely talk to anyone.
Many studies show that the ability to connect to other people in the organization greatly helps both job effectiveness and advancement. Why? It’s simple: You can’t know all of the answers, but with help from others you can do a great job.
But it’s not enough to simply be a connection point within the organization. You also need to add skills that improve your effectiveness.
Here’s where online learning can make a difference. People don’t care where you learn a skill; they are just pleased when you add one that’s relevant to your situation.
Today, many companies offer financial assistance for those who wish to learn new skills. When that assistance is provided over the Internet, costs are reduced and you can take more courses than those who enroll in classroom-based courses. In addition, learning while you work allows you the chance to apply what you are learning. In that way, you can sift through lots of theoretical knowledge to get just what you need. Dr. Hartinger also notes that if an online school offers flexibility in designing courses, your skill improvement can be even greater.
How to Start a Career in Business
People look for the options so that they can start their own business. It has been observed that people are sacrificing their jobs to start business of their own. This is because of the reason that they are not happy with stubborn bosses on long working hours. However, they must be well aware of the fact that starting a career in business requires patience and investments. First of all, you must decide the type of business you want to start. You can choose from various options and make up your mind. You must known latest trends and what people want.
Get Started with Your Business Career Here
Starting a career in business will require efforts. You first have to analyze the requirements and based on that you can start your business with little or huge investment. This all depends upon the kind of business and your choice. If you want to start a small scaled business, the niche and your target audience will be narrowed. You can start with offering products and services to other people. In order to get started you can take the help of surveys and feedback from people. Starting a career in business requires no formal education as anyone can start it. However, you must have complete knowledge about what you want to start with.
One of the most effective aspects in starting a career in business is how you are marketing what you are offering. Let people know about you as they are the key to the success of the business. Get the help of professionals for marketing techniques.