FACTOR V: ORGANIZATIONALPOSITIONING SKILLS
CLUSTER M: MANAGING UP
6 Career Ambition
For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to
move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer. Arnold Schwarzenegger – Austrian-American bodybuilder, actor,
businessman, and politician
Section 1: Your Development Need(s)
Unskilled
 Unsure what he/she wants out of a career
 May be bored or in the wrong career or the wrong organization
 May not want to make sacrifices to get ahead
 May not understand how careers really work and how people get ahead
 A poor marketer of self; doesn’t know how to get noticed
 Hesitant to speak up on career wants and needs
 Stuck in his/her career comfort zone; won’t take a career risk
Select one to three of the competencies listed below to use as a substitute for this competency if you decide not to
work on it directly.
Substitutes: 1,4,8,9,15,24,28,43,46,48,49,53,57
Skilled
 Knows what he/she wants from a career and actively works on it
 Is career knowledgeable
 Makes things happen for self
 Markets self for opportunities
 Doesn’t wait for others to open doors
Overused Skill
 May make unwise career choices
 May only select jobs in the can-do comfort zone
 May be seen as excessively ambitious
 May not pay enough attention to the job at hand
 May not take career advice comfortably
 May not trust the career decisions others make for him/her
Select one to three of the competencies listed below to work on to compensate for an overuse of this skill.
Compensators: 16,17,30,32,33,42,46,48,50,51,53,55,58,63,66
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Some Causes
 Bored
 Don’t trust organization
 Don’t want to make sacrifices
 Don’t know how to market self
 Don’t like to blow own horn
 Examine things to death
 Not career knowledgeable
 Too deep in your comfort zone
 Wait for things to happen
 Will only take a promotion
 Won’t take a chance
Leadership Architect® Factors and Clusters
This competency is in the Organizational Positioning Skills Factor (V). This competency is in the Managing Up
Cluster (M) with: 8. You may want to check other competencies in the same Factor/Cluster for related tips.
The Map
Being here on this page means someone or a number of people have told you that you are not ambitious
enough. That means they think you have more going for you than you are aware of or want to sacrifice to get.
They think you are undermanaging your career. The keys to career management are finding out how
successful careers are built, figuring out how far you can and want to go, analyzing what’s getting in your way,
exposing yourself to new tasks that build your skills, and getting noticed by decision makers.
Section 2: Learning on Your Own
These self-development remedies will help you build your skill(s).
Some Remedies
 1. How good are you? Take stock of your value. How good could you be? Are you underselling
yourself? You may be too critical of yourself. Get a good, confidential 360°. Are your ratings lower than
those of others? Sit down with an experienced facilitator. The process should be, ―How good could I be
with this foundation of strengths? What do others think are my strengths that I don’t see? What should I
work on next to progress?‖ Build up your confidence. Take a course or work with a tutor to bolster your
confidence in an area. Behave as if you were confident and successful. Reward yourself if you’re a
doubter. Master a skill. Prepare for meetings better than anyone else does. And learn how to cope with
your mistakes. Acknowledge them, inform everyone affected, learn from them, and then move on.
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Remember you don’t have to be good at everything or mistake free to succeed. More help? – See #55
Self-Knowledge.
 2. Need a sounding board? Get and use a career Board of Directors. Since you’re not—at this time—
your best career advisor, seek out one or more people who could be. A mentor. Boss you respect. Friend
down the street. Spouse. Parent. Clergy. Consultant. Professional colleague. Periodically, pass your career
thoughts, assumptions, concerns and opportunities by them for an objective opinion. Listen to them.
 3. Bought into career myths? Learn the facts about successful careers. Many people don’t know how
careers are built. Most are put off by the popular myth of getting ahead. All of us have seen How to
Succeed in Business Without Really Trying or something like it. It’s easy to get cynical and believe that
successful people are political or sell out, suck up, knife people in the back, it’s who you know, and so on.
The facts are dramatically different from this. Those behaviors get people in trouble eventually. What has
staying power is performing and problem solving on the current job, having a few notable strengths, and
seeking new tasks you don’t know how to do. It’s solving every problem with tenacity while looking for what
you haven’t yet done and getting yourself in a position to do it. Read The Lessons of Experience by McCall,
Lombardo and Morrison for the careers of men and Breaking the Glass Ceiling by Morrison, White and Van
Velsor for the careers of women to see how successful careers really happen.
 4. Doing the same old thing? Break out of your career comfort zone. Maybe you haven’t seen enough.
Pick some activities you haven’t done before but might find exciting. Take a course in a new area. Task
trade—switch tasks with a peer. Volunteer for task forces and projects that are multi-functional or multibusiness in nature. Read more broadly. More help? – See #46 Perspective.
 5. Can’t figure out the keys to success? Find out what it takes. Think of five successful people in your
organization/field whom you know well and ask what drives them? What sorts of jobs have they held? What
are their technical skills? Behavioral skills? Use the Leadership Architect® Sort Cards to determine what
the 10 key skills of each person are; compare this list with your own self-assessment and feedback. Ask
Human Resources if they have a success profile for some of the jobs you may be interested in. Make a list
of what you need to work on next. If you want to be a star, figure out what is important about your job to
higher management. If you’re an accountant, help management pinpoint high costs; if you’re a chemist,
find a cheaper way to do what you’re now doing. Learn to love the details that affect your field. If your
strengths are not technical, help out coworkers or look for a management or organizational problem around
you to solve.
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 6. Not comfortable marketing yourself? Create a successful career brand. You don’t know how to get
promoted. You dislike people who blow their own horns. Here’s how to do it. Build a performance track
record of variety—start up things, fix things, innovate, make plans, come under budget. This is what will get
you promoted. All organizations are looking for broad thinkers to give fresh opportunities to. Start by
thinking more broadly.
 7. Low profile? Get noticed by top decision makers. Top managers aren’t as interested in glitz as many
would have you believe. They’re interested in people who take care of problems, spot opportunities, ward
off disaster, and have a broad repertoire of skills. They are looking for bold performers. But a better
mousetrap alone is not enough. Volunteer for projects that will require interacting/presenting with higher
management. Focus on activities that are the core of what your organization does. Find a business
opportunity and make a reasoned case for it. Pick a big problem and work maniacally to solve it. You need
to be seen and heard—but on substance not fluff.
 8. Not willing to make sacrifices? Make the difficult moves. Many people turn down career
opportunities based upon current life comforts only to regret it later when they have been passed by.
Studies indicate that the vast majority of moves successful general managers had to make during their
careers were not seen as right for them at the time. They tried to turn them down. We all have the
problems. Children in school. A house we like. A parent to take care of. A working spouse. A medical issue
to manage. A good neighborhood. Most successful careers require moving around during the years that
are the most inconvenient and painful—when we have kids in school, not much extra money, and aging
parents to manage. Read The Lessons of Experience by McCall, Lombardo and Morrison for the careers of
men and Breaking the Glass Ceiling by Morrison, White and Van Velsor for the careers of women to see
how successful careers are really built. Set your mind to it. You must move to grow.
 9. Waiting for your boss to retire so that you can get the big promotion? Take an alternate path. It’s
hard to understand, but a promotion to your boss’s job is about the least developmental promotion you can
receive. Same issues. Same people. Same customers. Same products and services. Variety is the key to
career building. Take laterals. Bury the ego. Work for the long term. Turn down a straight line promotion
and ask for a like level job elsewhere.
 10. Blindly following your passion? Diversify your talents. Most of us make a very human error in
career management. We pursue what we most like to do. Our parents and counselors told us to find
something you like and that makes you happy, get really good at it, join a big company who will take care
of you and provide you a nice pension. While that may have been good advice in the past, it doesn’t fit
today very well. Lifelong employment is dead. Layoffs. Virtual corporations. Chaos. Employability is the
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new term and concept. You have to be good at a lot of things. You will change organizations several times.
You will have to move around to where the opportunities are.
Section 3: Learning from Feedback
These sources would give you the most accurate and detailed feedback on your skill(s).
 1. Natural Mentors
Natural mentors have a special relationship with you and are interested in your success and your future.
Since they are usually not in your direct chain of command, you can have more open, relaxed, and fruitful
discussions about yourself and your career prospects. They can be a very important source for candid or
critical feedback others may not give you.
 2. Spouse
Spouses can be powerful sources of feedback on such things as interpersonal style, values, balance
between work, career, and personal life, etc. Many participants attending development programs share
their feedback with their spouses for value-adding confirmation or context and for specific examples.
 3. Yourself
You are an important source of feedback on yourself. But some caution is appropriate. If you have not
received much feedback, you may be less accurate than the other sources. We all have blind spots,
defense shields, ideal self-views, and fantasies. Before acting on your own self-views, get outside
confirmation from other appropriate sources.
Section 4: Learning from Develop-in-Place Assignments
These part-time develop-in-place assignments will help you build your skill(s).
 Do a study of successful executives in your organization, and report the findings to top management.
 Do a study of failed executives in your organization, including interviewing people still with the organization
who knew or worked with them, and report the findings to top management.
 Volunteer to fill an open management job temporarily until it’s filled.
 Manage the outplacement of a group of people.
 Write a speech for someone higher up in the organization.
 Launch a new product, service, or process.
 Seek out and use a seed budget to create and pursue a personal idea, product, or service.
 Manage a group of people in a rapidly expanding or growing operation.
 Take on a tough and undoable project, one where others who have tried it have failed.
 Build a multifunctional project team to tackle a common business issue or problem.
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Section 5: Learning from Full-Time Jobs
These full-time jobs offer the opportunity to build your skill(s).
 1. International Assignments
The core demands to qualify as an International assignment are: (1) First-time working in the country. (2)
Significant challenges like new language, hardship location, unique business rules/practices, significant
cultural/marketplace differences, different functional task, etc. (3) More than a year assignment. (4) No
automatic return deal. (5) Not necessarily a change in job challenge, technical content, or responsibilities.
Examples of International assignments would be: (1) Managing local operations for an office located
outside your home country. (2) Leading the expansion into new global markets. (3) International sales
position. (4) Country/region head. (5) Managing transition for outsourced operations at an international
location. (6) Head of supply chain or manufacturing for global business. (7) Global compliance manager at
an international post.
 2. Line to Staff Switches
The core demands to qualify as a Line to Staff switch are: (1) Intellectually/strategically demanding. (2)
Highly visible to others. (3) New area/perspective/method/culture/function. (4) Moving away from a bottom
line. (5) Moving from field to headquarters. (6) Exposure to high-level executives. Examples: (1)
Business/strategic planning. (2) Heading a staff department. (3) Assistant to/chief of staff to a senior
executive. (4) Head of a task force. (5) Human resources role.
 3. Staff to Line Shifts
Core demands necessary to qualify for a Staff to Line shift are: (1) Moving to a job with an easily
determined bottom line or results. (2) Managing bigger scope and/or scale. (3) Requires new
skills/perspectives. (4) Unfamiliar aspects of the assignment. Examples of Staff to Line shifts would be: (1)
Moving from support function to business unit with P&L responsibility. (2) Product manager responsible for
product life cycle, revenue projections, and inventory planning. (3) General manager position. (4) Manager
responsible for a region or a product line or brand.
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Section 6: Learning from Your Plan
These additional remedies will help make this development plan more effective for you.
Learning to Learn Better
 1. Envision Yourself Succeeding
Envision yourself succeeding. Examine the image in detail: what you are doing, what you are feeling, how
you are reacting to others, how others are reacting to you, how the parts fit together. Can you then play
that out in the real situation and get to the same outcome?
Learning from Experience, Feedback, and Other People
 2. Using Multiple Models
Who exemplifies how to do whatever your need is? Who, for example, personifies decisiveness or
compassion or strategic agility? Think more broadly than your current job and colleagues. For example,
clergy, friends, spouses, or community leaders are also good sources for potential models. Select your
models not on the basis of overall excellence or likeability, but on the basis of the one towering strength (or
glaring weakness) you are interested in. Even people who are well thought of usually have only one or two
towering strengths (or glaring weak-nesses). Ordinarily, you won’t learn as much from the whole person as
you will from one characteristic.
 3. Learning from Mentors and Tutors
Mentors and tutors offer a special case for learning since the relationship is specifically formed for learning.
You need to be open and nondefensive. You need to solicit and accept feedback. This is a unique
opportunity for you to get low-risk, honest, and direct feedback on what you do well and not so well.
 4. Learning from Interviewing Others
Interview others. Ask not only what they do, but how and why they do it. What do they think are the rules of
thumb they are following? Where did they learn the behaviors? How do they keep them current? How do
they monitor the effect they have on others?
 5. The Power of Feedback
People learn and grow best through timely and ―actionable‖ feedback on the skills, knowledge,
perspectives, and values required to achieve realistic career goals and job objectives. Armed with accurate
feedback and the help of others, people can construct, execute, and monitor focused plans for
improvement and growth.
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 6. Using Multiple Sources
The usefulness of feedback varies with the quality of the source and the content of the information. Some
give better feedback than others. Feedback on skills directly tied to success is most useful. Different skills
are best observed by different groups like peers, bosses, direct reports, or customers. Timing of feedback
can be critical.
 7. Managing Your Own Future
You can make a difference in the amount and quality of feedback you receive. The more you understand
about feedback and the more initiative you take, the more feedback you will receive. From this, you can
construct and execute better on-target development and career plans.
 8. Feedback on What?
Although any feedback is useful, it’s best to seek and receive feedback on skills the organization feels are
the most important for your present and future success. Not all skills are equal in importance. Some
common skills may not have much bearing on success at all. If the organization has an official success
profile, that may be the best way to focus your growth efforts.
Learning from Courses
 9. Orientation Events
Most organizations offer a variety of orientation events. They are designed to communicate strategies,
charters, missions, goals, and general information and offer an opportunity for people to meet each other.
They are short in duration and offer limited opportunities for learning anything beyond general context and
background.
 10. Personal Skills Courses
These are courses designed to teach one skill like negotiating or decision making. They are good for
people with a need for that skill and a motivation to learn. The value of such courses depends upon the
quality of instructors and the accuracy of the content. Check with others who have attended. Ask if they
improved in the particular skill being taught.
High expectations are the key to everything. Sam Walton – American businessman and founder of Wal-Mart and
Sam’s Club
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Suggested Readings
Bolles, R. N. (2009). What color is your parachute? 2009: A practical manual for job-hunters & careerchangers. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press.
Brim, G. (2000). Ambition: How we manage success and failure throughout our lives. New York:
Backinprint.com.
Butler, T. (2007). Getting unstuck: How dead ends become new paths. Boston: Harvard Business School
Press.
Caesar, V. (2003). Uncommon career success. Seal Beach, CA: PCH Publishing.
Champy, J., & Nohria, N. (2000). The arc of ambition. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing.
Christian, K. (2004). Your own worst enemy: Breaking the habit of adult underachieve-ment. New York: Regan
Books.
Darling, D. (2005). Networking for career success. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Dominguez, L. R. (2003). How to shine at work.New York: McGraw-Hill.
Erickson, T. (2010). What‘s next, Gen X? Keeping up, moving ahead, and getting the career you want. Boston:
Harvard Business Press.
Fels, A. (2004). Necessary dreams: Ambition in women‘s changing lives. New York: Pantheon Books.
Goldsmith, M. (2007). What got you here won‘t get you there: How successful people become even more
successful. New York: Hyperion.
Goldsmith, M. (with Reiter, M.). (2009). Mojo: How to get it, how to keep it, how to get it back if you lose it. New
York: Hyperion.
Ibarra, H. (2003). Working identity: Unconventional strategies for reinventing your career. Boston: Harvard
Business School Press.
Kaplan, R. S. (2008). Managing yourself. Harvard Business Review, 86, 45-49.
Kummerow, J. M. (2000). New directions in career planning and the workplace: Practical strategies for career
management professionals. Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black Publishing.
Mackay, H. (2010). Use your head to get your foot in the door: Job search secrets no one else will tell you.
New York: Portfolio.
Mahan, B. J., & Coles, R. (2002). Forgetting ourselves on purpose: Vocation and the ethics of ambition. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
McCall, M. W., Lombardo, M. M., & Morrison, A. M. (1988). The lessons of experience. Lexington, MA:
Lexington Books.
Morrison, A. M., White, R. P., & Van Velsor, E., & The Center for Creative Leadership. (1992). Breaking the
glass ceiling: Can women reach the top of America‘s largest corporations? Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley
Publishing Company.
Schweich, T. A. (2003). Staying power: 30 Secrets invincible executives use for getting to the top: And staying
there. New York: McGraw-Hill.
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ROBERT W. EICHINGER
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Wendleton, K. (2006). Navigating your career: Develop your plan, manage your boss, get another job inside.
New York: The Five O’clock Club.
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