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Managing your career: The ultimate solo
flight
Laurette Koellner. Executive Speeches. Dayton: Feb/Mar 2001. Vol.
15, Iss. 4; pg. 19, 3 pgs
Abstract (Summary)
In planning a career in today's fast-changing and highly unpredictable
business environment, you do not want to aim for too small a target. It is
a great mistake to target a specific job because organizational or
technological change may cause the job you want to disappear. On the
other hand, it is critically important that you have some kind of a flight
plan that sets some broad parameters and gives some definite direction
to your career. People should pay less attention to moving up and more
attention to moving out - seeking new opportunities for personal growth
that my not involve a bigger title or more pay. People learn the most
when they are on the move - facing whole new challenges and demands.
People as individuals must decide how they are going to expand
frontiers for themselves and for others who are working with them or for
them.
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Abstract
Full Text - PDF (291 K)
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Subjects:
Career development
planning
Career advancement
Personal development
Aerospace industry
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Full Text (2134 words)
Copyright The Executive Speaker Feb/Mar 2001
Good evening. It is a great pleasure to address the Long Beach Chapter of
the Amelia Earhart Society, and to honor people who-like the great
Amelia-have exceeded expectations.
Amelia Earhart had a brilliant career. She was the first to cross the Atlantic
twice in an airplane and the second person ever to fly solo across the
Atlantic. Like Amelia, each of us is responsible for managing his or her own
career. We all have teammates, and we may have mentors. But, at the end
of the day, planning and managing a career is the ultimate solo flight-for
each of us.
Tonight I would like to provide a few thoughts on how to make the most of
that flight-exceeding your own as well as other people's expectations. I will
cite a few lessons from the first people to cross the Atlantic by air. I will
also draw upon some of Boeing's history.
In his book, The Spirit of St. Louis, Charles Lindbergh recalls addressing a
group of naval officers on the subject of long-distance aerial navigation.
This happens only a few weeks before he takes off on his flight from New
York to Paris:
"What kind of charts do you intend to use?" one officer asks him. "The
same as you carry on ships at sea," Lindbergh replies. "Suppose you strike
a wind change in the night, and it drifts you far off course?" another asks.
"A navigating error wouldn't be too serious," Lindbergh answers. "This flight
isn't like shooting for an island. I can't very well miss the entire European
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coast."
Lindbergh got a good laugh with that line. But there is an important point
here for all of us. In planning a career in a fast-changing and highly
unpredictable business environment, such as we have today, you don't
want to aim for too small a target. It is a great mistake to target a specific
job, because organizational or technological change may cause the job you
want to disappear. On the other hand, it is critically important that you have
some kind of a flight plan that sets some broad parameters and gives
some definite direction to your career.
We all know that people with a real mission and purpose in life do a lot
better than those without the same engine and compass. As a teenage
girl-years before she became interested in flight-Earhart formulated what
amounted to a personal mission statement. She wrote, and I quote, that
she wanted a "life of the mind, combined with a life of purpose and action."
As a company, we, Boeing, have a mission statement of our own. It reads:
"Working together as one company for aerospace leadership." That's a
little more specific (we are, after all, an 84-year-old cornpany), but it is still
extremely broad. You may want to devise a mission statement of your own.
You can begin by asking whether Boeing is the right company for you. As
the company mission statement suggests, we insist on teamwork-working
together. Moreover, this is one company-not a collection of different and
essentially autonomous companies. Finally, Boeing is about
leadershipleadership in the field of aerospace. Are you comfortable and in
sync with those three elements?
Assuming you are, which, of several different work environments within this
company, is best suited for you? I, for one, have always liked to work in a
headquarters, or an enterprise-wide, type of environment. I like the daily
change and variety that comes with interacting with a lot of different
businesses and products. Others, I know, prefer the focus and action of
working within one program over a period of time. That's great. But don't
confine yourself in your long-term thinking to just one program. If you are a
program-oriented person, within this one great company, there are scores
of wonderful and exciting programs. But you must be willing to expand your
contacts and seek new opportunities.
If Amelia Earhart were alive today and working for Boeing, she would
probably be one of our growing number of female test pilots. I expect that
she would take advantage of the opportunity to flight-test just about every
kind of airplane we make-military and commercial, fixed-wing and rotary.
That brings me to my next point. Over the course of a career, I believe that
people should pay less attention to moving up and more attention to
moving out-seeking new opportunities for personal growth that may not
involve a bigger title or more pay. Certainly, the most important moves that I
have made in my own career have been lateral, not vertical. I have moved
around from accounting and finance to overhead management, contracts
and pricing, labor relations and negotiations, computer operations, safety
and environmental services, procurement, and several other activities
besides.
We learn the most when we are on the movefacing whole new challenges
and demands. What's more, this gives us a whole new perspective on
things we think we have already mastered. If you are a financial person who
moves into production, you will gain a new perspective not just on
production, but finance as well. Conversely, if you go from production to
finance, it will give you a whole new slant on production as well as finance.
Lateral moves are much easier to make than vertical moves. They depend
more upon your own initiative than they do upon accidents of timing or the
judgment and discretion of others. That's one of the great things about
lateral moves: You deploy yourself. There is no faster or surer way of
expanding your thinking and building your intellectual capital than voluntary
self-deployment through multiple lateral moves.
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Bill Boeing made a lateral move when he went from building boats to
building boat planes. In entering the aircraft business, he didn't make any
more money or achieve any greater recognition-at least not initially. Boeing
had a passion for designing and building things out of wood. Those were
his parameters, if you will. Just as he already proven to his own satisfaction
that he could build a better boat, so he set out to build a better plane. In
doing so, he both had his cake and ate it, too-drawing upon his intellectual
capital, and, at the same time, expanding it.
If you set the right parameters, and you are willing to continually deploy and
re-deploy yourself, I think you will have no trouble living up to the spirit of
my third and last piece of advice regarding the planning and management
of a satisfying career.
Don't wait to be asked; take empowerment to the max
A colleague of mine in Seattle gave the best description of empowerment
that I have ever heard. This person-and she is not, by the way, a member
of senior management-told me that her job was "so challenging and
exciting," that she couldn't "understand how anyone could have trusted her
to do it in the first place." Those are the words of an empowered person,
someone who is exceeding expectations all over the place-even including
her own.
I wish everyone in The Boeing Company felt as she did. We have all heard
Phil [Condit]and Harry [Stonecipher] and others talk about empowerment.
But it is up to each of us to self-empower and selfdeploy.
No one asked Amelia or Lindbergh to do a solo flight across the Atlantic.
No one asked Bill Boeing to build an airplane. They did these things
because they wanted to. They did them because they wanted to open new
frontiers. Similarly, we, as individuals, must decide how we are going to
expand frontiers for ourselves... and for others who are working with us or
for us. To do that we must be prepared to do battle from time to time with
the internal bureaucracy in our organizations. But even more than that, we
have to be prepared to fight against our own inertia-or what one poet
described as "mind-forged manacles."
At the outset, I asked you to ask yourself whether you were working for the
right company. I didn't do that to shock anyone. If you intend to build a
good career inside this one company, there must be a basic harmony
between you as an individual and the company as a whole.
With that in mind, I do want to say a few things about where we are going
as a company. If there is one way that the Boeing of today differs from the
Boeing of two or three years ago, it is in having a more intense and clearer
focus on business. To be the real leader in aerospace today is not just a
matter of how far, how high or how fast. It is a matter of how well can we run
our businesses for the mutual advantage of our customers and
shareholders.
There are three things that we-the Boeing teammust do in order to succeed
today, tomorrow and far into the future.
First, we have to run our core businesses exceptionally well.
Second, we have to leverage our intellectual capital and our knowledge of
the customer in growing new products and services.
Third, we must continue to open new frontiers, and continue to lead, not
follow, in major advancements in aerospace and communications.
What does it take to run core businesses exceptionally well? One thing is a
strong business mentality, which is what you have when every manager and
leader is well versed in the basic mechanics of business. By that I mean
having a thorough appreciation of how cash flows in and out of a business,
both short-term and over extended periods of time. A knowledge of
accounting and finance is as fundamental to running a business as keeping
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the engine oiled, knowing how to change the fan belt and watching the fuel
gauge are to running a car. You don't have to be an MBA to understand
basic financial concepts anymore than you have to be an engineer to
understand how an engine works. Make sure that his knowledge is part of
your intellectual capital-indeed, part of the way you think-if you aspire to be
a leader within this company.
It is amazing what you can accomplish when people act as a team-and
have a thorough understanding of the exact requirements for successtechnically, logistically and financially.
We, as a company, have far exceeded Wall Street's expectations over the
last several quarters. That is due in large part to getting the commercial
aircraft side of the house back into good working shape. Did you know that
the average number of hours required to assemble a 737 has fallen from
30,000 down to just 10,000? Part of the turnaround in commercial has
come through a much better business focus. That's something that those
of you who work in the C-17 program understand very well indeed. Several
years ago, everyone who was a part of that program came face-to-face with
the realization that a financially healthy program was the only kind of a
program that could possibly survive in an era of huge defense cutbacks.
We have healthy core businesses inside Boeing today. Through a variety
of new services to our military and commercial customers, we are
leveraging our intellectual capital and finding new ways to grow the top and
bottom lines. Whatever some of the skeptics may think, we are pushing
new frontiers. We haven't stopped with putting a man on the moon. Just
look at Space Station. Look at the National Missile Defense. Look at
Conexion by Boeing. Look at the new space-imaging capabilities we have
acquired with Hughes.
As I see it, we are fortunate to be a part of what Harry Stonecipher has
called "An Aerospace Dream Team." There is no other aerospace
company in the world that comes close to matching the breadth and depth
of capabilities... and aspirations... that we have inside this one company.
There is no limit to the opportunities for people to move around and find
new avenues for personal and professional growth within this company.
The Leadership Center in St. Louis is our crossroads. I urge all of you who
can to use it to broaden your horizons and maximize your potential. Boeing
also provides some of the most liberal benefits of any company in the
world for all those who wish to build their intellectual capital by pursuing
further studies and education.
I am going to close these remarks with three uplifting words. They should
be familiar to all of you from our new advertising campaign.
In remembering the always questing and fearless Amelia Earhart, and in
reflecting on your future within The Boeing Company, I wish you all...
Forever New Frontiers.
[Author Affiliation]
Laurette Koellner is vice president, corporate controller, The Boeing Company.
Her remarks were presented at the Annual Awards Banquet of the Long Beach
Chapter of the Amelia Earhart Society on November 3, 2000.
Indexing (document details)
Subjects:
Career development planning, Career advancement, Personal
development, Aerospace industry
Classification Codes
6200 Training & development, 9190 United States,
8680 Transportation equipment industry
Locations:
United States, US
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Companies:
Boeing
Co(Ticker:BA, NAICS: 336411, 336413, 336414, Duns:00-925-6819
)
Author(s):
Laurette Koellner
Author Affiliation:
Laurette Koellner is vice president, corporate controller, The Boeing
Company. Her remarks were presented at the Annual Awards
Banquet of the Long Beach Chapter of the Amelia Earhart Society on
November 3, 2000.
Document types:
Speech
Publication title:
Executive Speeches. Dayton: Feb/Mar 2001. Vol. 15, Iss. 4; pg. 19, 3
pgs
Source type:
Periodical
ISSN:
08884110
ProQuest document ID: 68947102
Text Word Count
2134
Document URL:
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.nz:2057/pqdweb?did=68947102&sid=3&Fmt=3&clientId=31722
&RQT=309&VName=PQD
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