I’ve been a consultant for all but two years since 1988, both in the US and in Europe. My clients have included such companies as UBS, Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical, US Army Corp of Engineers, C N A, State Farm, Agfa-Gevaert. I worked with these high- level clients and was able to provide them value they couldn't get anywhere else. I solved seemingly impossible problems, like leading a group to ISO 9001 certification in 90 days, writing for five different languages, co-authoring or ghost authoring with leading experts on three continents.
But I could never get out of my mind that I was here to do something more than just help companies make a lot of money.
I started on this path of discovery for hidden high potentials because I was one. I regularly accomplished the impossible in my work, not understanding how impressive my results really were. A consistent overachiever, I found that I had to dissemble on my résumé because no one believed that I had done what I had.
Like many of you, I’ve bounced from career to career, always taking things with me and always out-performing the job:
- Leading CSC’s ISO 9001 compliance effort for their desktop support group in their global commercial outsourcing operations, achieving the highest score the assessor had ever given within 90 days of starting;
- Creating three different short courses in environmental and safety compliance, with accompanying manuals, which I gave across the U.S. — before I turned 25;
- Editing drafts in two different areas of academy — a social psychology textbook and a political science series;
- Leading the development team that created UBS Warburg’s website authentication system;
- Creating project risk management process for the nation’s largest P&C insurer which got replicated as the standard across IT projects;
- Leading a ragtag team of outside process writers to complete a set of required processes in 60 days when the global experts couldn’t do it in six months.
The usual outperforming in every job. You get the picture.
But in 2003 I lost what I was sure was the best consulting job that I would ever have. I couldn’t understand what had happened since I had followed all the rules. For the first time, my overperformance didn’t work. By that fall, I discovered the findings of a mid-20th century genius named Elliott Jaques and the Labor-party multi-national owner at whose firm he made these discoveries, Lord Wilfred Brown. Here was the key that made all the other things make sense.
Since then I have worked with the world’s leading experts on organizations and working to learn why the standard career rules that work for most people don’t work for hidden high potentials. These experts know something you don't — how work gets done — and that knowledge can transform your life. Normally, this information is only given to the world’s most successful companies under large, very expensive consulting contracts. These “secrets” really just describe the natural way things are. But the experts believed it was complex and could only be understood by experts, and only then after years of work.
To me these Secret Rules were simple and profound. As I learned them, I realized that these findings could transform the lives of hidden high potentials, and that they in turn could save the world.
It was never my goal to start a business doing career coaching. I fell into it because it seemed that I was the only one who cared about high potentials who, for whatever reason, hadn't gotten the tap to be the Next Great Thing. When I started telling other people about this, I realized that I could make something everyone else thought was wildly complex into a simple presentation.
And it transformed how these people ran their careers.
Let me bring you the good news about work. It doesn’t have to be crazy-making! Work can make you feel good! Read more in the resources, many from my own blog, or contact me to start down a new path, armed with the power of the Secret Rules of Career Success.
I'm looking forward to helping you discover who you really are.
