Eight Ways to Rock at Your Job (or Get a Better One)

You're smart, hard-working, and loyal as a dog. So why hasn't your career taken off the way you had hoped?

Quite possibly, it's because while those qualities are appreciated by upper management, they aren't enough to set you apart. Here are eight tips that may help.

Note that if you are already at the top of your game, this guidance will seem old hat (though you may want to share this with younger colleagues). If you're struggling just a bit, it may help. And if you are just starting out or early in your professional career, it is vital.

Be Passionate

Care about your company and industry and show it in your work and speech. There is no such thing as a 'boring product' or service only bored employees.

I gave a presentation a while back to staff at a company that made rubber gaskets. One of the attendees asked how he was supposed to get excited about rubber gaskets. I asked where the company's gaskets were used. 'Oh, different applications in high-performance motors, like generators, pumps, NASCAR engines'' NASCAR engines??!! How can you not be passionate about that? The rubber gaskets may be only a small part of the equation, but races couldn't be won without them.

Have Ideas

The best ideas are good ones, of course, but even interesting ideas that don't ultimately make it into production are important and show that you have, well, passion for the business. New products typically account for as much as 25% of revenue and an even higher percentage of profit.

New ideas, whether for new products or services, enhancements to existing offerings, or just better ways of doing something, are the lifeblood of future success. Particularly when it comes to new products, only a small percentage of new ideas actually make it into production'but all new ideas have value.

Present Alternatives

Never ask your boss / co-worker / colleague what they think of a specific color, font, tagline, headline, product concept or anything else'instead, present alternatives (at least two, preferably three, no more than five). People prefer to choose between different options rather than just a give a thumbs-up or down to an idea in isolation.

Be Bilingual

Obviously, being linguistically bilingual (e.g. able to speak/write/read Spanish and English, or Chinese and English, etc.) is valuable in many business contexts. But it's also helpful career-wise to be departmentally bilingual. For example, I got one of my first promotions based on being able to 'translate' engineering jargon into language that a marketing team could understand.

And no matter what function you work in, it's crucial to be able to translate your department's internal jargon into business language. For example, in social media marketing, measures such as Facebook likes, LinkedIn followers and retweets on Twitter are meaningful'but your CEO and CFO couldn't care less about these metrics. However, being able to say that social media produces sales leads at x% lower cost than other sources and furthermore that these leads have a y% higher close rate will get C-level attention.

Be Social

Most people in marketing today will interpret this suggestion as applying to social networking, and there's no question that it's important for marketing, SEO and PR professionals to be active (in a professional manner) on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn at a minimum. And having an active presence on sites like YouTube, Pinterest and Google+ doesn't hurt.

But don't neglect the most literal meaning of this recommendation either. Working through lunch can be interpreted as a sign of your dedication'or give the impression that you don't care to interact with co-workers. If you're on a tight deadline, go ahead and spend your lunch time hunched over a keyboard, but if not (and presuming it's an option), spend that time getting to know those you work with better, and letting them get to know you. 'Office politics' isn't a nasty term, it's a fact of life.

Never Stop Learning

For most of human history, odds were that you would end up doing whatever it was your parents did (in most cases, farming), and in pretty much the same way.

In The Logic of Life, author Tim Harford quantifies the acceleration of technological change as it relates to population growth. 'The'Homo erectus population in 300,000 B.C. would have been coming up with on (brilliant, life-changing) idea every thousand years. By 1800, the dawn of the Industrial Revolution'the innovation rate would have risen to one stunning idea every year. By 1930 it would have been one world-changing idea every six months'we should now be producing this kind of idea every two months.'

The development of the Internet wiped out a wide swath jobs but created many new ones (webmasters didn't exist twenty years ago; social media consultants have been around for less than five), and changed the way almost all other jobs are performed (including farming).

For the most part, the college textbooks on my bookshelf are now more of historical interest than practical use. My daughter, for the most part, won't even use printed textbooks.

Staying ahead of the curve is tough, but essential. As columnist Thomas Friedman recently noted, 'if you want a decent job that will lead to a decent life today you have to work harder, regularly reinvent yourself, obtain at least some form of postsecondary education, make sure that you're engaged in lifelong learning and play by the rules.'