Excerpts from the book: Great Work Great Career

Excerpts from the book: Is my series where I share some highlights and notes I made while reading some book that I think is good, thought provoking and worth sharing.


Great Work Great Career
As we live through successive economic earthquakes that shake the core of our society, it can be difficult to maintain one's footing. Still, Covey argues there is a positive side to these tumultuous times, provided one is willing to take a chance and go with it. Welcome this wild and demanding new world and embrace the opportunities it presents. Covey tells us, don't just settle for a job; you want a great job - Great Work, Great Career.

• A person with a great career makes a distinctive contribution and generates a strong feeling of loyalty and trust in others. Anyone, regardless of title or position or profession, can do these things.
• Dr. Fiona Wood clearly shows us what it means to have a great career. It’s not the acclaim or the fame, it’s the contribution.
• A great career is all about solving great problems, meeting great challenges, and making great contributions.
• He is not ambitious in the sense of needing the signs of external success, like constant promotions or public acclaim, but he’s making a difference.
• object of the ambition. If you’re ambitious only for the trappings of success and unwilling to pay an honest price for success, ambition can destroy your happiness over time. On the other hand, if you’re ambitious to make a real difference—a meaningful contribution—you will experience the deep satisfaction of a job well done and a life well lived. That is the kind of ambition I believe in.
• A great career does not rise from a need for outside affirmation, but from within you, from your own curiosity, from your own unique mix of talents and passion.
• It also rises from your conscience—from the whispers deep inside that point you to what you should do.
• A great career requires both of these dimensions—the desire and skill to contribute, and a character worthy of the trust and loyalty of others.
• satisfies your conscience. But it’s not just about you. It’s also about answering a significant need.
• Your great career starts, as Peter Hawkins and Nick Smith say, “when you stop asking questions such as ‘How do I get promoted?’ and start asking ‘What is the difference I want to make? What is the legacy I want to leave?’”
• “In corporate leadership roles and over 10 years in coaching and counseling, I discovered the difference I want to make—help people make their difference. In doing so, they reclaim their passion and find significance in their work.” — Julia Tang Peters, leadership coach.
• A great career comes down to making a great contribution, to making a difference that matters to you and to the people you serve. Envisioning, defining, and designing your Contribution Statement is the first step on the path to a great career. People who are only looking for a job have résumés. People who are looking to make a great career have Contribution Statements.
• Maya Angelou said, “You can’t be what you can’t see.”
• Those who create a great career for themselves are those who make the time to define their contribution and plan how they will achieve it.
• The Industrial Age, people simply asked, “What’s my job description?” Now, according to Peter Drucker, “Knowledge Age workers must learn to ask, ‘What should my contribution be?’
• Intelligence has become the new form of property. Focused intelligence, the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and know-how, is the new source of wealth.”