Not every year at every company is valued equally. Just as a year in a dog’s life is equivalent to seven human years, the same can be said for experience in certain companies.
Unlike many Monday-morning armchair pundits writing about corporate life, I can talk from experience having worked for Amazon on their Fashion Leadership Team during explosive growth. We had acquired Zappos and Shopbop, created MyHabit, and were sowing the early seeds of private label offerings. We were also breaking the mold at Amazon with innovative marketing strategies. That year was the equivalent of ten years at another company. I secured a seven-figure investment in 48 hours, got to sit the other side of the table from Jeff Bezos, and be a part of watching his brilliance at work, while laying the foundations for what became one of the fastest-growing profitable divisions of Amazon.
Everyone asks me what it was like to work at Amazon and whether all the stories are true. I share examples in both of my books Thoughtfully Ruthless and Rapid Growth, Done Right.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Am I at a company where I am learning at the rate of dog years or even Amazon years?
- Did I make more than a years worth of progress in the last year?
- What about making more than a months worth of progress in the last month? ...or week... or yesterday?
Until you get specific enough and detailed enough consistently - your progress will not improve.
Ask your team - "How can I help so that we can make more than a days worth of progress today?"
That is how you hold the bar for performance high enough for Rapid Growth.
Dedicated to growing your business,
Val
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