Want to Become an Executive? Choose Your Manager — Not The Job.
And other lessons shared by Jack Duffy, a vice president at AT&T
I had the good fortune post-graduation of choosing to work for AT&T, who offered me the opportunity for a career. And 37 years later, I have a lot to be thankful for, particularly during the holidays. I want to share some of my learnings from my very diverse career.
Reflecting on what has been most important, I would boil it down to work ethic — work harder than anyone else — and networking — leverage your work ethic to become a top performer, and then based on your performance, build a set of supporters of your career. Always have a very positive attitude, a commitment to positive leadership (a can-do attitude, flexibility, rolling with the punches), and never forget your roots. Treat all people with respect (and give back!).
I started with high ambition and literally no bounds on how hard I would work. But I quickly learned that my success was very dependent on other more seasoned peers. And trust me, an ambitious “high potential” young college grad is not very appealing to people who had to claw hard just to make it from a union to management position. So I started “tagging along” with the seasoned team members and, when given high priority projects, I always told my management that they were the reason for the success. I realized that treating people with respect, recognizing their accomplishments and value, and building relationships was most important. My peers became my supporters. I also never lost sight of always delivering for the team and the organization. I had a maxim that every year one of my boss’s top three achievements was something that my team and I delivered for them.
If you want to become an executive and that’s an ambition early in your career, networking and job choices are crucial.
In college, did you pick the course or the professor? In business, my belief is you always choose the boss/leadership — not the job. Working for top leaders has two-fold value, first you learn role model behavior, you see by example what is expected of key leaders and, if you perform for them, they also become your supporters for advancement. The “selection criteria” include their ability to teach/coach, their reputation as tough and going places and, again, assuming you continue to deliver for them, your potential to benefit from their successes (coat tails). Using this approach, I was very fortunate (some luck is always involved) to have many amazing leader/bosses. Bosses of mine became president of our company, CEOs of Kodak, Lucent, Priceline.com, the American Red Cross, Virgin Mobile and Gateway computers. Along the way, they rewarded my performance with continually greater responsibilities. This was not easy, and it does eventually come down to this.
There are a lot of excellent performers, but ultimately someone has to want to promote you — and that is earned by continually delivering, building trust, relationships, and a very strong reputation.
There is one last key, and that is a total commitment to continuous learning. I am in the technology business, and the changes my company and industry have gone through are significant. If I wasn’t totally committed to change and constantly learning I would have been left behind a long time ago.
Jack Duffy is a 1979 Gettysburg College alum and the vice president of service management (Eastern US) at AT&T, Enhanced Client Services. Read more:
