Nico is about to lose his job.  He does not realize it, but his company set him up to fail, and he drank the Kool-Aid. He was the best account exec in the firm, and he had been there the longest, so when it came time to hire a Sales Manager, he was first in line. He accepted the promotion and it has been all downhill from there. How can this be?

Some of the best employees are graduates from the College of Common Sense. Who should play drums in the band? The person who plays drums. Who should manage the sales team? The person the sales team turns to with questions, concerns and new ideas. Managers are born, not made.  They are the people who quietly nudge others in the right direction, with or without the manager title.

Sweat?  Sacrifice?  Compromise?  What is the real secret to success?  Theories abound, but the answer is probably all of the above.  According to those who know, success seems to be a combination of many factors, with sweat, sacrifice and compromise heading up the list.

Success requires sweat.  Two kinds:  the perspiration of day after day of hard work and the sweaty palms of fear, anxiety and worry.  Thanks to air conditioned offices and good morning hygiene, most people don’t leave their work stations literally sweating at the end of the day.  However, the satisfied feeling of having invested a whole day’s time and attention and energy to a project or assignment has the same effect as a long run or heavy lifting; there is pain and relief at the same time, a sort of natural high because you’ve accomplished something. 

Those sweaty palms are actually another sign of success.  Anxiety is a healthy emotion that leads people to double check their work, think carefully through plans and ask better questions.  Total confidence is totally useless.  The only certainties in life are supposed to be death and taxes, and these days even death is something that can be reversed.  Assuming you know less than you should, that nervous feeling can lead you to discover new, better information.  Anxiety channeled into motivation separates those who want to succeed from those who do.

Career Coaches can spend half of a good day encouraging people to use the internet for job searching, and the other half telling them to turn it off.  Like Cajun cooking, loud music and sunshine, too much of a good thing is too much.  Once a person knows how to LinkIn, Facebook, Google and navigate a few job boards, what was once intimidating becomes a comfortable bad habit.  Comfortable, so it becomes part of the routine; bad, because it is not especially effective in and of itself.  When looking for new work, for clients to sell to or for ways to get ahead, setting boundaries can be as important as setting goals. 

Set a time boundary.  During summer vacation, my dear Grandma Desi takes care of a houseful of grandchildren and has only a few tough rules, including, “No TV until 3:00.”  To a kid, this is agonizing.  For about ten minutes.  And then, suddenly, there are all kinds of adventures to be had.  Setting a time boundary on internet use can lead you to find all kinds of ways to look for work. 

In the book The Question Behind the Question, John G. Miller describes the importance of taking personal responsibility and shifting blame statements like Who broke the copier?  to solution statements, How can I fix this thing?  Today’s job market has a lot of people playing the blame game: nobody’s hiring, I don’t have the right skills, and it’s too late to learn.

It is never too late.  Taylor Cisco at Contata Solutions, a tech company in Minneapolis, wants people to know they can be successful, no matter where they come from.  Cisco suspects that lack of training is causing the deepening divide between the haves and have nots.  A shift in thinking is the first step to bridging this dangerous gap.

Cisco is VP of Digital Content and Director of Interactive Marketing at Contata.  He explains, “I’m a young guy, early thirties.  I don’t come from a fancy background.  I was a musician in high school and wanted to be the next Jimi Hendrix.  I never thought I’d end up in marketing.”  But he did, and he knows the same success he enjoys can come to others, if people only open up to the opportunities around them.