In his new book, Career Intensity: Business Strategy for Workplace Warriors and Entrepreneurs, David Lorenzo challenges readers to channel their passion into a competitive career advantage
Don’t call David Lorenzo a “workplace warrior.” In the vocabulary of this business performance strategist, a workplace warrior is someone who just puts in his time on the job, watching the clock and collecting his paycheck. Lorenzo is anything but a nine-to-fiver, as evidenced by his meteoric career and his passion for motivating the workplace warriors of this world to embrace a process of continuous self-improvement and engage in what he terms “career intensity.”
From his humble start as a hotel bellman, Lorenzo rose through the ranks of the hospitality industry, becoming a hotel general manager by the time he was 30. He ultimately became the vice president of Marriott’s corporate housing brand, ExecuStay by Marriott, where he grew the brand’s annual revenues in the Tri-State area from $1 million to over $50 million in just three years. Along the way, Lorenzo earned an MBA from the Lubin School of Business at Pace University and a masters degree in Strategic Communications from Columbia University
Then, in the aftermath of the horrors of September 11, 2001, Lorenzo watched as the brand he had built crumbled. Thirty percent of Marriott’s apartments were inaccessible due to their proximity to Ground Zero, and within three weeks, a full 80 percent of their residents decided to relocate outside of New York City. Once Lorenzo and his team had reduced the staff by two-thirds and stabilized the business, he says, “I realized I needed a change. I could no longer come to work everyday and face the constant reminder that the great business we had built had been torn from us.” In early 2002, Lorenzo joined The Gallup Organization, where he became a partner specializing in integrated marketing communications, brand management, and human capital management.
Throughout his career, Lorenzo has taken note of the strategies and continuous improvement models that helped companies chart paths toward success. He has also studied the mindsets and attitudes of the movers and shakers in those companies – the super-achievers who seem to have a competitive advantage over the rank and file. He has found that highly successful individuals employ many of the same mechanisms that companies use to position themselves in the marketplace. Using this as his framework, Lorenzo has formulated and mapped out personal strategies that virtually every person can use to take control of his career, gain personal fulfillment, and enjoy financial success. Those strategies can be found in Lorenzo’s soon to be published book, Career Intensity (Ogman Press, 2006).
Shifting the Paradigm
The theory behind Lorenzo’s career strategies lies in the changing nature of the business world. Past generations could spend their entire work lives with a single employer that looked out for their employees’ best interests in exchange for company loyalty. In contrast, businesses today concentrate on both their current bottom line and their ability to sustain growth and profitability for the long term. As a result, the focus has shifted from businesses balancing the needs of their employees against the needs of their bottom lines to a nearly exclusive focus on how the individual can best serve the needs of the company.
Who, then, is ensuring that the needs of the employee are met in this “Individual Economy”? According to Lorenzo, when it comes to managing their careers, today’s successful businesspeople – even those in corporate America – are thinking like entrepreneurs. “They don’t wait for a roadmap to guide them or for a supervisor to tell them what to do,” he says. “They work to increase their individual value and differentiate themselves from their competition by staying out in front of the latest initiatives.”
According to Lorenzo, these achievers continuously analyze their performances and adjust and improve them accordingly. “In two words, they implement the practice of career intensity,” he says. “In using this approach, they are rewarded with promotions and advancement. In effect, they are building equity in themselves – and that equity is portable.” He postulates that this is why today, a successful 40-year career is likely to include tenure at multiple companies and a personal competitive advantage gained from focusing on value creation through continuous individual improvement.
In order to emulate the success of today’s top achievers, Lorenzo advocates that businessmen and businesswomen position themselves in such a way as to generate individual value within their organizations. “People in the workforce fall into one of four categories,” he says. “They are either workplace warriors, management mavericks, intrepreneurs, or entrepreneurs. Only two of those categories generate individual value – the intrepreneurs and the entrepreneurs.”
Lorenzo describes workplace warriors as the backbone of any large organization. The workplace warrior puts in his time and may provide essential services to his company, but has little individual value. Although he has little tolerance for risk and has a perception of job security, the workplace warrior is subject to staff reduction from budget cuts or outsourcing. “With a little training and development, the workplace warrior is replaceable,” says Lorenzo.
While management mavericks are not risk-adverse, they have a tendency to move forward and implement solutions without the support of team members and superiors. Lorenzo says that a management maverick is often perceived as a rogue, whose value is often misunderstood or unrecognized by those in authority. “Often, her own perception of the value she is creating is greater than the perceptions of her supervisors or customers,” Lorenzo says.
According to Lorenzo, the intrepreneur generates tremendous value within an organization. He’s similar to an entrepreneur in many respects, although his low tolerance for risk makes him feel more comfortable working in a corporate environment. “The future is bright for the intrepreneur,” says Lorenzo, “since he consistently develops new ways to improve the value of his company’s business, is a master persuader, and gains advocates along the way.”
The entrepreneur is also a value-creator, although instead of creating value for a company, she creates value for her customers. She typically demonstrates a high level of risk tolerance that comes from the confidence she has in herself and in her team. “The entrepreneur has the ability to change or disrupt an entire industry,” says Lorenzo. “For example, a drycleaner who provides same-day service and stays open until 9:00 p.m. to catch people returning home late from work could blow her competition out of the water.” Lorenzo cites computer mavericks Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as examples of entrepreneurs who created and continue to change an industry on a global scale.
Taking Hold of the Reins
In Career Intensity, Lorenzo advocates workplace warriors and management mavericks taking the reins of their careers and moving into value-creating positions as intrepreneurs and entrepreneurs. To do this, Lorenzo says that individuals need to commit to what he terms a cycle of continuous improvement. “The cycle begins with the process of discovery and learning, continues on to applying what you’ve learned to your career, and then concludes with you marketing yourself to the world in a way that communicates your ability to generate value. The trick is not to do this once, but to do it in a perpetual cycle,” Lorenzo says.
Once that commitment has been made, the person striving for career intensity must overcome a series of internalized roadblocks that has kept her from achieving her dreams. According to Lorenzo, she must first take responsibility for her future. “Successful people begin to take responsibility for their future by following their passion and making their passion their career,” he says. Second, she must overcome what Lorenzo terms the “Five Irrational Fears” that prevent people from creating their own destiny. “The fear of the unknown, the fear of failure, the fear of commitment, the fear of disapproval, and the fear of success are irrational fears that have been learned. You can unlearn them by ridding yourself of negative thought processes and replacing them with visions of your future success,” he says.
Third, the person developing career intensity must engage in outcome-driven thinking. “Successful people approach every interaction with a desired outcome. They have an idea of what they want from each meeting, each phone call, and each e-mail,” says Lorenzo. “In essence, outcome-driven thinking comes from an awareness that life is a collection of finite opportunities, and that you must make the most of each moment.”
Fourth, those driven by career intensity harness their imaginations to shape their daily activities, to focus on their goals, and to act as if they have already achieved their goals. “The more you practice this process of acting as if you are in the role you seek, the more natural your transition into that role will become,” says Lorenzo. “Successful people acted in ways appropriate to the roles they would assume years before they achieved their success. When they got there, they felt and behaved as if they had been doing it all their lives.”
Embracing Strategic Thinking
The failure to think strategically – to see a clear path through the mental haze that surrounds a decision – when faced with a career-related or life-changing choice can mean the difference between rousing success and dismal failure. “If you aspire to greatness, the process of strategic thinking must become second nature to you,” says Lorenzo. “By examining the implications of your choices and analyzing the options available to you before you make decisions, you will develop a competitive advantage in business and in life.”
In Career Intensity, Lorenzo examines the five factors that influence the thinking of super-achievers: time, control, experience, the unknown, and outcome finality. Time constraints can compromise an investigation into the underlying causes of an issue or limit the ability to try out a hypothesis, while too much time can result in “analysis paralysis,” or the Sisyphean attempt to research a topic exhaustively. An assessment of which elements of a situation are within the control of the decision maker can direct a plan of action, while experience can be useful in understanding the historical implications of a decision. Understanding that which is unknown allows a decision maker to make contingency plans for ambiguous situations, while outcome finality – or the implications of the decision – can create emotional consequences for the decision maker.
Strategic thinking also comes into play when setting goals. Lorenzo has found that top performers take control of their careers by prioritizing important elements, building goals around them, and then making those goals actionable. The accumulation of these actions over time builds into the achievement of their long-term objectives.
In Career Intensity, Lorenzo outlines the optimal goal-setting paradigm, which he terms the 3-9-27 Pyramid.” The first tier consists of three overarching goals that are achievable over a timeframe of ten years. The second tier is comprised of three sets of three contributory goals, all of which can be achieved within one year. Each set supports one of the three long-term goals. The final tier consists of nine sets of three weekly action items, with each set supporting one of the nine contributory goals. According to Lorenzo, “The goals in the 3-9-27 Pyramid are integrated to build upon one another. The regular action that people take towards their goals drives their behavior. This approach helps create a wave of momentum that leads to increased focus and accelerated goal achievement.”
Gaining the Competitive Advantage
Highly successful individuals employ a number of strategies to give them a competitive advantage. First, they combine hard work and impeccable timing to seize moments of opportunities that advance their careers. In other words, they create their own luck. “Over the years, I have found that top performers – whether they were entrepreneurs, company executives, superstars of the academic world, or emerging leaders in business and public service – share four common qualities that attract success like a magnet,” says Lorenzo. “They take calculated risks, they create a positive environment for themselves and everyone around them, they work hard at making things simple, and they spend their energy on the few tasks that will garner the greatest results.”
Second, top performers are well prepared for every interaction – even those that are seemingly random. “High value individuals go the extra mile when they prepare for a meeting or event,” says Lorenzo. “They know what they want, they research what the other party wants, and they plan and execute a call to action that is effective for both sides.”
Third, super-achievers create a personal brand and market themselves, much in the same way companies position themselves and their products in the marketplace. “When you use personal branding to define yourself in the marketplace – either within your company or as the head of your own company – you differentiate yourself from your competition by creating value for those who use your services,” says Lorenzo. “Through value creation and marketing, you’ll create a demand for your services, which ultimately will attract success.”
According to Lorenzo, the most valuable – and least expensive – form of marketing for individuals is word of mouth. Positioning your personal brand and generating buzz can lead to a myriad of career advancement opportunities. The key people to reach in order to begin generating buzz are those that Lorenzo calls “repeaters.” He says, “While it’s true that each one of us shares information with others all the time, the average person may share a story or anecdote with two or three people. A repeater will share a story with 100 or more people.” Even better than repeaters are “boosters,” who have a public platform from which to promote ideas, products, and services. “Members of the press, celebrities, Wall Street analysts, church pastors, and sports figures often enjoy this type of status,” says Lorenzo. “These boosters amplify your message in both volume and stature.”
Fourth, highly successful individuals are master persuaders. “Intrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, and everyone who aspires to become either must be able to communicate and sell their ideas to others,” says Lorenzo. Whether making a case for financing, building a team, or motivating employees, it is necessary to learn the art of persuasion. Lorenzo is careful to emphasize the difference between persuasion, manipulation, and coercion. He says that persuasion means influencing the opinion of another person, while manipulation implies that a devious act is involved in the persuasion process. Coercion, on the other hand, implies that force or intimidation is involved while influencing the other party to make a decision. “There is no place for manipulation or coercion in the process of selling yourself,” he says emphatically.
The Bottom Line
In Career Intensity, Lorenzo outlines the universal drivers of career value upon which all workplace warriors or management mavericks who aspire to be successful intrepreneurs or entrepreneurs should focus. They include being persistent, adopting a strategic mindset, developing and working toward meaningful goals, and using preparation to take advantage of opportunity. He places equal emphasis on demonstrating and promoting the value that is created. These drivers of value perception include leveraging the personal brand, building a web of advocates to get the word out, and pitching ideas to others in ways that will make them more receptive to the personal branding message. Ultimately, though, Lorenzo’s message is simple. “I want to help people create value, capitalize on opportunity, and always let the world know how great they truly are!”
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