Decoding “The Game of Career” : Part 6- What is your CSQ?

Please read the previous blog –  Know Your Players to understand the context better.

What is CSQ?  I just coined this word to make you understand your score in your current career. CSQ (Career Success Quotient) is simply the score expected to win vs your score. This is very simple. And let me explain.

Let’s say you are in the first 5 years of your career. In those early years, what is mostly required and expected is technical competency (any field) and ability to work hard to delivery the work. Let’s say the weightage/score is 50 and 50. So depending upon your technical competency and your effort you know your score. Life is very easy right?.

Now move to 5-10 yrs range. Here you are expected few more things like people management skills and little bit networking skills. So the expected score gets distributed among these based on the importance. Observe how the weightage changes here. It will get very interesting further.

Once you are in the 10-15 & 15-20 yrs zones, you are required to “manage” many things.  Slowly the games becomes complex. You need to have ability to market/sell your work, build personal brand ( people need to know who you are), managing internal politics and most importantly you need to “align” properly. Align with your organization culture, your unit and your boss and his boss and his boss.

It will be altogether different game when you get into senior positions. It requires completely different “talents” to win the game. The game becomes very intense. Not every one can play this game. That’s why very few can go to the top.

Did you know notice the 180 degree shift from your where you have started in terms of what is required?. Don’t look at any thing (alignment, politics, etc) in the negative shade. This is how things work on the ground. Take any field whether sports, politics, business, movie industry and every where there are different kind of players required based on the game you are playing.

Above table is just a framework for you to understand. Don’t debate on the skills required or scoring mechanism. Just take it as rough example.

What is the benefit of this score? It will give you your career astrology. You come up with your table and derive your score. You will know why you are not growing or growing.  Not every would have the talent, interest, focus and  priority to grow in career and win .  It is all based on your biology, beliefs, psychology & philosophy of your life. But the point is you get the clarity (I hope) from your score.

YK