Saturday, October 3, 2009

I was once told by an acquaintance of mine that there are three types of people at business school: (1) hunters, (2) skinners, and (3) cooks. Hunters are those with a burning desire to be on the front lines. For example, these types most enjoy being face-to-face with clients, winning new business or generally being wherever the action is happening and being wherever the sparks are most likely to fly. Skinners are those who seem to most enjoy synthesizing raw data into slightly more manageable streams that serve organizational needs and serve as important conduits between an organizations internal and external environments. Then there are cooks. Cooks are those who prefer to keep the back-end business simmering (perhaps these are those most likely to 'cook the books'). They may most enjoy the transactional aspects of managing their business day-to-day but may not have the burning instinct to boldly charge into an entirely new sector or forge an entirely new strategy for tackling an adjacent industry, for example.

As a 2nd year, I can vouch that it has been incredibly important to really figure out where you fit in the organizational landscape or at least where you most want to be. Because if you are in a place or working for an organization that meshes well with your natural (or trait-level for all you organizational psychologists out there) disposition, you are more likely be most successful in the long term. The reason is because as leaders, managers or even in our day-to-day lives we all tend to settle into a natural rhythm over time that dictates our most comfortable pace. Just like running on a treadmill, we start by tinkering with our speed up and then down or maybe first down and then up, but eventually we find a pace that we can maintain for the entirety of our workout. It seems to follow that this is analogous to our careers in some ways. To the extent our corporate environments or workplaces generally support those things that come naturally to us or at least support a pace that we can handle over the long-term, then we are more likely to be successful than would be the case if we were in an environment moving at a snails pace or exceeding a pace with which we can comfortably keep up.

My point is this: figure out who you are and the sooner the better. If not before business school, at least by the start of your 2nd year because the choices you make in your second year are those that you will need to commit to for at least your first couple of years out of school. So why not take the time to make the best decisions possible and leverage insights with regards to what most makes you tick? Instead of going wherever you can make the most money, or entering an organization at the most envious position, or having as much positional authority and control as possible to start, why not just figure out where you can best be your most authentic self. Start there and I think if we do that, then we are all even more likely to find the long-term success than we could have ever engineered in advance. Your Cornell MBA is going to open a whole of doors to the most savory, sumptuous and downright delectable opportunities that most of us could have even imagined. But the 2nd year requires making choices and my recommendation is to make the best choices possible for your long-term success.