{"id":558,"date":"2010-05-14T05:32:17","date_gmt":"2010-05-14T12:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=558"},"modified":"2010-05-14T05:34:10","modified_gmt":"2010-05-14T12:34:10","slug":"it-isnt-the-what-it-is-the-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=558","title":{"rendered":"It isn’t the ‘what’ it is the ‘who’"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking about family, work, career, accomplishments, goals … heady stuff like that.\u00a0 It has translated into several drives into the office in silence … no music, no radio … and many evenings on the back porch staring out over the greenway that separates our small cluster from the houses on the next block over.<\/p>\n

Most of this reflection has, I think, been productive.\u00a0 But some has bordered on the thumb-sucking, navel gazing and Hamletesque type angst that most humans are prone to.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I got some unexpected help and insight from a very dear friend who now is a big muckety-muck at one of the nation’s leading career services firm.\u00a0 She mentioned a conversation with another important muckety-muck … a person from Harvard … who said that most people get it all wrong.\u00a0 They frame the entire career thing the wrong way.\u00a0 What she said I’ll remember for a long, long time.<\/p>\n

“The critical question is not ‘what<\/strong>‘ you want to be … it is ‘who<\/strong>‘ you want to be.”<\/p>\n

That says so much in just fifteen words.\u00a0 It is more the motivation than the act.\u00a0 It is more the idea than the product.\u00a0 It is more the character than the career.\u00a0 It is more the identity than the label.<\/p>\n

I thought about my clients.\u00a0 And I realized that their challenge was eerily the same.\u00a0 Many were all bollixed up trying to figure out the “what” … when their real problem was the “who.”\u00a0 It wasn’t the product set, the service package, the channel strategy that was their real problem.\u00a0 Their real problem was that they didn’t have a clear sense of who they were and what they stood for.<\/p>\n

These fifteen words haven’t solved my personal life’s riddle.\u00a0 But they’ve allowed me to see things much more clearly.<\/p>\n

So I ask you …<\/p>\n

Not what do you do … but …<\/p>\n

Who are you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking about family, work, career, accomplishments, goals … heady stuff like that.\u00a0 It has translated into several drives into the office in silence … no music, no radio … and many evenings on the back porch staring out over the greenway that separates our small cluster from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=558"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":562,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558\/revisions\/562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}