Career Edition

Before starting college, I anticipated that my roommates would be excited to learn as much as possible about everything. To my surprise, their goals were quite different.

One roommate planned a four-year vacation during which he would do minimal academic work and maximum partying. Another roommate primarily looked for new experiences, tried many non-academic activities, and was satisfied with so-so grades. A third roommate yearned to follow in his father's career footsteps and worked long hours to accomplish that result.

I was surprised that some other classmates wanted very little from attending college. This low expectation contrasted with what I had read in many biographies about highly successful people: They were always looking for bigger challenges and ways to accomplish more with existing tasks.

Despite having high expectations, these successful people had often surprised themselves by how much they accomplished. As one success after another followed, they developed a zest for leaping into seemingly "impossible" tasks.

American statesman Benjamin Franklin is a good example of what I mean about unexpectedly great accomplishments. He achieved breakthroughs in so many different fields that most people cannot understand how he could have possibly done so much. Franklin was a:

-- successful entrepreneur who established a highly profitable printing business,

-- visionary scientist who developed important theories and discoveries about electricity,

-- practical inventor who developed helpful items we use today such as bifocals, the lightning rod, and the Franklin stove,

-- popular and influential writer who penned Poor Richard's Almanac,

-- civic leader who established the first public lending library and the first fire department in Pennsylvania,

-- revolutionary statesman who helped found the United States under democratic principles,

-- persuasive diplomat who attracted the military and naval resources and support from France that permitted the American Revolution to succeed, and

-- progressive opinion-leader in opposing slavery.

Franklin is easy to understand. He was committed to an enthusiastic exploration of whatever captured his interest and could potentially benefit many people. He achieved a life filled with the joy of continually attempting and accomplishing bigger and better things that have improved the lives of billions.

Does that kind of life appeal to you? It should. Why settle for anything less?

Unfortunately, many people don't try much because they fear that they lack the talent to continually accomplish bigger and better results, but Franklin was only trying to do more than he had accomplished before.

You can easily join him in the pursuit of achievements. His perspective can be successfully applied by those with only the most modest of talents in a few areas: The quantity of your efforts to continually improve make a greater difference in how much is accomplished and how much satisfaction is gained than does how much talent you started with in life. In time, modest talents can be developed by good judgment based on understanding experience to make very fine decisions.

Let's look at a modern-day improver who has humble opinions about his talents to see how his life was invigorated and improved by continually trying to accomplish bigger and better results. Dr. Dominic Cianflone is a first generation Canadian-Italian whose parents emigrated to Canada when they were quite young. Because his grandparents often cared for him and they knew little English, he grew up speaking Italian (his native language) and English (his second language) at home.

By making sports participation contingent on earning high grades, Dr. Cianflone's father successfully harnessed his son's love for playing sports into fine academic accomplishments. When Dr. Cianflone graduated from high school, he won two honors: a gold letter for combined academic and athletic accomplishment and a $250 check for excellence in business courses. Earning the money convinced him to concentrate on business in college and inspired him to accomplish more in that field.

As a youngster, Dr. Cianflone worked at several different jobs (including a paper route, being a disk jockey, and refereeing ice hockey matches). These high school work experiences taught him something valuable for his career: He was miserable while working for others but felt excited while being his own boss.

He realized that he is only happy while pushing himself to accomplish bigger and better things, an orientation that's difficult to maintain while working for someone else who will often just want you to do the same old things in the same old way with predictable results.

A college marketing professor taught Dr. Cianflone that "The more educated you are, the more you realize how much you never knew in the first place." From that perspective, learning is an excellent vantage point for seeing new opportunities to learn, to achieve, and to exceed your prior best.

Learning offers another important benefit: It's a continually humbling experience because you continually become more aware of your ignorance. Humility keeps you open to new ideas and new ways of doing things. On the other hand, successful learning also improves your confidence in eventual success: By persevering, even mistakes (after they are understood and corrected) point the way to important lessons needed to be grasped in order to achieve.

Dr. Cianflone pleasantly invigorated his life by continuing to learn. After graduating from college with an accounting major and a finance minor, he worked as a controller in a few organizations before deciding to earn an accounting designation and a graduate degree. A year after earning the prestigious Canadian Certified Management Accountant (CMA) designation, he earned his MBA in Strategic Leadership and Organisational Behaviour.

Dr. Cianflone next decided to become a consultant. After a successful initial engagement, he wanted to learn more about sales and chose to gain that knowledge through working. He worked in a business development role for a recruitment agency that placed accountants for temporary assignments, and he was happy to discover that he enjoyed sales.

He was soon invited to teach accounting and strategy, his academic passions. Dr. Cianflone happily picked up the teaching challenge. Since then, both his consulting practice and teaching opportunities have expanded. As a result of these experiences, he feels that his career has involved continually reinventing himself.

Having a modest view of his academic talents, Dr. Cianflone was thrilled to be asked to work with the world-class faculty of the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto. Teaching there expanded his concept of what he wanted to do: He decided to develop case books and write texts for his students.

What was next for new challenges? Dr. Cianflone had taken some MBA classes online and felt that an online doctorate could help him to improve his writing and help him learn how to publish case books and texts. He selected Rushmore University for his doctoral studies on the recommendation of a teaching colleague who had recently completed his Ph.D. degree there.

While earning a Ph.D. in Management Accounting and Strategic Leadership, Dr. Cianflone wrote major case studies and authored his first professional article for a Canadian journal for accounting and finance professionals. Since graduating, he has published a major book of management accounting and strategy cases and has begun working on a second edition.

How did earning a Ph.D. at Rushmore contribute to his success? Here is what Dr. Cianflone said:

"Learning and researching independently has motivated me to challenge my students and clients. I have developed a framework of analysis, research, and problem resolution which has positively impacted my teaching appointments and consultancy revenue. My clients see me as an expert in my fields and they do not hesitate to recommend me to others.

"The Oxford Tutorial Method was a very effective tool for me. It does, however, require a considerable amount of self-discipline and the ability to teach oneself, through focused research and compilation of data and ideas."

Dr. Cianflone was honored to become a professor at Rushmore. He has enjoyed his online teaching experiences at the university while lecturing at the Schulich School of Business at York University, the University of Toronto Mississauga, Ryerson University, and Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada.

As time passes, we can expect to see many more case books from Dr. Cianflone, continuing self study, and excellent encouragement for and support of many superb students who, like Dr. Cianflone, enjoy accomplishing bigger and better things. Consistent with his philosophy of accomplishing more, Dr. Cianflone has decided to pursue yet another designation -- this time in the area of supply chain and logistics.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Would you like to live a more exciting and rewarding life that others will use as inspiration and follow your example? All you have to do is to begin making efforts each day to improve on your best past performances and to take on new challenges that interest you. If you expand your learning bit by bit, you'll make faster progress than you ever imagined.

Why not give yourself a chance? All you have to lose is your low and inaccurate opinion of yourself!

About the Author:

Donald W. Mitchell is a professor at Rushmore University, an online school, where he helps students learn how to create world-class breakthroughs for businesses and humanitarian organizations. For more information about ways to engage in fruitful lifelong learning at Rushmore to increase your effectiveness and improve your career, visit http://www.rushmore.edu

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