Career Coach - Column with Bo Graesborg

the american novelist john Irving once contrasted cooking with love, He said that if you use good ingredients and don't take any shortcuts, you can usually cook something very good. Whereas with love, you can have all the ingredients and give it time and care and still get nothing. What about careers? Or they're more like cooking or more like love. If you do everything right, will you succeed without good ingredients? It is really hard to have a great career. Being good at what you do is one such ingredient, so is being able to connect well with others and finding and committing to your ambition to varying degrees. All those ingredients are homegrown, so to speak, they are within your control, so work on them. If a strong career really is what you want, they will take you far. They are, However, no guarantee. The harsh truth is that in the end, careers are more like love than cooking, it is possible to do everything right and still get nothing. We can all point to colleagues who are competent, well connected and ambitious, but who still seems stuck, they do everything right and yet things are not happening for them. If you have a friend in this situation here is how you can help them. First ask some tough love questions about the initial diagnosis, for example, are you sure you are competent enough? What can you do to repair your relationship with the admittedly psychotic head of production? What do you really want? What are you willing to do to get it? If this conversation really does leave only elements beyond your friends control, such as chance, luck and timing. You tell them to keep calm and gently guide them away from the strategy of banging their head against the brick wall and towards acceptance of the things that just are remind your friend that while doing everything right is no guarantee it is still the best path to success. You could also suggest taking up cooking, which, according to Irving, can keep a person who tries hard sane.