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The Career Ladder Isn’t In The Office
By Sean Johnson

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My college mentor grew up in a poor African American family in Alabama. He managed to be the first in his family to get into college, attending West Point. He was a decorated officer before getting his MBA at Harvard. When I met him, he ran economic development in Colorado Springs.

When I asked him what he most attributed his success to, he said it was because he started reading and never stopped.

He believed knowledge was the key to getting what you wanted in life. So much so that his life goal was to build libraries in underprivileged communities like the one he grew up in.

He always asked job applicants what book they were currently reading. The A players were folks who could answer without hesitation. They usually were in the middle of 3 of 4 books, and at least one of them was professional in nature.

Reading gives you a huge head start on your peers who don’t.

You’re more likely to identify strategies and tactics from other industries that might work in your company.

You’re more likely to avoid making common pitfalls that otherwise would only come with experience.

You’re able to transfer that knowledge in your organization, creating new capabilities for your company.

And you’re more interesting to talk to.

It’s unlikely you’re going to have a conversation at a networking event about the 4 P’s of marketing or some other concept you picked up in your textbooks. But it’s very likely you’ll have a conversation about the long tail, or the 10,000 hour rule, or the build-measure-learn loop.

Anthony Robbins used to say that if you spend 1 hour a day learning about a particular topic, you’d know more about that subject than 99.999% of the world within a year.

Even if you have only 30 minutes a night, you can easily read a book a week. Maybe you’re not an expert, but I guarantee you’ll know more than your peers.

Maybe you don’t know where to start. At the end of this post I’ve included a list of my favorites to get you started. One less excuse.

Read. Take good notes. Repeat.