Positioning Yourself

Greetings!

Yesterday I took the Graduate Management Admissions Council test which was pretty much the last step needed in my quest to get an MBA.

For those who know me, you are probably asking - why an MBA now? Sometimes I ask myself the same question, but in nearly two years of self reflection I came up with the following assessment:

- You are either part of the victims or the victors. For the majority of us that are right there in the middle just trying to do our thing, we are either positive or negatively impacted by a victim or a victor. For the most part, victors act as catalysts, for things good and bad. Victims are sucking the life out of those in the middle because the "middlers" get caught in a victim's weave of drama somehow and manage to come through unscathed. Middlers are also the buffer to the victors so most times they are not bogged down with the ills of the victims. I decided it is time to be a victor which leads me to point 2.

- The working world is caught up in letters. My day job is in healthcare. When you see employees' names at the bottom of their e-mails or on their business cards, they have five or six sets of initials behind their name - RD, RN, BSN, CPM, MPH, ABC, XYZ. Intellectually these initials amount to alphabet soup when you don't have the swagger to back them up, but those in the position to promote you are desperately seeking some indication that you MAY be smart. So whether I decide to stay where I am or be an "expert" either as a professor, or on even some tacky daytime talk show, those letters will take me a long way.

- Right now, I am all about the elevation of my purse. I need money to be able to take care of mine, save for retirement and exist IN COMFORT in a world that is becoming increasingly expensive. Bad part about that is salaries are not moving proportionally with these price hikes! The only way to be able to make quantum leaps in salary is to leave a company, hit the lottery, OR arm yourself with those perceived assets that make you more valuable in the eyes of the people pulling the purse strings!

With all that said my thoughts are around positioning - build a skill set, go or return to school, meet great people that can help you enter a field or give you valuable information that will help you move to where you want to be - great ways to position yourself in the place you would like to be. An MBA is NOT a silver bullet, it is a tactic in a list of strategies that will ultimately empower me to write my own meal/travel/wealth/retirement ticket. Find your tactic and move toward it.

With that I wish you all the best today and always.

G