Speech copywriting
As a recent recruit - at a high level in the company - our client wanted to introduce himself to his new subordinates with a good-humoured, positive and with luck helpful collection of 'tips for the top' assembled over the course of his long and successful career.
Ten tips for the top
Good afternoon
Thank you for coming. I've been asked to talk to you today about what it takes to make it - to become successful, rich, famous, glamorous. Well, successful, anyway. My first bit of advice to you would be this: have rich parents. Many things can help you go far in this world, but not much beats a daddy with dollars.
Assuming that like me, you've blown that one, what now? Well, I'm neither a billionaire nor a household name, but I started out with nothing and now I'm doing a fair bit better than ok, so I guess I might have something worth passing on.
When I was a young man, with few qualifications and no real sense of direction, I made no fewer than eleven 'false starts', at one company after another. Every time I started at the bottom. Every time I put in the effort and the dedication to start working my way up the greasy pole. And every time I ended up falling off, and having to go and start at the bottom somewhere else. Which brings me to the first lesson I learned.
Tip one: don't be precious.
Don't be too proud to start at the bottom. The world doesn't owe you a living - don't expect to get everything you want straightaway. You know you're a genius, but no-one else does - yet. Be prepared to do some donkey work on your way to getting recognised.
Doing mundane work can be valuable in any case - not that you'd want to do it all the time. But I read recently, for example, that Sir Terry Leahy, the boss of Tesco, spends a week every year stacking shelves. Why? Because Tesco can't find enough shelf-stackers? No, because he reckons that if people at his level don't stack shelves now and again, they'll lose touch with staff and customers, and that's when businesses start to go rotten from the top down. I wonder how many shelves the Chairmen of Sainsbury's or Marks & Spencer have stacked in recent years...
Now I'd be lying if I said starting at the bottom time after time was fun. It wasn't. At times it got pretty damn dispiriting. There I was, working hard, thinking I was doing alright, and then bang: I discovered my boss wasn't seeing it quite the same way. And losing out that way, time and again....well, it can start to feel a bit like you're always going back to square one. But of course you're not.
The fact is, trying out lots of different alternatives in this way can be one of the most valuable working experiences you ever have in your career.
I said a moment ago that the first stage of your brilliant career is preparation. If you're anything like me, you'll start out with loads of energy, loads of enthusiasm, loads of ambition...but no clear sense of direction. Do you know exactly what you want to do with your life? If you do, good for you. You're one of those unusual and blessed people who, to use the common expression, have a vocation. Great! Seriously. I've always envied those people who always knew they were going to be a vet or never wanted to do anything but fly an aeroplane. But I'm not one of them, and nor I think are most other people. So my next tip - assuming you don't have such a clear vocation - is:
Tip two: try different things.
When you try on lots of different hats, it enables you to develop a better feel for which one really suits you. I had eleven in my early days, remember. None of them fitted me perfectly. But I learned a lot from how different ones fitted - how well they suited me; where they pinched. Some of the pinching was, frankly, uncomfortable. I found out that other people could do much more easily – and better – things I'd always thought I was good at. A sobering realisation. But I also discovered skills I never thought I had - skills I might well never have discovered if a new role hadn't brought them into play.
Doing new and different things forces you to face challenges you would never thought of taking on - and when you rise above them the feeling of satisfaction is immense. Even if everything goes pear-shaped, never forget the old Calvinist saying: 'Good work is never wasted'. You may not see the payoff today, or tomorrow; you may not even recognise it for what it is when it comes. But every time you apply yourself to something, you learn skills and develop your character in ways that will stand you in good stead whatever you go on to do later. Which brings me to my:
Tip three: keep learning.
You may think you're at square one in your new job, but you're not. Because you'll have brought with you all the things you've learned from your previous 'false starts'.
And that means everything from little tricks with Microsoft Excel that can help you make friends and influence people in your new role, right through to the most important skills you'll need in your career ahead: interpersonal skills. If there's one key factor that determines how far and how high you'll fly, it's the people you spend your time with. The trendy term these days is 'networking'; in the old days, there used to be a saying: 'it's not what you know, it's who you know'.
But whatever you call it, the bottom line is clear: no-one gets to the top on their own. It's the people you work with and the way you work with them that determines how far you go in life. So even when you're at the very bottom, you should be constantly, consciously and deliberately developing the people-skills you'll need in the years ahead.
The ability to be able to gauge people quickly and accurately. To know who's worth spending time with and why. To tell - at a glance, almost - the clever from the dumb, the honest from the sneaky, the trustworthy from the one who'd sell their granny if the price was right.
Who's all talk and no action? Who's always full of big ideas, but nowhere to be found when it comes to putting them into action? Who's quiet and shy - but every word they do speak is right on the money? Learning about people is the most important learning you'll ever do, and there's no better place or time to do it than during your preparation phase.
You're learning these skills right now. And they will stand you in good stead, in your career ahead. Even your failures contain the seeds of future success, in the form of the lessons you learn in the course of failing.
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