Potential and shoulda woulda coulda doesn't cut it in the real world.
Yeah, it actually does. People who are interested in your future potential rather than what you've achieved in the past will look at how you went about things rather than actual results. Arguably the decisions you made and why you made them are orders of magnitude more important than the actual outcome, at least in terms of assessing future performance potential.
You know how when you have a job interview and they ask you about your past experience, a good interviewer will ask you to walk through how you achieved something and why you made those choices? That's because they're more interested in how you think and act than the specific results that you achieved.
Just because someone happened to be at Apple during the original iPhone development doesn't make them amazing. It's what they worked on and how they went about it that will tell you whether they actually contributed or are just one of those mooches that mails it in every day and then jumps on the bandwagon when the project finishes.
I find it interesting that you're apparently in a managerial position and you still think that results trump how you got top the result. It's an issue that many managers come up against, and it leads to some pretty nasty stuff. You end up blaming the messenger a lot (because making the right decisions and failing is in your eyes a failure), and rewarding people who simply happened to be in the right place at the right time (because being a lazy moron and getting results is a success). Ultimately it leads to a mindset where you divorce yourself entirely from the people behind the job and just look at numbers, which is a great way to build a team of people who are resentful and antagonistic.
Managers who only consider results rather than actions are almost universally bad managers. It's incredibly hard to get good results out of people who hate you.
To bring it back to the professional arena (because it's simpler), do you really only judge people based on results? Think about this: if you're hiring someone, what are the things that you would look for in order to tell you that they'll be a good fit for the role you want?
The thread stated: "To me I want to achieve more in my life but on a monetary and emotional level. How do you feel a person in their 20's can achieve economic growth? What investments ? Personal growth ? Relationships? Tips/Advice", you can easily make your thread if your trying to redefine what I mentioned.
I'm doing just fine here taking part in this discussion, thanks. If you think that what I'm posting is off-topic, report it to the mods.
The title of the thread is "How do you define success and how would you achieve it?". If you don't want that particular question addressed, maybe don't put it in the title.
I asked what's your background in terms of job, education and things along that line.
Well, you only asked me in this post right here, so I'm not sure why you're making it sound like you've asked me previously and I refused to answer. That's just not true.
I think based on your past posts in this thread you're simply asking so that you can attempt to use them to belittle me. We shall see how true that is. The reality is that I'm in a job where putting it on the internet is potentially risky for my employer and myself, so you're just not going to get any specifics. You can read into that what you like, but I will not endanger my job or personal safety for the sake of an internet discussion. If I say "defence contractor" I'm sure you can understand why.
I have a scientific qualification, I've been in the industry for about fifteen years, and my positions tend to be either research and development or QA/production support. I do and have worked with salesmen, businessmen, production staff, engineers and scientists (at least in as much as there's a practical distinction between engineers and scientists, to a layman an engineer is a scientist). I am what is commonly described as middle management; I have responsibility for my area of the business and the people involved in it but limited input in business decisions or direction (beyond "yes, we could do that" or "no, that's the dumbest idea I ever heard and you'll kill someone if we try that"). On the other hand, within my local company I'm the most experienced and knowledgable person in my field, and within the international business as a whole there's probably half a dozen of us or so who are more or less on the same page.
I think I've done all right establishing myself as an expert within my (somewhat niche) field and working into a position of influence and responsibility. And I'm enough of a generalist and have done well enough developing personal relationships within the business that I have good involvement in most areas of the business outside of finance (which I'm attempting to learn more about, because I'm the sort of person that gets annoyed when there's something I don't understand).
I would have said that I'm a fair approximation of the next stage of professional development that you want to reach, and so you'd think that my advice might be something worth considering even if you disagree or don't wish to follow the same path. I'd say that at minimum in order to progress you're going to need to lose the "black and white" attitude and learn to appreciate the shades of grey.
You asked for advice, maybe don't spit in the face of people offering it, hm?
