OPINION
WORDS SCOTT DAVIES
HOW TO FIND CAREE R CONTENTMENT
The business travel industry offers opportunities for everyone to get on the right career path
W
HAT CAREER ADVICE would you now give to the younger you when you started your working life?
With good health we can
all expect to work for at least 50 years, so guidance at the beginning of, and during, this lengthy journey has always seemed like a good thing to me, and it’s as topical a subject with the members of ITM as any that we work on. My first grown-up job was
a graduate placement at IBM (wow, does that date me?) and I’m sure I had good intentions and some vague ideas about what I wanted, but I was effectively clueless. One late afternoon I was putting together tedious monthly reports, and wondering how many more of these I had left in me, when my boss’s boss’s boss asked me into his sizeable triple-aspect office for a chat. I’m not sure what I was expecting as he asked one of his two assistants to get us both a coffee, but I was fairly floored by what he said. “Do you know that 90 per cent of the time I’m doing my job in a way to specifically further my career.” He probably couldn’t see the incredulous look on
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an extended interview for the next position. I’m guessing this because my boss’s boss’s boss left that message with me fairly cryptically, without a great deal of additional explanation. Some might find this advice worthy of note and, because it came from a senior executive, I tried to follow it at first. It took me a little while to establish that it wasn’t quite the advice I really needed.
I think some of the happiest
people I know have found great jobs, regardless of reward package or seniority, that enrich their lives and there is no need for them to map out plans beyond them. Many others burn with a hunger and ambition for more. ITM’s 2019 Conference will
my face due to the way my floppy hair (there are photos to prove to non-believers) partially obscured it. It wasn’t a long chat. The coffees actually arrived after it had finished, which was a bit awkward as I ambled back to the cheap seats and poured mine away – I didn’t drink coffee back then. I think the message was not that you should avoid real work and do lots of sucking up, but that you should go about your work in such a way that your potential for progression is always being demonstrated. You should treat every job like
be held in Brighton from 30 April to 1 May, and we will be dedicating some time to helping our members to achieve career contentment, whatever that means for them. The business travel industry community embodies lessons and values that have guided me much better than that well- intended mentor’s advice. I’m certainly not saying I’ve cracked it, but I do feel very lucky to be in a job that I look forward to every day, working with inspiring and fun people.
SOME OF THE HAPPIEST PEOPLE
I KNOW HAVE FOUND GREAT JOBS THAT ENRICH THEIR LIVES
Scott Davies is the chief executive of the Institute of Travel Management (
itm.org.uk)
buyingbusinesstravel.com
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