What Does Your Salary Mean

What Does Your Salary MeanWhat Does Your Salary MeanThe value of work is mora than just a dollar figure.I grew up and live in St. Louis, Missouri, which by definition means I am a St. Louis Cardinals baseball fan. Always have been. They dont call this Cardinal Nation for nuthin. In the long, glorious history of the St. Louis Cardinals there are two amazing players who stand out above all the others. They are Stan Musial and Albert Pujols.Just to give you an idea of how much Stan Musial means to St. Louis Cardinals fans, Ill tell you a story about my dad. He died at the age of 79 on March 18, 2009. He suffered from a horrible disease called Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), which essentially robbed him of his mind and his muscles. In the last six months of his life he no longer knew my name or my siblings names. The therapist suggested we show him picture books to stir his memory. We would go over family photo albums, and he would barely stir. Then I showed him a baseball hall of fame book and when he saw Stan Musials picture, he sat up and said, Thats Stan the Man.What does your salary mean?At the height of his playing career in 1958, Stan Musial at the age of 38 signed a one-year $100,000 contract. It welches the highest salary in the history of the National League. Recently Albert Pujols signed a 10-year $254 Million contract. It is the second biggest contract in Major League Baseball history. At the age of 38, he will earn $25.4 Million.So what do these two contracts tell us? Is Albert Pujols two-hundred-and-fifty times more valuable than Stan Musial? Is his batting average two-hundred-and-fifty times higher than Musials? How about his average number of home runs or average number of hits? Did the Cardinals under Albert win two-hundred-and-fifty times more often than under Stan? Obviously not.So what is the lesson from this story? Your annual salary is a function of a number of factors, many of which are outside of your control. It is dependent on your perfor mance, your experience, your industry, the era in which you work, the overall economy, the marketplace, and a host of other factors.Salary and Self-EsteemThe reason this is so important to understand is that if you think the value you contribute to society is directly related to your salary you will constantly weaken your self-esteem. Self-esteem is not the value you have to offer to other people. Self-esteem is the value you see within yourself. It is subjective, not objective. It requires looking inward rather than accepting what others say about you. If you correlate your self-esteem with your salary, you will constantly see less and less value within you because you can always find other people who make a lot more money than you do or who live in a much bigger house than you do or drive a fancier car or go on a more exotic vacation. Dont waste time playing that game.Lets say you earn $80,000 a year. Thats a pretty darn good salary. But if your neighbor earns $800,000 you might f eel rather insignificant. And if your neighbor has a business tycoon friend and that part earns $8 million a year, then you both might feel like chumps. John Lasseter is the creative head of Disney/Pixar Animation Studios. According to celebritynetworth.com he has a net worth of $100 million. Steve Jobs, who owned 50.1% of Pixar when it was sold to Disney, became the single largest stock holder of Disney stock with 7%. His net worth at the time of his death was reported to be $8.3 billion. Should Lasseter feel somehow insignificant compared to his good friend, Jobs? I dont think so. I think they each have contributed real value in their work.The Real Value of Your WorkThe real value of what you contribute to society can only be measured by you. To what degree are you fulfilling the purpose you think you were put on this earth to do? To what degree are you applying your strengths and your passions toward fulfilling that purpose? I encourage you to think much longer and harder about t hose two questions than about how your income compares to someone elses.To this day, some of the most influential people in my life were my high school teachers, my college coaches and my parents. None of these folks ever made more than lower middle income salaries.John Lasseter was interviewed on December 2, 2011 by Charlie Rose and Lasseter said, I love animation. I love the way it can entertain people of all ages. I think its what I was put here to do. Lasseter was just as focused on animation back in 1994, the year before Toy Story catapulted Pixar into the financial stratosphere. Albert Pujols was just as focused on baseball in his rookie season as he was heading into a record contract.Rather than driving yourself crazy that your salary isnt the same as Pujols, why not turn the argument around and focus on the value you contribute with your life. Ive heard people say, That guy has a great job. What does that mean? For them, it means hes earning what they consider to be a boatlo ad of money. My question is, Is the rolle fulfilling his purpose in life either through his work or through what he accomplishes with the money he earns? If he is, then I would say he truly has a great job. If he isnt, I wonder if hes just kidding himself.Avoid the Grand IllusionI encourage you to read the words to the song, The Grand Illusion, by Styx. It was one of my favorite songs back in the 1980s and it still is today. I think the words have stood the test of time quite well. Dont fool yourself into thinking that your value as a person is equal to the size of your salary, otherwise youll spend the rest of your life ignoring the real value you bring to other people.

Scope, Risk, and Assumption in Project Management

Scope, Risk, and Assumption in Project ManagementScope, Risk, and Assumption in Project ManagementThe field of project management, much like any other area of expertise, has a unique vocabulary filled with acronyms and specialized terms. Three essential terms and concepts you must include ScopeRiskAssumptions It is an outline of unterstellung three essential project management terms and includes links and suggestions for additional reading. Scope In project management, scope is the set of boundaries that define the extent of a project. The scope describes what is to be delivered to the customer as a result of the project initiative. Understanding the scope allows the project manager and project team to understand what umstands inside or outside the boundaries of the project. If something is not in scope, it is not factored in the planning work of the project. Activitiesthat fall within the boundaries of the scope gutachten are considered in scope and are accounted for in the sche dule and budget.If an activity falls outside the boundaries, it is considered out of scope and is not planned for.? Whether youre a project manager or part of the project team, youll want to consider if something is in scope or out of scope as you move forward. As an example, imagine that a client has asked you to build a website. As you outline the scope (or set the boundaries) of the project, you indicate the following items as in-scope Site design and wireframe diagrammingEstablishment of a test bedCoding to the approved wireframeGraphics development for the website themeTesting and debugging prior to making the site public During the course of the project, the client asks you to include a video overview of the company. The video is not specified in the scope of the project and is therefore out of scope. While you may be happy to do the video work for an extra charge, this will require a revision of the scope and cost and time estimation for the project. In the absence of a clear and agreed upon scope document, the issue of the video might have become contentious between your team and the customers representatives. A clear scope statement allowed you to defuse the situation and deal with a change in an orderly way. So how do you determine what is in or out of scope? Youll first want to outline all the details of the project you currently know based on discussions with the client or the project owner. Then youll want to make key assumptions that will drive whats considered in or out of scope. Assumptions At some point in your life, youve probably been told, Never make assumptions. However, making assumptions in project management is an everyday activity. Assumptions help you define scope and risks and fine-tune your estimates for time and cost. Of course, it is essential to document and validate your assumptions. Consider something simple, such as creating a book. Lets say your friend has an idea for a coffee table book and has asked you to manage the pr oject. His first request is for a budget so he can secure funding. As you define the scope, its clear that your friend is uncertain on many details, including page count, image inclusion, cover style and the weight of the paper to be used for the pages. Since all of these factors will impact cost and production complexity, you will have to make assumptions about the specifications and validate those assumptions as acceptable or unacceptable to your friend. After further discussion, your friend tells you he plans to include 50 photos in the book. You can base your assumption on the 50 images or,anticipating that this number will increase over time, you can make an assumption that there will be between 75-90 pages with images. You can see how assumptions directly affect schedule as well. For instance, imagine youre leading a project at a park that involves building a swing set. When setting up your project, you are given the budget and assigned team members, one of whom is in charge o f materials. As you create your schedule, you ask the person in charge of materials when the cement will arrive. This person replies that hes not aya when the cement will arrive but that he believes it will be between June 1 and June 10. As you build your scope and schedule, you make the assumption that the cement will arrive no later than June 10. This example shows two benefits to making assumptions. The first benefit is that the assumption of receiving the cement no later than June 10 allows you to plan for activities that rely on the cement arriving. The second benefit is that it provides the person in charge of materials with a deadline to deliver the cement, which he can then relay to his supplier. It has inadvertently set up a key deadline for the project to move forward. Making assumptions creates benchmarks that are often revisited during the project to aid the project team in staying within scope, on time, and within budget. But what happens when assumptions are wrong? It is where the risk comes into play. Risk Once youve built your scope and identified the assumptions that are behind the scope and estimates, you will want to begin assessing areas of risk. Risk is the same in project management as it is in the real world it is a hazard or chance that can create damage. All projects contain risk, and if you are the project manager or project owner, its not only your responsibility to anticipate risk, but its also your job to communicate the eignung impact of those risks to the project team and to prepare to mitigate the risks. Risk comes in various degrees. Sometimes risk can mean the project will run slightly differently or take a small unexpected turn. In some cases, however, risk can lead to catastrophic results that turn your project on its head. Lets use the playground scenario from the above cement example. One of the risks is that the cement does not arrive by the assumed date of June 10. What are the potential effects of this risk? All of the successor activities that follow after the cement has been poured are delayed as a result of this problem. Risks can be positive, as well. Consider the impact to the project if the cement shows up earlier than anticipated. While this seems like a positive outcome, it still creates a problem for the timing and sequencing of all of the other steps in the project. Project managers work with their project teams to brainstorm and identify potential risks. They take the process a step further and look at the potential severity of the risk and its likelihood of occurrence. Furthermore, they identify those individuals best suited to identify when the risk is occurring, and they develop agreed-upon risk mitigation plans. Many firms have detailed risk templates they have developed over time and from experience with other projects. Some industries have compiled risk profiles that are used as a starting point for risk analysis. Many industries practice very detailed statistical analysis fo r risk planning as well.

Feeling Lost Take an Aptitude Test

Feeling Lost Take an Aptitude TestFeeling Lost Take an Aptitude TestIs yur current job leaving you feeling like a square block trying to fit into a round peg hole? Do you find yourself spinning your wheels on a daily basis in your current position? Or maybe you just feel underappreciated or like despite your best efforts you still havent made advancement in your current job position.If these feelings sound familiar, chances are youve considered that you may be in the wrong career field or position. This determination, however, is the easy part of the equation. The harder aspect for those who are feeling lost in their job or career is determining just what is the best alternative path that fits both their skills and personal ambition and desires.Enter the aptitude test as a valuable tool for helping increase job and career satisfaction for workers in need of a change of scenery. The various tests on the market use every day questions and scientific and social analytics to help identif y core personality traits and values. These can then be applied to common traits of various jobs or industries to help find just the right fit for your particular needs. Intrigued? Read on We break down the most popular aptitude tests out there today and weigh the pros and minuses thatll help you figure out just the right equation for work/life happiness.What Color Is Your Parachute?If youve spent any time online or perusing social media, youve probably come across dozens of personality tests. While the what is your inner spirit animal quiz probably wont go far in helping you pick your ideal career path, there are numerous science and researchbased resources with long standing track record that may provide real help.The book, What Color is Your Parachute, has been in publication continuously for decades. Updated annually, this well written and researched resource breaks down essential personality characteristics to help job seekers and those looking to excel in their current careers develop proven strategies for finding work satisfaction and happiness. An initial personality assessment through self-quizzing is followed up by a variety of personalized recommendations and approaches. In addition to the book, an online course is also offered for those looking more in-depth analysis or interactive features.Myers Briggs Personality TypesPerhaps one of the most well-known and longest established tests of the personality persuasion, the Myers Briggs has been analyzing your innermost workings since the early 1900s. Developed by an experienced psychologist, the test is regularly updated to account for modern trends and developments in social and personal interactions. Myers Briggs focuses less on individual traits, instead grouping people into one of 16 basic personality types based on four main personality traits, their presence or lack, and the various combinations they may form. The Myers Briggs website and various resources from supporting companies and services ma y provide helpful insight into not only your inner motivations but just what careers or job tasks can help keep you fully satisfied with your work.CareerOneStop.orgWhile the other resources on our list of personality tests may require you to shell out a few clams to delve into the depths of your job aptitude, the U.S. Department of Labor has a totally free service available for those looking for an initial overview. CareerOneStop.org not only lists a variety of positions, including open government positions, it also offers a handy Interest Assessment feature where you can answer a few straightforward prompts and questions for instant feedback on potential careers that may be up your alley. While not quite as in depth as the other sites, if youre on the job hunt and short of funds this easy to access resources is a great place to start on your road to job self-discovery.While weve listed a few of the most commonly used personality assessment sites, feel free to break the mold and tak e a DIY approach using the numerous resources available online and in print. Industry publications, chat groups and homepages often provide in depth reviews of various job positions, including the types of people that tend to excel in their roles. Dont forget that mother knows best, either. Quizzing friends or family over what they see in your personality or as a career field that may be a great fit is an excellent way to get a fresh perspective if you find yourself in a rut. Whatever route you take, as in most areas of life, a little self-examination will go a long way towards your individual and career growth and towards helping you find long term happiness in the work world.