I've read many books about "What I wish I knew when I was 20" and here's the deal. While I can appreciate words of wisdom, I'm very glad to learn life's lessons on my own. I appreciate my naivety and optimism and in fact, I celebrate it. I work in a creative industry and quit jobs as soon as I start to feel the pain of status quo or the 8 year old imagination in myself fading away.
I do NOT under any circumstance want to turn into "you". When I say "you" of course I will not create stereotypes of a generation (even though you seem to be comfortable calling mine entitled which, tangentially is hilarious because I walked in the snow for 2 miles to get to one of my 4 jobs in college and have worked my A&* off to get to be where I am today, I have high expectations of myself and those around me, yes.)- When I say "You" I am referring to a specific sub-group of people, an attitudinal segment that I've been dealing with for the past 8 years which typically exists in Gen X and Boomers demographics.
The:
1. "I have no power"--- do you even know what the word power means? Maybe yo should spend more time on HBR. Middle managers, are you so stified that you don't see that to every single person below you, you have an incredible amount of ability to create change, influence key decisions, and make them feel valued. I have heard this statement from a spectrum of roles, from a 'marketing manager' at Microsoft to a VP of Global Strategy at a Fortune 500 company to the CMO of a multi-million dollar company. Everyone has someone to report to.
Advice: Be open-minded and create the kind of power and influence you want. Learn and define what power means to you and recognize that to someone (likely a lateral peer or direct report) you can make a big difference.
2. "You don't have an MBA from a top 3 school so you aren't worth talking to"--You continue to stress that you want innovators, disrupters and game-changers (I need not quote articles from HBR, Fast Company, Wired, Mashable, MIT Press, etc.) and yet you have no desire to hire them. You are SO risk averse that you continue to hire the same model of person over and over and over. McKinsey experience and top MBA school. What you are really saying is you want people JUST like you with no diversity of talent, thought, or ability. What you are really saying is that you are a lazy hiring manager with the assumption that an MBA from a top school acts as a basic filter for intelligence, ingenuity, IQ/EQ, etc. What a fallacy. Of course you are busy, we're all busy.
Advice: Please take the time to get to know the abilities and skills you seek and hire accordingly.
3. "You are too smart for these positions. We want do-ers not thinkers"-- Eek! We all know that most in any enterprise organization could be construed a "grunt" but it's sad that in a war for talent most HR and "talent management" teams have no ability to actually assess talent and connect them with the right teams.
Advice: If a candidate isn't right for a specific role, great but don't turn them away because you think they are too smart. Nurture them if they are an organizational fit and connect them with others in the company to identify potential teams that might be better.
4. "That's not the way we do things here" Maybe you should change the way you think. While there are many pros, the con of being in the same company for so long is that you are immune to issues. You work on autopilot around them instead of wanting to care because it's less time consuming.
Advice: Stop being a sheep. Take a sabbatical and travel. Take a trapeze or pottery class. Learn something new. You are stagnant and it shows.
5. "I CAN'T be myself here" I was in a conversation with co workers once who were talking about children. They communicated that they wished that they could be as open and as honest as kids were. They kept on, discussing the importance of having what they called a "filter." Yes, having a filter is an important skill in any leadership position BUT aren't you, by watering down your thoughts and ideas, watering down the work you are attempting to collaborate on? Why would you want to be at a place where you can't feel authentic?
Advice: Be a better example for those under you and learn to be a version of your authentic self at work or you'll likely not ever feel fulfilled.
6. "Don't ask questions, it makes you look stupid" - More senior VP/EVPS than I can count. If only CMO's could feel completely comfortable asking CIOs about technology in a simple way that they can understand without the fear and self-consciousness of feeling "stupid" because they don't know certain things about ERP, CRP, DCM, etc. systems. If only people in different departments asked questions as freely and openly as a young child does when they don't understand something. If only agency's would raise their hand at "all-hands" briefing meetings.
7. "We make decisions together" I get collaboration and stakeholder input but at the end of the day someone needs to make a decision. I worked with a client lately and sat in a room with 15 VP's (all men) who were talking over each other, saying a lot of words without saying much of anything at all. And out of all of them, none stood up and took a position of leadership, none could make a decision. I stood up, took control and told them we'd go through a series of prioritization exercises to arrive at an answer. One person said "You are treating us like kindergardeners".. Well, stop acting like them.
Advice: The desire to be well liked is often correlated with being an ineffectual manager. Learn how to take a leadership role in daily ways, including managerial meetings.