7 Career lessons we wish we had known 25 years ago

If you were starting your career today, what would you do differently?

In this episode of The Three Steps Ahead Podcast, Martin Gibbs, Richard Miller and Simon Cossey share practical career lessons drawn from more than 100 years of combined leadership experience. 

This is real world advice for Gen Z, millennials and ambitious professionals who want to build careers that last.

1. Continuous Learning → Qualification Is the Starting Line

 - The real learning begins after you qualify. Career advantage comes from staying curious and adapting faster than change.

2. Stick With It → Careers Compound over time

- Success comes from patience, resilience and long term reputation. Careers are marathons that reward consistency.

3. Personal Brand → You Already Have One, what are you going to do with it?

- Your reputation is forming whether you shape it or not. Be intentional about what you are known for and how you show up professionally.

4. Authentic → Know Your Non Negotiables
- Clarity about your values and principles helps you make better decisions and build a career that fits who you really are.

5. Agile → Do Not Marry the Plan
- Industries evolve and disruption is constant. Direction matters more than rigid planning. Stay alert and ready to adapt.

6. Connected → Opportunity Flows Through People
- Career breakthroughs come through relationships. Build networks, contribute generously and be known beyond your organisation.

7. The Bonus Lesson - Ownership → It Is Your Career
- No one will manage your career for you. Take responsibility for your growth, reputation and future direction.

Whether you are starting out or stepping up, these lessons will help you stay three steps ahead.

Listen & follow:
Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/three-steps-ahead/id1870837966
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/episode/2dLsrl94ONPxKEJlT3Eh9f?si=899edd4900c34dae
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Three Steps Ahead - Practical strategy for the next move

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello everybody and welcome to episode four of the Three Steps Ahead Podcast. This is a business strategy podcast presented by myself, Martin Gibbs, Richard Millen. Hi Martin and Simon Cosse. Good morning, all. And I've got my new background. It is March. It's the spring classic cycling season. The biggest bike race in the world is only four and a bit weeks away. Duronda, if you know, you know. Master the cobbles and stay ahead of the pack. Well, though, as you said, Richard, master the cobblers and stay ahead of the pack. Maybe, maybe more apps. Just as relevant. Just as well. Today we're going to be talking about the advice we might have given ourselves 25 years ago on how to get three steps ahead in our careers. The first of those is all about continuous learning. Your case and my case, Richard, we became accountants. The goal is to qualify, and that is your only goal for a long while in your career. Once you've qualified, that is not the end of your learning. You will learn more in the five years after you qualify than really in the whole of the time you were qualifying.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

Yeah, I think it's interesting. It isn't just about an accumulation of knowledge. I think a lot of it has to do with mindset and Carol Dweck growth mindset. She says that's the not yet. And I think the feeling is that if you you you feel as though you're accumulated knowledge and you get a sense of worth and a sense of purpose out of that. But I think it's really important to adopt that sense of continuous learning. I mean, I'm still learning, I've probably learned more in the last five years than I had in the last 10 years or so. But I think it's it's it's that openness to actually challenge what you think is the knowledge that gives you purpose.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

And I think your career, maybe in as you say, in the last five years is is a good example of, I don't know, sometimes careers link and daisy chain from things.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Yeah, and I think I think if I was to advise myself at an early age is the the idea of just don't stay in your lane. But I think it's really, really important that you stay curious and you actually go where the energy is to a certain extent. So I was finding when I was talking to clients that that the kind of questions that I I was asking away from the sort of normal financial stuff were far more valuable than the kind of stuff in terms of the financial reporting. So don't just stay in your lane, be curious.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

I think continuous learning is two different bits. In that in our younger days, it's continuous learning towards a specific goal. Our continuous learning is about seeing the bigger picture.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Factor two, then. Stick with it. Over my career of maybe 40 years, there have been periods, particularly back in the 1990s, where it was a trudge. You just had to plow through. It's not always going to be exciting. Resilience and tenacity and loyalty goes a long way. It's a marathon, not a sprint, and it's not a race against anybody else. And sometimes you've just got to uh put the hard yards in.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

It's reminding me of a phrase that we hear from from James Mason from Mind Shop a lot. You just need to get some rubber on the road. Most success really comes from repetition, not lots and lots of mega new things. Genuine expertise is really only for an elite few. And I think you've got to you've got to keep that in mind. It's not necessarily a superpower, but it generally comes from endurance and patience. So that kind of stick with it, very important. Richard, you've got a point.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Yeah, I I wanted to sort of be rather contrarian and agree with you and disagree with you. In the 1980s, I joined Price Waterhouse, and I remember this sort of career senior manager that would never make partner, but who's always the happiest person there in that respect. And his one word of wisdom to me was that, you know, if you're enjoying what you're doing 40% of the time at work, you're doing really well. So I think there is that question of taking the rough with the smooth, and there is a there is a sense of sticking with it. But I think on the other side to that, I think the problem is if I use a terrible accounting term here, is the ledgers don't always add up. And so you've got to be careful in terms of, you know, you think early in your career, I've got to invest in time and effort to get that kind of traction. But in reality, just because you're doing stuff, don't feel you're necessarily going to get the reward. You know, you need to have some lines around what you should do and what you shouldn't do. And I think I've seen too many younger people who will invest time and effort thinking that they're going to get the reward and recognition that they should. And in reality, they don't. So I think you'll get far more respect if you do put boundaries around it rather than just always doing what you think is what your boss wants.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

I I saw a wonderful quote, it uh and it it called upon a Frank Sinatra song, not that I can lay claim to this. Um and he said, or a line from his song is you're 35 and it's a good year. Uh and the point that it was making is always act as if you're you're 35. So if you're a bit younger, that element of maturity, if you're a little bit older, always have that youthful energy that you bring to everything. So I thought that was quite an interesting 35.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

Three middle-aged men thinking 35's young. Factor number three, then, Simon. This is one that I think will resonate with you. You've got to develop your personal brand.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Yeah, big one. Manifests itself largely these days through through LinkedIn, which is your online real estate as we call it. It's your picture. You own it. And absolutely, if I would have started owning it a bit earlier, I think would be uh a piece of advice I would I would give. You know, make sure it's relevant, make sure it's updated, don't leave it to the last minute, perhaps, before you're you're looking to either reach out to someone. So it becomes a living and breathing document. It's your sh your competencies, it's your character. People get a sense of you from it. It's your digital footprint.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Richard, do you remember the zero moment of truth? And and the message was that uh people may not find you through LinkedIn, but if you've got a meeting with somebody, an in-person meeting or an online meeting, they will 100% check you out on LinkedIn before the meeting. So your LinkedIn profile and your profile on your own firm's website need to reflect who you are, what you do, and what you want to be known for, what message you give across.

SPEAKER_02 6:31

Yeah, I think that's really important. I think the whole idea of the zero the zero moment of truth was the the fact that you you may not even get to that meeting, or they've already made a decision based upon your online presence before you go into that meeting. Whereas before, I suppose when we started out and there wasn't digital presence, it was very much about you know relationship building within a context of face-to-face. Whereas now what you project externally, it needs to be authentic, is something that will allow you to differentiate and also to uh establish your skill set to see whether you can work with that organization. Now, I think in the it when we first start out, our brand to a certain extent is subsumed by the brand of the organization we work for, which is natural in the early stages. But I think it's really important that you work out exactly what it is you want that brand to be in terms of capability, how you interact with people.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

And a message you and I, Simon, have been hammering into people for donkeys years now. If you're in business and on LinkedIn you've got fewer than 500 connections, generally people are just not going to take you seriously.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

It's a fascinating statistic of the day is that 80% of roles are filled through connections. And a big element of that, and an increasing element, I would say, is through LinkedIn. You know, if you're pitching, as you mentioned, zero moment of truth for a piece of work, absolutely someone's gonna look you up.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

Moving on to points four, five, and six, all of which have got a big resonance for me. Four, five, and six, authentic, agile, and connected. Looking at authenticity, then, to me, this is all about understanding your core values, understanding your principles, speaking up for and standing up for what you believe in.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

Yeah, I think it all it almost cycles back to what we were talking about before in terms of effectively, you know, the ledges don't always add up, and you you you effectively need to know what the limits are. And we talked previously about having a certain amount of resilience in sticking with it, but I think it's really important that what you believe are your values. It may be too early in in your career to talk about work-life balance, but they're really important. Yeah. Because if you're in if you're investing time and effort into a career where it doesn't give you what you need for your own career progression, if it doesn't give you that sense of being and sense of worth, and if you're being asked to do things that you don't want to do, then it's time to think about whether it's a time to change tack.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

Yeah, classic point for me was back in the early mid-90s, firm I was working for, the only way you would get ahead is to still be there at seven o'clock at night. My daughter was a toddler at that stage, and my main driver was work-life balance. I wanted to get home and see my daughter, and I was not going to be there at seven o'clock at night and half seven at night. And that held me back at that particular point in time. Yeah. Point five, Richard, agility. Why is agility important?

SPEAKER_02 9:23

As an agility nerd, I think it goes through everything we do personally, and also it's really useful in a business context. So agility is the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. And to actually be able to do that, you need to try stuff out, you need to experiment. And if it's not working, understanding why, and it's the actions and decisions you make as a result of that.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

And it's being aware of what the next disruptor is going to be, or looking out for the next disruptor. Again, if you look through the period of our careers back in the 1980s, the big disruptor was the advent of the uh the PC and computers coming in and changing the world. And then it was the internet, and then it was this thing called email. And now we're onto the era of AI. So there's always the next thing, the next disruptor. It's very important that in your career you don't back yourself into a corner where you're not able to respond personally to what the next big change is going to be.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

I think there's something here that's really important in that. In order to help you remain agile, is find a mentor. And there's a great quote from an 18th-century philosopher, Edward Burke. Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. And those mentors, those different conversations, can help provide you with a bit of stretch, but really help you with remaining agile in that workplace and in your life generally, because they'll give you a slightly different perspective. So I think that's really important to talk to someone different about things, someone that's not necessarily in the same line of work that you are will give you a very valuable agile perspective.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

To probably misquote something Richard said five or six years ago about agility. In order to be agile, you've got to have stability and you've got to have traction. And I think there's a key thing there. And some of it goes back to what we were saying earlier about sticking with it and having some resilience. But in order to be able to change direction quickly, you've got to have a firm foundation on where you are and you've got to have the awareness of where you want to be going. Success is not a straight line. So that's a that's another soundbite for us. The sixth point, connected. Going back to what we talked about in the last episode about being connector in chief. So much of what has happened to me and the opportunities that have come my way through my career have all really been through connections, making sure that you put yourself out there, that you connect with people. Stuff happens from stuff. People do business with people they know. The more people you know, and the more that you mix, the more opportunities that will come your way.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

And don't be a group of smart young things either. You know, you need to make sure that you connect with people of all different ages. Again, comes back to different perspectives. Really important that you network with people beyond your own age group and beyond your own professional circle as well.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

I think if we if we're sort of quoting people, I always remember Martha and I when we went to again see Chris Frederickson. That was probably back in the 1990s. Christ, that's a long time ago. But I think one of the things that sort of stuck with me was he said, you know, outflow creates inflow. You know, you're not going to make those connections by just sitting at your desk and doing what you do on a day-to-day basis. And so it comes, again, it feeds back into this curiosity, put taking yourself out of the comfort zone not only will give you opportunities, but it also allows you to get a different perspective and a different context. I think that's something that you may lack in the early stages of your career. You only see what is it within the organization you have. So actually, you know, creating that outflow will bring an inflow in terms of opportunities, but also in terms of your knowledge as to how you're going to proceed within your career.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

And I think connection can be within work and outside of work. The biggest connection organization I've been involved with is Round Table, myself and my wife. It's brought huge opportunities and lots of influences. And indeed, our social life today, even though we've not been in Round Table or Ladies' Circle for probably 10, 15 years, still revolves around largely the people that we met during those years. And business opportunities and career opportunities have flowed from people who know people. You've got to put yourself out there.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

Which again circles back into the whole idea of personal brand, you know, some something that differentiates you, something that feeds into the values you have, which are important both in work and outside of work.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Definitely. Absolutely. And a final point, it's not part of the sixth, it's the magic seventh. And this is all about ownership. This is your career. It's your responsibility to build your career. It's your responsibility to pass your exams, to get your professional qualification, to get your degree. It's your responsibility to learn new stuff, to be curious, to have that lifelong learning. It's your responsibility. You need to take control of it because nobody's going to do it for you.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

Sometimes do stuff, go and get a coffee, piece of paper. What did I learn from that? Can I add that to my profile? Can I do that? But yeah, you absolutely, as the individual, own that yourself.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

Yeah, and I think that feeds into you know not having a rigid plan. When we're advising people, we often talk about the where.

unknown 14:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

And the where isn't necessarily an end point, it's merely a sense of direction. And if you have that sort of sense of direction and the why that sits behind it, it's far more likely you're going to make better decisions or you're going to react to circumstances in the in the best possible way. Have some kind of idea as your direction of travel. You know, what is ask the why? What is this job actually offering to me? You know, why am I here? How do I make the best of the actual learning I can take whilst I'm within this particular career? And I know when we were at Daphne's, the whole idea of providing an environment where people could learn and add value to us while we were still there, but at the same time, we recognized the fact they wouldn't necessarily stay with us. But if we if we got the best value out of them and they had developed whilst they were with us, then we were doing our job properly.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

And the thing we were good at, Richard, is that a lot of those people we got to come back at a later stage in their career that we did object. Yeah, exactly right. I I don't think necessarily having a plan is realistic all the way through. When I left school, I hadn't got a clue what I wanted to do. Nine months later, I'd sort of got a bit of an idea that bookkeeping and accounts was some of it. I then started working at Dapon's. I was told which exams I was going to do. I qualified as a chartered certified accountant. But back in those days, as you'll know, Richard, that was a dead end. You couldn't become a partner if you were a certified accountant. By the early 90s, the rules had changed. My horizon then changed from wanting to go out into industry to staying in practice and I wanted to become a partner. Not so easy. Once you become a partner, well, you then want to become an equity partner, at least I did. And then becoming managing partner came out of that. And then once managing partner, you've then got to guide and direct the firm. But both of us, all three of us, have then had opportunities with Coventry and Warwickshire first, which have come out of what we've done with Daphne's and stuff that I did with Champions Placeboard and stuff with AGN International. Things lead to things, lead to things, and none of them are necessarily obvious at any one particular point. But you build and you build and you build.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

So which sort of feeds back into the agility point, doesn't it? In terms of the whole the whole idea of agility, is that circumstances will change, and so it's a question of how do I capitalise on the opportunities that come in my direction.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

So thank you, Richard and Simon. Three steps ahead will return. We are planning a special guest for that episode. So in the meantime, Richard, thank you very much. Thank you, Martin. Thank you, Simon. Thank you, guys. And don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe.