Career Basics

The decision-makers in companies, from team leaders to board members or managing directors, naturally form a very heterogeneous group with a broad spectrum of different ways of thinking and acting. And yet there is a whole series of unwritten laws and rules that apply almost everywhere - and which ultimately show how the professional system works.

Early on in my long professional life, I was able to recognize that:

a) the knowledge of these rules and the willingness to follow them as far as possible is not very widespread among employees in all fields of activity and at all levels of the hierarchy, which results in wrong actions on the part of those concerned with consequences that can even endanger their existence, and that

b) I find an almost instinctive access to these rules and not only often understand what is going on there, but also why it happens that way (this is no more than a randomly given, very one-sided talent; to compensate for this, I have only a rather limited access to other contexts - trees do not grow into the sky).

On this basis, I have devoted large parts of my professional commitment for several decades to defining those rules of the professional system and advising on their optimal application. Many activities have resulted from this: Newspaper series, books, a lecture series at a university, lectures - and now these "career basics" that are particularly close to my heart.

It is important for me to point out that I am reporting from the practice of the real existing system, I am not shaping or designing it. If you don't like one or another detail of it, I'm just the messenger bringing bad news. All statements in these "Basics" have been presented and discussed publicly several times in one form or another over many years - and have passed their respective test. Nevertheless, you can always come across divergent views in individual cases, which is to be expected from the heterogeneous group of decision-makers mentioned at the beginning.

Also well-known is the deep skepticism that, for example, students who are still unfamiliar with the system show towards individual or many of these rules. After about two to three years in the profession, experience has shown that approval rises sharply, and after about ten years of practice it is almost 100%.

The "career basics" presented here have already been sent or made available to subscribers of our newsletter - in a different, deliberately unordered sequence. Here, however, you receive for the first time a systematic order with a detailed table of contents and thus a solid working basis.