You ever notice how some people, perhaps you or maybe a friend, seem to have an invisible connection to people, leadership, sports, or something like that allow them to understand and react to problems and obstacles with a kind of natural tendency? You have seen these people! They are the ones in the meeting rooms that speak up when there is actually something important to say and they are the athletes on the field that stay cool even when the other team appears to have the advantage. These are the people who think standing up, run when everyone else walks, and solves the problems while others wait for the problem to be solved. They are problem solvers!
Unfortunately, these problem solvers are not always the most valued assets on their team or in their chosen profession, in-fact they are often seen as obstacles themselves mainly by those who try to make their mark on the world by causing problems. You have also seen these people! These are the Directors of Special Projects, the second-baseman who can't throw to first base, and the Vice Presidents who have no direct reports. These are the people who go through life with tunnel vision and whether through pedigree, politics, or birth-right still manage to rise up in the ranks of their professions.
Perhaps this a cynical perspective...but let's use a job like buying and selling merchandise at a large corporation to paint a picture. Inside a retail company there are Vice Presidents, Buyers, and Assistants. The Vice Presidents believe their buyers are the cream of the crop, the Buyers believe they know everything and their suppliers know nothing, and the Assistant are the only ones who really know what is going on because they read every piece of information that comes in through the E-mail inbox and answer every phone call. Sales for this company fail to meet the expectations of Wallstreet for five straight quarters all the while the Vice Presidents and the Buyers blame poor performance on the weather and the Assistants are looking for jobs outside of the company because they see the writing on the wall. For the sixth quarter in a row the company fails to meet sales and profit expectations and the company makes a public announcement that they are going through bankruptcy proceedings. The Vice Presidents and Buyers are surprised about this, but they refresh their resumes and send them out to the other retailers in the market who are more financially stable in the hopes that they will secure a job. Some of the Vice Presidents are fortunate and are able to secure jobs as Presidents and Vice Presidents of other companies, and it is the same story for the Buyers. Unfortunately the most of the Assistants were not as fortunate in finding jobs and some of them were laid-off prior to bankruptcy declaration so that some of the officers of the company could have a better severance package.
Keep a couple of things in mind, this company had problem solvers and problem causers. Also, the people with the ability to change and impact the company for better or for worse were the Vice Presidents and the Buyers. The people who had the ability to restore the company and didn't, either because they didn't know how or didn't want to listen to the people who did, were re-hired and in some cases promoted to the heads of other companies.
The moral of the story is that if you are really good at what you do, and have been in your position for more than two years, you are probably irreplaceable. If you have no clue what is going on, drink more than four cups of coffee a day, and talk more about golf and college football than you do about your job then you are probably a self-centered ass who steps over other people on your climb up the corporate ladder. Advice for new graduates entering the workforce, become an entrepreneur, run your own company and have a lot of fun doing it because the alternative is to fight your way into a great paying job where you are forced to work with people who bury their heads so far up their Vice President's ass that if the Vice President were to have a hemorrhoid operation your brown-nosing colleague would be decapitated! Be a problem solver! You may be frustrated at times, but at the end of the day people need problem solvers, they don't need two assholes!
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