What is this book about?
Who is this book for?
From the author...
What is this book about?
As the author of this book rightly notes, a career is not just a way to make money. For many, this is a path of self-expression, self-identification, and search for one’s place in life.
There are still few books on how to build a career in a large international corporation on the Russian book market, since there are very few Russians who have achieved high positions in such organizations, and even fewer are ready to write books on this topic. In addition, in Russia there is virtually no institution of mentoring, so the opportunity to receive timely advice on building a competent career is further reduced.
This book, written by the Russian vice president of IBM headquarters, is designed to fill this gap: the author describes in detail his way up, without missing out on details related to the peculiarities of the Russian mentality in Western business conditions.
Who is this book for?
For everyone who dreams of making a successful career in a large company (especially a foreign one).
From the author
…Each job taught me something new—launching measurable marketing campaigns in over a hundred countries, recommending companies for purchase, speaking in front of a thousand people, building relationships with analysts and the press, defining the structure of a new division, and leading a large organization. But neither in 1996 nor later did I think about a career as such. Like many, on early stages I have not yet separated work - launching marketing companies or concluding partnership agreements - and the process of planning my own promotion through the management hierarchy. What job to choose next and how to get it, how to acquire the necessary skills for it, how to build relationships with your manager, colleagues and subordinates.
Nevertheless, regardless of what a person does in a company - finance, sales, development, production or marketing - it is worth thinking about what level he wants to reach over the next 5-10 years. Having set the task, you can outline a step-by-step plan: what positions can lead to the desired goal, what needs to be learned and what results to demonstrate in order to achieve one of them.
My book is not one of those theoretical pieces of advice that will guarantee you success if you follow it. This is simply an attempt to comprehend and voice my own experience of building a career in a large American company in the hope that it will be useful to others.
Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
J. Bernard Shaw
Who is Inna Kuznetsova ( karial ) and why she has the moral right to talk about career growth, I clearly explained some time ago alex_levitas (). Today I would like to put in my two cents from a career consultant.
Commercially available books on career topics can be divided into two types: a) inspiring (auto)biographies - most often success stories of Western business stars, b) yawn-monotonous manuals from consultants on the topic “how to become...”
"Up!" is neither one nor the other. Inna doesn't just describe personal experience climbing the career ladder to one of the top positions at IBM, but also complements it with a generalization of the experience of his colleagues. This is truly a very practical book: a system of recommendations formed based on an analysis of the path traveled.
Who will it benefit? First of all, to all the young and ambitious. At the same time, by ambition I mean the opinion that is not common among today’s graduates that immediately after receiving a diploma they should be given Personal Area and a secretary to boot, and an active desire to actively work for my career. In Inna’s book they will be able to find much that university teachers will not tell you about. It will help you avoid those bumps that people usually learn through experience: how to navigate the political landscape, how to overcome your own mental barriers, how to find a mentor, where to look for additional support and how to navigate between office conflicts. Separately, I would like to highlight a unique chapter that you will not find anywhere else: “Networking and introverts in an extroverted world.” She debunks the myth that extroverts rule the roost and provides plenty of practical advice to everyone for whom communication is rather a forced necessity.
Secondly, Inna’s book will be useful for mature managers, because they often forget that a career is a dynamic concept, implying different competencies at different levels. different stages. What leads to success at first may turn out to be an obstacle later (while a beginner is expected to take ambitious independent actions, a senior leader should be more oriented towards cooperation with his peers). "Up!" teaches you not to stand still, but to constantly work on yourself and develop, no matter how high you climb.
On my own behalf, I would like to add a special thank you to Inna for her vivid demonstration - with her own life and her own book - of the fact that most of our barriers and limiters are in our heads: “When I was at school, they forgot to tell me that women are not good at mathematics. Or rather, they forgot to tell my grandfather about this, who, in the absence of a grandson of the opposite sex, taught me to calculate the determinants of matrices by the sixth grade, so in the end I ended up at the department of general mathematics at Moscow State University. My daughter's grandfather taught me to play chess. She became the president of the school chess club, being the only girl in it - they forgot to tell her that the best chess players come from boys.” I wish us all such “forgetfulness”!
As the author of this book rightly notes, a career is not just a way to make money (although advice on how to increase income has long been of interest). For many, this is a path of self-expression, self-identification, and search for one’s place in life. We spend most of our time at work, so the desire to increase productivity and satisfaction from it is absolutely natural. There are still few books on how to build a career in a large international corporation on the Russian book market, in contrast to the Western one, since there are very few Russians who have achieved high positions in such organizations, and even fewer are willing to write books on this topic.
In addition, in Russia there is virtually no institution of mentoring (you will read in detail about what it is in Chapter 6 of this book), so the opportunity to receive timely advice on competent career building is even further reduced. This book, written by the Russian vice president of IBM headquarters, is designed to fill this gap: the author describes in detail his path “to the top.” Observations and advice related to the peculiarities of the Russian mentality in Western business conditions are especially valuable. We wish you equally successful personal and career growth.
From the author of the book Inna Kuznetsova - Up! Practical approach to career growth: My first job taught me to eat very quickly. I transferred negotiations to the hungry perestroika years. The interlocutors spoke and ate in turns, and I had to translate continuously, so that to this day I cannot wean myself from the habit of quickly swallowing any, even the most exquisite food. My next job taught me how to deal with a whole audience of tired adults: I led mathematical analysis at the Faculty of Geography of Moscow State University in the last “couple”, when it was already dark outside the window, it was raining, and the entire road around the university building was covered with wet fallen leaves. We passed a maple leaf down the rows, and everyone who wanted to wrote questions and jokes on it.
In 1993, when a graduate student’s salary was equal to the cost of a kilogram of tomatoes, and one of the associate professors began to pay me for teaching seminars in his place while he was developing a sugar trading business, I left academia. My next job was at IBM. And since 1996 I have been living in America - it turned out that you can build a career in a large corporation by changing continents, countries, disciplines, positions and technologies.
I started my work in the USA as the head of operations for one of the divisions in emerging markets, and later switched to other areas associated with rapidly growing or new businesses. In 2006, I took the position of director of strategy and marketing for IBM Power Systems UNIX servers, a year later I headed IBM's Linux business and, in parallel, but independently of this, one of the company merger departments. At the end of 2009, I became vice president of marketing and sales of system software. In this role, I am responsible for launching IBM's new strategic business and changing the sales model in the hardware division.
Of course, each subsequent job taught me something new: launching measurable marketing campaigns in more than a hundred countries, recommending companies for purchase, speaking to audiences, building relationships with analysts and the press, defining the structure of a new division and leading a large organization. But neither in 1996 nor later did I think about a career as such. Like many people in the early stages of their career, I had not yet separated the work, whether starting marketing companies or negotiating partnerships, from the process of planning my own advancement through the levels of the management hierarchy. I didn’t think about what job to choose next and how to get it, how to acquire the necessary skills for it, how to build relationships with managers, colleagues and subordinates.
However, regardless of what a person does in a company - finance, sales, development, production or marketing - he should think about what level he wants to reach over the next fifty years. Having set the task, he can outline a step-by-step plan: what work can lead to the desired goal, what needs to be learned and what results must be demonstrated in order to obtain one of them, how one can move to one of these positions.
This book is not one of those textbooks or collections of theoretical advice, following which you are guaranteed to achieve success. This is an attempt to comprehend and voice my own experience of building a career in a large American company in the hope that it may be useful to others. My book will be of particular interest to those who are building a career in business areas (marketing, finance, sales, mergers, etc.) in large American and European companies, both in their Russian branches and abroad. Many of the tips may also be relevant to a broader audience - anyone who has to conduct or pass job interviews, build a network of contacts in the industry, deal with difficult colleagues and bosses, or think about getting an MBA.
Inna Kuznetsova
Up! A practical approach to career development
From the publishers
As the author of this book rightly notes, a career is not just a way to make money (although advice on how to increase income has long been of interest). For many, this is a path of self-expression, self-identification, and search for one’s place in life. We spend most of our time at work, so the desire to increase productivity and satisfaction from it is absolutely natural.
There are still few books on how to build a career in a large international corporation on the Russian book market, in contrast to the Western one, since there are very few Russians who have achieved high positions in such organizations, and even fewer are willing to write books on this topic. In addition, in Russia there is virtually no institution of mentoring (you will read in detail about what it is in Chapter 6 of this book), so the opportunity to receive timely advice on competent career building is even further reduced.
This book, written by the Russian vice president of IBM headquarters, is designed to fill this gap: the author describes in detail his path “to the top.” Observations and advice related to the peculiarities of the Russian mentality in Western business conditions are especially valuable.
We wish you equally successful personal and career growth.
My first job taught me to eat very quickly. I transferred negotiations to the hungry perestroika years. The interlocutors spoke and ate in turns, and I had to translate continuously, so that to this day I cannot wean myself from the habit of quickly swallowing any, even the most exquisite food. The next job taught me how to cope with a whole audience of tired adults: I was teaching mathematical analysis at the Faculty of Geography of Moscow State University in the last class, when it was already dark outside, it was raining, and the entire road around the university building was covered with wet fallen leaves. We passed a maple leaf down the rows, and everyone who wanted to wrote questions and jokes on it.
In 1993, when a graduate student’s salary was equal to the cost of a kilogram of tomatoes, and one of the associate professors began to pay me for teaching seminars in his place while he was developing a sugar trading business, I left academia. My next job was at IBM. And since 1996 I have been living in America - it turned out that you can build a career in a large corporation by changing continents, countries, disciplines, positions and technologies.
I started my work in the USA as the head of operations for one of the divisions in emerging markets, and later switched to other areas associated with rapidly growing or new businesses. In 2006, I took the position of director of strategy and marketing for IBM Power Systems UNIX servers, a year later I headed IBM's Linux business and, in parallel, but independently of this, one of the company merger departments. At the end of 2009, I became vice president of marketing and sales of system software. In this role, I am responsible for launching IBM's new strategic business and changing the sales model in the hardware division.
Of course, each subsequent job taught me something new: launching measurable marketing campaigns in more than a hundred countries, recommending companies for purchase, speaking to audiences, building relationships with analysts and the press, defining the structure of a new division and leading a large organization. But neither in 1996 nor later did I think about a career as such. Like many people in the early stages of their career, I had not yet separated the work, whether starting marketing companies or negotiating partnerships, from the process of planning my own advancement through the levels of the management hierarchy. I didn’t think about what job to choose next and how to get it, how to acquire the necessary skills for it, how to build relationships with managers, colleagues and subordinates.
However, regardless of what a person does in a company - finance, sales, development, production or marketing - he should think about what level he wants to reach over the next fifty years. Having set the task, he can outline a step-by-step plan: what work can lead to the desired goal, what needs to be learned and what results must be demonstrated in order to obtain one of them, how one can move to one of these positions.
This book is not one of those textbooks or collections of theoretical advice, following which you are guaranteed to achieve success. This is an attempt to comprehend and voice my own experience of building a career in a large American company in the hope that it may be useful to others. My book will be of particular interest to those who are building a career in business areas (marketing, finance, sales, mergers, etc.) in large American and European companies, both in their Russian branches and abroad. Many of the tips may also be relevant to a broader audience - anyone who has to conduct or pass job interviews, build a network of contacts in the industry, deal with difficult colleagues and bosses, or think about getting an MBA.