If I were ever had the hubris to write an autobiography, I would probably name it “Falling Up: A series of mistakes, screw-ups, failures and follies that made me the success I am today.” Anytime I get the opportunity to give someone career advice the first thing I tell them is not to follow my path in any way. Too often all we hear about are people who’ve been successful and all of the great choices they made. We are encouraged to take risks and learn from mistakes. But how frequently do we ever hear about them? Is it because successful people don’t make mistakes? Or is it because either no one is interested in the failures of successful leaders or they have too much pride to admit to them?

Well, it’s my blog and I don’t care if anyone finds anything I write on it interesting or not, I thought I’d share some of the major mistakes I’ve made in the early phases of my career in consulting and what I learned from them. I would also note that I consider myself fortunate that all of these things happened and that they occurred early in my career. I’d like to think I’ve applied my lessons from them well since I graduated from Business School with a clean slate and my career has benefitted as a result.

Not focusing enough on my day job — Early in my career at Accenture there was a lot of focus on what I now call “tie breakers” — attending networking events, organizing fundraisers, ‘Community meetings’ and generally being perceived by senior management as a “go getter.” But instead of trying to hold out these as ways to get junior people to volunteer for internal jobs that no one wanted to do, I wish just as often they said “Just do really well at whatever is asked of you because that’s most important.” I assumed like every other wise-ass kid in my 20’s that I was the shit and smarter than everyone, so of course I was great. So I focused on all the wrong things, was a serial procrastinator who always put off the most important tasks, was too often distracted by trivial personal interests and didn’t spend enough time, attention or focus on making my bosses and clients happy. I was too interested in the next thing and didn’t realize that most employers purposely start with small things to test you. Everything builds off a small foundation. If you do well, at least feign interest in learning new skills, demonstrate humility and do a good job, you’ll get more responsibility and build a brand of credibility and trust. And yeah, then once you have it down and are considered a star and get bored, THEN do your corporate citizenship but until then? Execute and make those immediately around you happy as priorities one, two & three.

Loose lips while traveling - Relatively early in my career at Accenture, I was on a flight with a fellow junior colleague. I don’t remember much about the flight or the conversation, but at some point we joked about our client and some of the people who worked there. We didn’t divulge anything sensitive or confidential but apparently we didn’t do so quietly. As we were disembarking, a fellow traveller identified himself as another Accenture employee and dressed us down for our lack of professionalism. I don’t know who he was, I never got his name or heard from him again, but looking back I’m glad he said something. When you’re traveling on business, from the moment to leave your house to the moment you return, there is no “off” and “on.” You are a representative of the company who employees you, so keep any talk in public PG-rated and off of anything confidential. It’s almost like you are playing for a team and wearing their uniform at all times. This became especially true while in a subsequent project when other team members got in trouble for having a conversation about our highly-confidential project while in a taxi and somehow it got back to the client. It wasn’t me and it wouldn’t have been me. It’s good to have travel buddies as life on the road can get lonely, but often it’s when you leave your guard down with someone you think is a friend is when you can get most burned. Keep it 100% professional from the time you leave your door step to when you get back home — no matter how exhausting.

Not being myself - My first managerial role at Accenture was a series of mis-steps and critical lessons learned. My biggest was trying to be someone I wasn’t. Not only did the power trip go to my head, but I was given an extremely challenging goal with insufficient timing & resources to get the job done. I was stressed and it showed. In normal times, I can be a bit more emotional but in difficult times, it gets worse. This ran counter to the “Arthur Androids” motto that was at the core of their culture so I was counseled by project leadership to bury my emotions. I tried to put on the fakeness expected of me, but if I’m bad at handling stress, I’m even worse at lying. It was a disaster and my team seemed to hate me. At a crisis point with making our critical deadline seemingly in doubt, I took a long weekend to collect myself and resolved that if I was going to go down, it was going to be as my authentic self. Over time, my personality has mellowed a bit and I’ve learned how to keep my worst emotions in check, but never again betrayed who I am or been called out for being fake. Interesting post-script to this — later in my career I got to meet a partner who was always brought in when projects got messy, the type of projects that go so south there client relationship is burned and they’re just trying not to get sued; he’s loud, authentic and the type of character that only seems to be from NY and due to his personality he confided in me as somewhat of a kindred spirit that he resented always having to be “that guy” and never trusted to lead projects in good times and bad. But he stayed there, never stopped being true to himself and instead of changing, the firm changed and clients it turned out were much more receptive to his direct style than they thought there. He’s still there and in a much more senior role almost 15 years later.

Not valuing the importance of my immediate network - At Accenture, I worked on Government & Financial Services projects. Government work was interesting to me; I could see the value in my work, particularly because it was to make New York City a better place. I also worked on two Financial Services projects. The second was the worst professional experience of my life. The first was one of the best, but it’s because I walked away from it that the second happened. When I was working on it, I didn’t think it was so great. The work was mind-numbing and we were doing seemingly inane work to consolidate decades-old technology systems of a massive bank. We were tiny cogs of a massive wheel and we knew it. But despite the drudgery of the day-to-day, the hours were steady & easy, the team was great and I was well-liked. I also had great mentorship. My immediate manager was my career counselor, we got on well, and I was developing a strong reputation amongst her peers in leadership. The problem was I had no desire to be there and completely undervalued the impact of the network I had developed and relationships I gained. After being bored there for close to a year, my Government-practice contacts were just strong enough to get me on one of their projects, but not in a position to be successful. The team was unexperienced, ill-equipped to execute on the project, had no interest in developing my career and it started a downward spiral at Accenture, culminating in the second Financial Services project I took, merely to avoid being laid off. That project was so bad that I asked off the project knowing I would be immediately fired — and I was. The paycheck literally wasn’t worth it. Looking back, I squandered an opportunity with good people around me, but a bad situation. Instead of leveraging my newfound network to get me in a better seat, I bailed and burned the whole network. It’s always hard getting the work, the team & the industry you do all lined up, but too often I undervalued the necessity of finding a good team of successful people and growing with them. Early in your career, your success is as much that of your team and your immediate superior.

Telling my boss I wanted to leave my job before I was ready - Another Accenture mistake…. after being there four years stuck on systems implementation projects it seemed like the right time to move on. My career was stagnating: I wasn’t doing work I enjoyed, my skills weren’t developing and I wasn’t doing well when I interviewed externally. It became clear that my best option was to go to Business School to make the leap I had been unable in the past to strategy consulting. I asked a couple Senior Managers who I knew liked me and a Partner to write my recommendations and they dutifully complied. But I wasn’t fully committed; I applied to three top schools in the middle of the Great Recession, didn’t manage the process actively and ended up getting rejected everywhere. Fast forward to late the following summer and the partner who had recommended me for business school took me to dinner to let me know that I was about to get laid off. He lamented that he wished he had done more to keep me staffed on projects so it wouldn’t happen but thought I was going to leave him for Business School and didn’t think it was prudent to risk continuing to commit to supporting me when he thought I was leaving. The lesson? Never let them think or know you are leaving until you are 100% sure. And if applying to graduate school, be sure to manage the process as if you will go and it is your #1 job. You can’t half-ass it and think “well I’ll go if I get into a really good school.” Once you make the ask, you need to be fully committed and ensure you get in SOMEWHERE that you will go. Otherwise, don’t ask anyone at your current employer for a recommendation.

Drinking on the job - Saving this one for last. This might have deep-sixed me from another consulting company and actually isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds. I actually have always been very good about the typical drinking follies you hear stories about that get people in trouble. Though I had a reputation for perfect attendance at Accenture Happy Hours, I was adept at leaving early, never appearing intoxicated around co-workers or doing anything remotely fireable during social outings. It was probably for this reason that I got overly confident during my Business School internship. I was already struggling; they project was a beast, they expected me to have more advanced skills than I had, I still continued to procrastinate and focus on the most important issues last, and I couldn’t get by on being one of the smartest in the room. Toward the end of my third week on the project, the Thursday we were supposed to leave was a holiday for the client so our team worked in a hotel lounge. I got up to grab a water and asked a junior colleague if I could get him something and he asked for a beer. I hadn’t thought to get an alcoholic beverage, but his asking and my focus on what I was doing made me think it was OK and that the rest of the team was doing it, so I was less than discreet about pouring myself a cocktail. An hour later, my supervisor pulled me aside and angrily chastised me for drinking on the client’s time. Fast forward to the end of the summer and I didn’t get a full-time offer to return from the firm. It was a hard summer for me and I’ll never know if this incident played a significant factor in the decision. Frankly, I still don’t think what I did was actually wrong. I was an adult, it was one drink, I was only in the company of fellow consultants, I was not the only one who did it (and I don’t believe anyone else was reprimanded) and it in no way distracted me from doing my job (which did not involve driving or heavy machinery), but it was still a big mistake and I regret it. First, I was skating on thin ice. When you’re doing well on a job, they’ll let some things go, but when you’re struggling, any questionable action gets magnified. Second, you have to be extremely careful of who you are around and who is watching you. It may be OK in the company of those who you trust and if everyone else participates, but I was blind to the situation and falsely assumed that no one had a problem with it. Unless you know, don’t assume.