Are You a Company Expert or an Industry Expert?

Many people are known as experts at navigating the systems and hierarchy within a company.  You may be one of those people.  Perhaps you are successful within your company because of this.

Make sure you are not confusing this expertise with skills that are relevant outside your company.

You may be the best at using that proprietary home-made CRM or knowing who the best person is to get an order out of the warehouse, but can you put those skills on a resume?

There may come a time when you will be looking at opportunities outside your company.  Have you taken the time to become an industry expert, to build your brand, and to gain new skills that are relevant outside the vacuum of your company?

Don't find out you've been institutionalized when you sit down to update your resume.

Why are you compliant?

While many bosses ask  "Why aren't you doing what I told you to do?", you should be asking yourself "Why am I so compliant?"

Is it because you want to fly under the radar, keep your head down, and just do your protect what you have?
You should be pushing the envelope, questioning, and initiating debate.

If your goal is to not rock the boat and not get noticed, be careful what you wish for: an forgettable, vanilla employee rarely achieves anything remarkable.  Try to think about an interesting book, story, movie or song about someone who did exactly what they were supposed to do.  Now think about the opposite.  I bet the titles start flowing.