• by Jack Myers , January 26, 2007

How many years have you been working in the media/advertising business? How often do you attend industry conferences, Upfront events and panel presentations? Are you actively engaged with colleagues from other companies, or do you spend the vast majority of your time immersed in day-to-day requirements of your job? How would you rate your responsibilities on a scale of one to ten for how much they are impacted by the changing media landscape?

If you believe the day-to-day requirements of your job will be radically different in 12 months, then you get a ten rating. If you or the person in your job will be doing basically the same task in 12 months without any change, then you get a one. Write down the rating you give your job from one to ten. Now, decide what you want for your own career. Again on a one to ten scale, rate how immersed you would like to be in new media and the changes taking place in the industry. If you're completely content with business-as-usual and find change troubling and disruptive to your mental stability, rate yourself a one. If you embrace change, need to envelop yourself and your career in emerging business models and love change, rate yourself a ten.

Finally, rate your company. How actively is your company adapting to consumers' embrace of new media technologies and the changing landscape? Are you working for a company that's completely embedded in the future and dependent on changing business models for its success and growth? Then rate it a ten. Are you a part of a traditional media company or agency that depends on traditional models for the vast majority of its business but is trying to incorporate new ideas and strategies? Then give it a three to five rating, depending on how dedicated the management team is to change. And if management just has its head buried in the past and is relying on slow but stable growth with virtually no investments in innovation, then rate the company a one.

You've just created a template for your own future. You've defined where you are personally today, where you want to be in the future, and whether or not you can achieve your goals at the company you're with today. The path forward with these three simple ratings is fundamental. If you're eager to be engaged with changes in our industry but in a job today that doesn't empower you, then check out your company score. Can you achieve your goals with your current company, or do you need to change?

Overly involved with change in your current job and company and eager for more stability and continuity? Again, the same analysis applies.

One thing I know for certain is that executives who are embedded in traditional media companies but eager to be a part of future models, need to look long and hard at their goals and ability to achieve them. How actively is the company you're with embracing change -- and are your goals and needs compatible with corporate realities? In the next two years, careers will be made and broken. Scores of entrepreneurial companies will run out of venture funds and disappear. Corporate initiatives will fail on both a grand and small scale. The traditional network and media agency models still in place today will be a vestige of the past in just a few short years.

In the continuum of change, from traditional models that have been solidly in place for five decades to business models of the future that are in the early stages of development, where do you put yourself today -- and where do you want to be? Too few people in the advertising and media business are asking those questions today and making career decisions based on the answers. Give it a try and let me know the outcome.