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*All else being equal and if you always behave in a legal, moral and ethical manner and you understand that the invoice printer is the most important machine in any enterprise. These are a given and you should already know them by now, if you have been following me for any length of time.

After forty-six and one half years of observing modern business life, I think it does indeed boil down to two things, at least in large corporations.

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Make your boss look good.

Your job is to make your boss look good. Easy to say, hard to do; for in order to make your boss look good you must understand the mandates under which your boss is operating. What are the objectives from on high your boss is charged with executing? What are the constraints on your boss's authority? What are her budget constraints? What timeline has been given to her? Once you know the answers to these questions, you can make your plans.

It may be hard to get answers to these questions, for your boss may not know them or is not allowed to share them openly. This makes talking to your boss important. We'll start with the second one--maybe your boss is not allowed to share the answers. Why would this occur? Because perhaps the mandate to your boss is to operate her area until, say, next March, when it will be shut down. As for the first one, your boss just may be too dumb to have figured out the questions, let alone the answers.

The solution to these problems is figuratively to peer around your boss and see if you can determine what is coming down from on high. If you are in a large corporation, read everything you can get your hands on. Talk to people, politely but circumspectly. Ask questions but listen more than you talk. Try to read the tea leaves.

Decades ago, when I worked in that little old soap company in Cincinnati, I was clueless. This was before almost any computerization of any work in the engineering department. At the point where I would have been ten years into my career (I left at almost five), vast swaths of the engineering department were decimated. Looking back on this, I did not see it coming and I was just fortunate I got out way ahead of this. But there was one manager, about ten years older than I, who did see it coming. He had an inside track to the headquarters staff. He kept talking about a senior vice president who thought the engineering department was bloated and expensive. There were other clues, too--in the engineering department there was near-constant training about how to manage people for more efficient work. However, the biggest clue of all was that the boss of this engineering department of over 2,000 people held the title of Manager of Engineering--he wasn't even a vice president, despite having a department that employed about 7% of the people in the company worldwide. Further, he reported to a vice president, not even a senior vice president. When CAD (Computer Aided Design) came along, the bloodletting wounds were wide and deep.

So, figure out your boss's mandate and make her look good, even if her mandate is to put you out of a job--which leads to the second item.

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Don't do anything you wouldn't put on your resume.

Your resume is your ticket to your next job. Unless you are in a pool of less than about 2% of all people ever employed, you will want and sometimes need a next job. Yeah, I know, you just got out of school and you are all starry-eyed about your current employer, but trust me, there will be a day when you want a divorce. Further, you don't know who is going to initiate that divorce.

In matrimony (an old fashioned word to you youngsters) the idea is to keep the body and the brain buffed and ready for action. Hopefully you are keeping all shipshape for life with your current partner. When I meet young couples today I frankly quiz them on the status of their marriages. One of my goals these days is to watch young marriages become old marriages, but again, you have to be prepared because things happen.

In business, the equivalent is to keep your resume up to date. Although almost no one follows my advice, I think you should update your resume at least quarterly until you are about forty. Helps keep you centered while you are getting your "sea legs" for this journey upon which you have embarked.

So, to the subtitle--why are you doing tasks, and by tasks I mean major tasks, that you would not put on your resume? In other words, don't take your eye off the goal.

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A better way to center yourself in your early years is to make a pro forma resume that you would like to be yours at about age 55--the time when you would be considered most desirable as a senior executive. Do it now. How? Ask senior executives or mentors what such a resume would look like. Then build your own. Now you can check what you are doing as you go along against your pro forma resume.

What to do if you are off track? Devise a plan to get back on track. Caution--do not talk to your boss about assignments being off track except in the vaguest of terms. Such talk could get you a sooner than planned opportunity to use your buffed resume.

In the end, I would like to tell you it is more complicated than this, and there are certainly minutia that can be complicated. Yet, the big picture distills to the two items I have given you here, along with the given caveats at the top of this column.

So, what do you think? Am I right or all wet? Take our quiz this week to let us know. You may take it here.

For safety this week, a poor safety record can torpedo a career as fast as being caught with your boss's spouse.

Be safe and we will talk next week.

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