Maria Brown on Ten Lessons for a Successful Career
Knowledge at SMU/Wharton
February 4, 2008
Straight-talking, multi-Michelin-starred chef Gordon Ramsey was relatively unknown to TV audiences in Singapore until the Asian Food Channel (AFC) began broadcasting his Hell’s Kitchen series. Described as the region’s first and only 24-hour pay channel devoted to matters culinaire, AFC broadcasts food and food-related programmes from cooking, game and travel shows to documentaries spanning the globe.
Maria Brown, cofounder and managing director for acquisitions and programming of the AFC, has spent over 14 years in the international media industry. She joined the BBC at the age of 21, moving on to management positions including senior producer at its London headquarters and its New York bureau. Brown worked on many innovative programmes including “Watchdog”, a consumer advocacy series, and also covered Saddam Hussein’s capture ‘live’.
Brown, who is based in Singapore where the AFC was launched in 2005, delivered a talk at the Singapore Management University recently on “Ten lessons to have a successful career” as part of the Wee Kim Wee Centre CEO Talks Series. Beginning at the bottom of the list, Brown worked her way up the ten key lessons which are summarised in the extracts below.
Lesson #10: Be passionate
Love your life, love your job, and love to be around the people you have to be around. It does not work if you do not feel any passion for what you are doing. The key thing about passion is that other people can see and feel it. It will determine the way other people respond to you.
One of the biggest things about the AFC is we are not backed by a major TV distributor like NBC or the BBC. We were two people setting up a company from scratch. The one thing that everyone knew about us was that we were so passionate to the extent that we made people sick!
Passion is infectious. Find what it is that is going to make you passionate in life. You have to understand that the same thing which makes you passionate will not make everybody else passionate. Sometimes you have got to be prepared to do something different, and to go against the rule of what everybody else is doing.
Lesson #9: Always dress well
Whatever it is you want to do, dress like you want to do it. If you want to be a rock star, dress like a rock star. If you want to be a politician, do not dress like a rock star. What you have to understand is, whatever it is you want to do, somebody somewhere will give you an opportunity to do it. But if you do not dress the part, they are not going to believe in you. What is worse is you are not going to believe in yourself. Understand that you have to be what it is you want to do before you actually do it. Start to think like that and you will become it. When you become it, you will be like it.
Lesson #8: Embrace Diversity
Diversity is a lesson for us to learn from each other. Without embracing that lesson you will fail. To be able to move forward, to be innovative and different, you have to embrace that which is different. Diversity is key. If you’re given the opportunity to work among people who are different from you, grab it. There is always something you can learn.
At the AFC, we have 30 employees made up of 10 different nationalities. Our oldest employee is 73 and is the most solid employee in the office. She takes less sick leave than anybody else, she makes the least excuses about not getting the job done, and she is one of the most open-minded people I have worked with.
Lesson #7: Plan for the worst; hope for the best
Plan whatever you want but expect that life is going to throw you challenges, which means you might not be able to do what you planned. Life is not one straight line. What we say at the AFC is “be paranoid”. Then when life throws you a surprise, you are not keeling over from shock because your life is not turning out the way you want it to be. Instead, what you can do is respond with positivism. What you will actually find is, very often, the great plan that you had which did not happen and made you do something else actually made you do something even better. But you have to be open to it.
Lesson #6: Be prepared for tough messages
There is no such thing as a world without conflict. The only way you can have a world without conflict is to be dead. You have to understand that there are going to be differences in opinions. Nobody is going to agree with you all the time. You are going to hear things you do not want to hear.
At the AFC, we have to give tough messages to our employees all the time. We have to tell our employees they are not doing well, that they need to do something different, or that this is not working out and we need them to leave the company.
You have to be open to hearing these things if you are going to learn and grow. The only way to learn is to fail and to hear the tough messages. Be a good manager or listen to good managers who are giving you that, and understand that you are going to have to deliver that one day.
Lesson #5: In life, make it happen
Whining does not get anyone anywhere. Get out there and do whatever it is you want to do. Get outside your comfort zone. Life is too short. None of us know how long we are going to live. You cannot sit there saying you have another 40 years to go. We have no guarantees.
Lesson #4: Be proactive
It is about going out there, taking control and having initiative. In the workplace, it is about thinking beyond your job description. It is about asking “what more can I do?” You are being watched all the time so you had better be watched for the right reasons. At the end of the day, you are there to do a job. You are getting paid by somebody to be there. So get smart in the workplace. And being smart is about being proactive; thinking above and beyond what you need to do and thinking what is going to make me look good. Read more.
