Each week there are new books released on the topic of effective leadership and management. Clearly there is a wide audience seeking the perfect formula for success. Over the course of my career I have built a library from many of these titles. What occurs to me is that the majority of these qualities are developed long before arriving at the executive suite.

My list of seven qualities, distilled from experience and the wisdom of others include: competence, confidence, common sense, clarity, creativity, curiosity and caring.

You develop your expertise with education, experience and mentoring. As you test our your knowledge you gain confidence in your abilities. But having confidence and a basic working knowledge of your field is only the beginning.

Take that knowledge and experience and apply common sense, plain, ordinary good judgment. Maybe this is the ‘go with your gut’ mentality, provided your gut is led by an accurate read of the facts.

Adam Bryant, the New York Times journalist has interviewed hundreds of CEOs for his weekly Corner Office column in the Sunday Business section. In his book, ‘The Corner Office’ he described five essentials for success. One is ‘a simple mindset’. A leader must convey their goals clearly so that each of the employees can identify with the organization’s direction. If you have more than five goals, you may want to go back and edit.

Creativity continues to be a leadership ‘buzzword’. The authors of ‘The Innovator’s DNA’ suggest that creativity can be learned and define the building blocks to get there. However, if you are not curious, you will never be creative.

The last, but most important on the list is caring. If you do not genuinely care for your colleagues, employees, clients, investors and community you limit your opportunity to succeed.

Think about your portfolio. Where are your strengths related to these seven categories? Where are the gaps?

Explore ways to fill in the blanks. Identify experiences, education and people who can help you. And don’t limit yourself to your current career field, open yourself to the wealth of multidisciplinary resources.

There seems to be a great deal of controversy over the topic of finding your ‘passion’ at work. Many feel that it’s unrealistic to expect a job to provide meaning, and others question how this is possible for people who don’t have access to the resources and network required to achieve their dream. The conversation itself may cause pressure for those who’ve not yet developed a coherent definition of their dream.

I think we have become lost in the semantics of the moment. I believe what we are looking for is a place where we can be successful, however we individually define success, among colleagues who value our contribution and managers who provide constructive evaluation of our work. We want to be better at what we do than when we started. We want to learn enough about ourselves and the work to make decisions about our next step.

In other words we need to find our work ‘place’ and if this is synonymous with finding your passion, great. If it’s a way station on a longer journey of discovery, perfect.

The key is momentum. Find your community, learn and contribute. Seek out the advice of others, but own your career choices. Don’t think of your work ‘place’ as a cubicle or corner office, but a moveable feast, a dream built on experience, connections and growth.

I purchased Workthoughts.com at the dawn of the Internet with the idea that someday it would be a platform to share ideas, trends and stories about work. And then life and work took me in a different direction.

My career started in college admissions, which was a nice transition from college life. I was in a familiar environment where I was confident I could be successful. I attended graduate school part time and received a master’s degree and continued to work in higher education for a few years before heading into the ‘real world’ of corporate life. The experience of Fortune 500 company life was an education in finance, corporate strategy, marketing and sales. I worked with clients in the financial services sector and managed line organizations delivering direct consumer services. But I knew the place where I belonged was with college students on a university campus. I found my work ‘place’ leading career centers at both Columbia University in the City of New York and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The transition allowed me to stay connected to the world outside of academia, interacting with employers as well as students and alumni. At USC I moved on to lead the continuing education organization and create strategies for the growing online degree portfolio.

During my time at USC I started writing blogs first about issues in the workplace, ‘SC@Work’ and next about lifelong learning, ‘refresh@USC’. I had the opportunity to co-found the USC Writers Conference and realized that it was time to find a new work ‘place’ where I could blend an interest in writing with my expertise on work.

Workthoughts is my new work ‘place’ and I look forward to our conversations about work, success and finding a way to matter.

Welcome to ‘Workthoughts’, a place to consider and reflect on how we spend our days, set our priorities and define success.

Work is a word that enters our vocabulary in our earliest moment of awareness. Our parents leave the house or drop us at daycare and disappear for hours or days ‘at work’. Some return home exhausted by the physical exertion of the workplace, others energized by the freedom to decide and create. From our earliest memory, we begin to formulate impressions of work. In our first jobs as babysitters, waitresses or camp counselors we collect first hand knowledge of the expectations of a workplace. In our neighborhoods, schools and churches we encounter the members of our first professional network. At the cinema and on television we watch actors portray a variety of callings, the majority happy with their career choice as lawyers, doctors, detectives, engineers and superheroes.

In the beginning we are open to any possibility. We haven’t learned the value society places on work and workers. Our exploration of the world of work begins with the folks who keep us safe. We imagine ourselves as those fictional superheroes, donning capes and masks, scaling buildings to save the city or the planet from threat.

Throughout our years of formal education we gain additional information about work and workplace options. By the time we are in high school, our academic performance and test scores have segmented the class into college bound and not.

As we progress through education we acquire the biases of our community and culture, strongly influencing our choice of work.

We begin our careers as interns; apprentices excited about an opportunity to finally realize a long held dream. Along the way we translate that experience into a full time job and begin our careers acquiring skills and learning the culture of the organizations we join.

We become engaged in our communities, raise families and continue our education.

At some point the momentum of our career trajectory outruns our initial dreams and values, and it’s important to ask, why work?

Workthoughts is not a job site, but a place to consider choices, share ideas and reconnect with dreams