How to keep your job Cover.indd - Richard Maun

Preface
good use of it in order to justify the money that is handed to us in
return for our efforts.
This awareness of the economic contract that underpins our
work is at the heart of this book. We have to remember it and make
sure that we do everything we can to remain a high-performing
individual, who is seen as a consistent producer of high quality
output.
IT’S OUR LIFE
This book is here to provide practical guidance so that we can
be really successful in our working life. However, we need to
acknowledge that there are hundreds of possible careers and
thousands of ways of interacting successfully with people. There
are also notable examples of people who ‘broke the rules’ and
things turned out well for them. These adventurous souls make
for lively comparisons in cafés and at dinner parties, as people are
often drawn to the cheeky renegade, the anti-hero or the person
who rebelled and beat the system.
However, given the millions of people who go to work each
day, these celebrated few are just that, a celebrated few. They will
probably be successful in whatever they choose to do and however
they choose to do it. That’s great for them, but we have to recognise
that until we can fi nd our own style and the confi dence to go our
own way, we need to be good at keeping our job. If we’re not, then
we could be setting ourselves up for a miserable life and nobody
deserves that.
Use this book to help you and at the same time remember
that it’s your life and you can choose how to live it. You decide
what behaviour to exhibit, how to interact with others and to
what standard you do your work. The responsibility for success,
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