What should you expect from your employer if you want to be a first-class player and a winner?

Foremost, you should expect to be provided with an environment of opportunity in which hard work and achievement are rewarded. This means you will be encouraged to grow as fast as you can, broadening your capabilities and building your experience every step of the way. You will be allowed to assume all the responsibilities you can handle.

This environment of opportunity should allow you to take common sense risks with the assurance that you will be rewarded if you are right and not punished if you turn out to be wrong.

You should expect your employer to provide you with the assets you need to get your assignments done on time and in a manner that produces profits. You have little chance of being a winner unless you are employed by an organization that satisfies this expectation.

You should expect your employer to maintain a highly visible connection between efforts, achievements and rewards. You will not have a nurturing soil in which you can grow to be a winner in the absence of a reward system that distinguishes between doing and "gonna do." There is little incentive to make your best effort where the annual compensation review almost always results in across-the-board, cost-of-living raises for one and all alike, loafers as well as producers; where winners are never singled out for a pat on the back.

Over time, the absence of opportunity, the lack of resources and the failure to reward good work will kill the fire in even the most ambitious of us. These failures will also cripple organizations.

Those who are driven to be winners will be smart enough to either change such a destructive environment or leave it.

Ramon Greenwood

RAMON GREENWOOD

Ramon Greenwood produces a free semi-monthly newsletter providing career advice to those who want to accelerate their careers. Contact him at ramon@commonsenseatwork.com to subscribe.

Those who know Ramon Greenwood and seek his counsel likely to describe him in such terms as "realistic" and"down-to- earth." Most agree with one of his clients who recently said, "He puts his rich and varied lode of experiences to work with an eye to results. He has the ability to make even the most complicated and formidable issues seem less forbidding and more manageable."

Another client declares: "Greenwood has been in the game, in the major leagues, for a long time. He's seen the winners and the losers up close. He knows what makes the difference between the players."

Greenwood's experiences include serving as:

? Senior Career Counselor, Common Sense At Work curently. ? Senior vice president for worldwide communications at American Express; member of the board of directors of American Express Publishing Company, American Express International, Inc. and American Express Foundation. ? Vice president-public affairs Consolidated Foods Corporation (now Sara Lee Corporation).

? Senior public affairs officer, U. S. Department of Transporation, during President Gerald Ford's Administration.

? Author of HOW TO MAKE THE WORLD OF WORK WORK FOR YOU and HOW TO LAND YOUR FIRST JOB. He is co-author of THE NAME OF THE GAME IS LIFE. His writings also have included a syndicated newspaper column, "Common Sense At Work"

? Wave 9 Enterprises, Inc., CEO and director ; Children On The Go, Inc., (chairman of the board and co-founder of this Chicago- based juvenile products company) ; Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods, Inc. (marketing and advertising agency), director; Simmons First National (Banking) Corporation, director and member of the corporate executive committee.

? Management consultant who counsels, speaks and writes on a variety of subjects related to career and business strategies and organizational dynamics.