Mick Quinn thinks that career experts make too much of career tracks. When he was building his career, friends, teachers and mentors drove home their importance. The big message was, “Get on the right career track and one day you’ll get the power job you’ve always wanted.”

Quinn didn’t buy it. And it’s a good thing, too, because this former programmer/IT headhunter/entrepreneur--who launched a half dozen successful online businesses and has just completed his first book, Power and Grace: the Wisdom of Awakening--says he wouldn’t be where he is today if he had listened to all the formula career advice that was dished out to him.

Endorsing the timeless teaching of Buddha and other Eastern sages, Quinn’s book is also about finding a path--not a defined career path, but a richer spiritual one that leads to personal fulfillment and achievement rather than wealth and power.

After a star-studded career of job hopping, Quinn says, he got where he is today not by following a career track but by cross-training. But he’s not alone. He insists that thousands of others have adopted the same strategy.

Most of the successful people Quinn’s observed over his 20-plus-year career have cross-trained themselves in skills they deemed essential for moving up the career ladder. More often than not, their moves were unplanned. Circumstances, events and just plain luck dictated the need to learn new skills.

Quinn contends that many CEOs, for example, may have had a dozen or more jobs before finding their way to the executive suite. “They may have started off in the mail room,” he says. “From there they moved into IT, starting off as a junior computer technician or programmer; then they learned some Access or VB, then cross-trained to learn DB rudiments. After they mastered DB basics, they jumped into a DBA job; cross-trained again in systems design, all the while cross-training in project management and team development to take on bigger projects. Then they decided to cross-train again and bone up on business skills, so they went back to school and got their MBA.”

The cross-training cycle continues, says Quinn, till our imaginary rising stars are promoted to CTO. With knowledge of technology and business management, they strategically positioned for a promotion to CFO, opening a clear path to the CEO job.

When our fictitious CEOs look back on their star-studded career, “they’re hard pressed to see a discernable career path,” Quinn adds. “I doubt that they were aware of the fact that they were cross-training their way up the ladder. More likely, they were just making smart moves that moved them along the knowledge/skills spectrum.”

Quinn has created a hypothetical scenario, but the point he’s making is an important one. It’s no wonder professional athletes cross-train with a vengeance so they can improve their performance in their primary sport. For example, skiers bicycle during the summer months to maintain or improve the strength and endurance of their quadriceps and their aerobic endurance. And golfers use abdominal and lower back strength-training exercises to add power to their drives. There are many other examples.

According to Quinn, the cross-training process ought to continue throughout your career. What are your short- or long-term goals, and how are you going to achieve them? If you’re just waiting for your boss to promote you, you could be waiting forever. But if you start boning up (cross-training) on the skills you need in order to reach them right now, you stand a much better chance of getting that promotion on your own merits, rather than seniority.

Many industries--especially hospitality, health care and transportation--have developed sophisticated cross-training programs. The primary reason is to reduce turnover, improve morale and create opportunities to promote from within. But consider the impression you make if you do it yourself--and on your own time.

In IT, for example, many seasoned project managers mastered their jobs by cross-training themselves. Many began their careers as programmers, moved on to big development projects and then went back to school to study management so they could understand the fundamentals and theory behind team development--and what it takes to achieve complex goals that harness the skills of many people. So they cross-trained themselves into new and more challenging jobs.

Cross Training