Get successful by getting tough - with yourself.

No matter where you are in business today, the demands and expectations are increasing, and there's less time and patience for getting the job done. Getting ahead isn't getting any easier. More hours, more responsibility and more knowledge are the ingredients for success.

It's tough now but indications point to it getting even rougher because the stakes are escalating. According to Don Tapscott in The Digital Economy, most of Hewlett-Packard's revenues come from products that didn't exist a year ago. Just a few years ago, it took six years to bring an automobile from concept to production. Now it's two. What will it be next year? The pressure is on to do more and more in less time.

The message is clear: Yesterday's success is tomorrow's failure. The work ethic is changing to meet new demands. No longer does hard work alone count. We're in a performance-based business mode that requires more than long hours. To become oriented in the new direction, here are eleven concepts for success in a career or in running a business. In order get to the top, get tough with yourself.

1. If you think you're doing your job, you're obsolete. Only The Paranoid Survive is the provocative title of Intel chairman Andrew S. Grove's book. It's easy to spot those who believe they have mastered their craft; they are oblivious to what's going on around them and have become functionally obsolete. What they do they may do well. Unfortunately, it is not enough.

2. If you think you fully understand what's happening, you will never get up to speed. Any business that depends on a fax machine, for example, is out of the mainstream. It's easy to understand yesterday's technology and issues. If you do, you're behind the curve. The business strategy, either for an individual or a business, is to avoid playing catch-up because there's no way to make up for lost time. The most pressing task is to get on the front of a curve by embracing new technology, anticipating trends and seeking new information - and stay there.

3. If you talk about what you've accomplished, you're useless. Humans seem to enjoy the past. World War II veterans have often been heard to say that this was the high point of their lives. But past accomplishments are today's useless baggage. To judge yourself by what you have done is to start down the career ladder. If you talk about past successes, then you can be sure you've stopped learning and that renders you useless. "If an organization stops improving," comments Gene C. Wright of Andersen Consulting, "it quickly loses competitive advantage." This applies to individuals, too.

4. If you feel you've paid your dues, your career (or your business) is bankrupt. The idea that you can earn a permanent place at the table is gone. While this lesson resonates within corporate America, it applies to every other business. The dues are never paid in full. It's a shock to realize that one cannot earn the right to take it easy, to slide along any length of time. Anyone who has been in the workforce for more than 15 years must undergo what can be called "work concept reversal." The old thinking held that the longer you were in a career, the easier it should become. Business owners can still be heard talking about "stepping back" and "slacking off", suggesting that they have earned the right to draw full pay but slow down. Work concept reversal holds that we should expect demands to increase over time and there's no room for "stepping back". If the time comes when you start losing responsibilities, you are on the way out.

5. If you're glad you have a job with little stress, you won't have it for long. While there are those who hold that stress is the current workplace enemy, the real culprit may be the notion that stress is abnormal. What may be harmful is the inner turmoil that develops when we act as if pressure or stress is inappropriate. The issue is learning how to cope with the most common elements of business life: confusion, complexity, contingency and contradiction. Only those who can survive in this type of environment will flourish.

6. If you're not pushing the envelope, you have nothing to contribute that's of value. There's no advancement for those who play it safe. Risk taking is the mental attitude that cuts costs, provides better and more timely service and finds solutions where there are obstacles. If you're not coming up with new solutions, new ideas and new answers, you're not needed. The way to get ahead is to be a resource for your company, whether you own it or work for it.

7. If you're not focused on the present, there is no future. The people who are most valuable to business organizations have an ability to separate themselves from both what happened yesterday and what might happen tomorrow, and focus totally on the now. If they are in sales, they listen to the customer instead of trying to get the customer to listen to them. If they are in management, they tune out themselves to they can hear the message.

8. If you have time to do your job, you've lost it. There is never enough time and there never will be again. Thinking about the way it was or might be only serves to make it difficult to focus on the present. Yesterday's bank president, for example, had an office in a building; today's bank executive also works out of a car. Importance isn't measured by the size of the office but by the quality of the performance.

9. If you're not willing to put yourself on the line, you'll hang on it. Taking responsibility is perhaps the most necessary quality in running a business or working in one. Yet, most people spend time avoiding it in a futile effort to protect themselves from possible criticism. Respect for responsibility is the missing ingredient in too many organizations. We live in a "no excuses" environment.

10. If you believe this is just the Information Age, you're out of touch. The idea of the Information Age, with its incredible emphasis on the availability of data, tends to obscure the need for concepts. This is the Age of Information Organization. Simply having more information at your fingertips is irrelevant unless you know how to process that information in productive ways. As one writer has said about Charles Darwin, "He saw more than those who knew more." The ability to link and interpret information in meaningful ways is the key.

11. If you're not wired, you're no longer connected. And if you're not connected, you're nowhere. The key is being connected and this runs counter to those who want to go on vacation so they can "be away from the telephone." That's past. Here's the point: IF you're out of the loop for even short periods, someone else has filled the gap. There's not time for a pause; there's no waiting. It's over.

If we want to succeed, the best place to begin is by getting tough on ourselves. Taking out our frustrations on others or blaming the companies where we work or even the times in which we live only serves to deflect us from the task at hand. Such exercises only serve to make us less effective at coming to terms with the issues that make a difference.

Only those who are relentless in making sure they are ahead of the curve are valuable both to themselves and their companies.

John R. Graham is president of Graham Communications, a marketing services and sales consulting firm founded in 1976. Mr. Graham is the author of 203 Ways To Be Supremely Successful In The New World Of Selling (Macmillan Spectrum, 1996) and Magnet Marketing: The Ultimate Strategy for Attracting and Holding Customers published by John Wiley & Sons. His audiocassette series, Selling More, No Matter What, is distributed by The Dartnell Corporation, Chicago, IL. Mr. Graham writes for a variety of publications and speaks on business, marketing, and sales topics for company and association meetings. He can be contacted at 40 Oval Road, Quincy, MA 02170 (617-328-0069; fax [phone]; [e-mail]). The company's web site is located at http://www.magnetmarketing.com.