Do you have any career regrets?

We all have regrets, right? As I'm known to say, shoulda, coulda, woulda . . .

Personal regrets, we all have those, right? I know I do. One of my biggest personal regrets is not wearing sunscreen when I was a beach bum in high school. Today I am paying the price for not wearing sunscreen when I spent those 6 - 8 hours a day on the beach.

But I'm not talking about personal regrets. No, not relationship regrets either. We all have those too. I know I do. I'm talking about career regrets. I went to lunch this week with a former manager. And at lunch we had a brief discussion about our individual careers and about the careers of our peers. After our lunch, I was thinking about my own career regrets.

Of late I can think of two, one in 1991 and the other in 1999. Neither of which I shared with my former manager.

Regret one: In 1991 I was a corporate travel manager for a US hardware manufacturer, Pyramid Technology. I had done an awesome job saving the company money on corporate travel. And because I had done such an awesome job, I had cut my workload in ½. With my commodity well managed, my reward was a requirement to learn T-accounts and help with accruals. I was, after all, in the accounting department. If you know me, you are laughing so hard right now you have to be crying. I did not warm to accounting and accounting did not warm to me. I did, however, have a wonderful mentor and manager, Dennis Demps (who I miss very much. Dennis past away in 1993). When Pyramid needed to make cuts in 1992, no matter how great of a job I had done managing travel, it wasn't enough for me to stay off of the RIF list. My regret isn't that I was required to learn accounting, or that I was really bad at it or that I lost my job. My regret is that I didn't take the opportunity to manage my own career. I could have looked, long and hard at my company and found the right mentor and the best spot for me to grow my career. My regret is that I didn't head upstairs and have a conversation with the VP of Marketing, who much later became the E in BEA.

Regret two: In 1999, I was a customer service manager, who was working hard to take charge of my career at a supply chain management company. Learning from my past, I was always looking for more responsibility and always connecting with folks to learn more about the business. In 1999, one of my peers called me doggedly persistent and to me it was a complement. One day I received a phone call from a head-hunter wanting to know if I would consider a project management role at a software start-up in San Jose. She shared a bit about the company, their product and well, gosh, I had never heard of BEA. My regret isn't that I didn't get the interview with a start-up I'd never heard about or that later they went public . My regret is that I didn't do my homework, I didn't know about BEA or who worked there. My biggest regret was not continuing to network with my former colleagues from Pyramid who were at BEA.

As I say, shoulda, coulda, woulda, right? Lessons learned: take charge of your career, do your homework and continuing to network. You can't change the past but you can shape your future.

What are your regrets?