In life, you must clearly understand what you are trying to achieve. You need to identify your personal mission, your vision, and your values before you can do well in any workplace. From there, you can analyze the priorities of wherever you work - in other words, what matters to the organization. In his new book, D.A. Abrams impressively melds all the wisdom he’s gleaned over an illustrious career with his deep knowledge of young talent in organizations. With Make It Happen, he provides an invaluable how-to for those early in their careers, so workers can craft a personal mission that feels authentic and exciting and also resonates and aligns with the goals and objectives of their organization’s leadership.

In Make It Happen, Abrams shows you how to approach your job with an aim to making it a career. His 12 Steps are designed to help you develop your brand and become the person your boss, team, and company can count on. Abrams starts with an essential truth for young workers: Just being good at your job is not good enough! So, to get ahead and realize your full potential while also having a satisfying life and productive career, you’ll need to understand and implement each of these 12 Steps, including the 15 core competencies he outlines in Step 4.

The bottom line: If you don’t grasp these Steps and get them to work for you, you’ll find it very difficult to succeed and make things happen for yourself within any organization that has norms, standards, culture, levels, and opportunity. So, dive in and learn the best way to “Make it Happen” for you and your professional dreams.