By Joe Grimm

We’ll be hearing comparisons between Kodak, which is slipping toward bankruptcy, and railroads.

Railroads acted as though they were all about trains and tracks, the story goes, and didn’t realize until too late that they were in the transportation business.

Kodak thought it was a photo chemical company and stuck with film too long after other companies began focusing on digital photography, which Kodak had pioneered.

People have been making unflattering comparisons for years between newspapers and the railroads.

But let’s try another comparison. Do you run your career the way the railroads ran their business? Are you acting like Kodak? Do you understand what you do in the large sense, or are you focused on what someday might be considered minutia?

One lesson you can learn from the railroads, Kodak and newspapers is to be broad, rather than narrow. Drop limiting adjectives. Don’t call yourself a TV reporter, but a journalist.

Be less mode-specific. Railroads stuck with tracks, Kodak stuck with chemistry – even though it invented digital photography – and newspapers still must rely heavily on paper delivery.

Recognize that new modes change not only the way we do what we have always done, but they also lead to new products and services.

Cars and trucks can do what railroads do, but with tremendous personal independence and freedom. Digital means freedom, too. And delivering news on platforms that are practically free can turn everyone into a publisher.

So, paring back your personal vision of what you do to its essence and then embracing new tools as they arrive helps to maintain career momentum.

As individuals, we have an advantage over railroads, newspapers and Kodak. Dropping the old ways when huge capital investments, pensions and other obligations rely on what they do is incredibly difficult.

Being one person, rather than a company or an industry, gives you flexibility the big guys don’t have. But you must use it.

Joe Grimm, a consultant and adjunct faculty member of the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute, recruited for the Detroit Free Press, Knight Ridder and Gannett from 1990 until 2008. He now teaches at the Michigan State University School of Journalism. He has run the JobsPage journalism careers site at www.jobspage.com since 1996. Questions about careers? E-mail Joe for an answer.