Author: Jeremie Averous

How Following Your Passion is a New Concept

Following on our previous post “Why Following Your Passion is not (Necessarily) the Solution“, I was inpired by the author Cal Newport to use Google Ngram viewer to look at the history of the concept. The result is self-explanatory!

follow_passion
Follow your passion is a very new concept that exploded recently

So, following your passion is an extremely modern concept (currently very trendy it seems) in particular when compared with some other related concepts such as life purpose, love work:

passion work purpose

 

In summary we’ve been having life purpose for a century, we’ve been substantially loving work for even more than that, but we’ve only considered following our passion for two decades. Isn’t that strange? I guess we can all draw an interesting conclusion from this observation!

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Why Following Your Passion is not (Necessarily) the Solution

At last a contrarian book about the general advise “Follow Your Passion”! – and I do love all things contrarian in particular when they are well argued. In the book ‘So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love‘ (which I highly recommend), Cal Newport argues that it is not useful and even possibly a dangerous piece of advice.

passionCal argues that you need to earn career capital before you can really concentrate on what you like best, and that most people actually discover their passion by developing their skills (and not the reverse where people develop skills to fit their passion).

Hence his conclusion that skills and ability trump passion, and that you need first to be so good at something that you basically can then carve out a freedom space to specialize further in what you particularly like.

An interesting career consequence for young people is that the advice is then to first develop a career in a conventional way to learn and enhance skills up to the point of becoming indispensable, where it is then possible to gain freedom and do new creative stuff.

I found this book enjoyable and useful, so in a few next posts I will continue to comment some of its ideas.

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How Salaried Work in Large Corporations was a Historical Exception

We need to remember that salaried work in large corporations as we know it is an invention of the Industrial Age. Before that, most craftsmen were on their own, selling their services. They learnt by being an apprentice for a while and by travelling around places to gather the best practices.

craftsman middle-ages
Like the craftsman in the middle ages, the KEEN is nomadic independent worker

What is happening now on the labor market can be seen in fact as a return to a situation quite akin to the previous Agricultural Age for learned ans skilled labor: independent craftsmen that move from project to project and learn through experience and travel.

Of course there are quite a few differences: many valuable crafts are now intellectual and not necessarily manual, a much larger proportion of total population is sufficiently learned to enter the category, apprenticeship still exists in a somewhat less formal way in the form of years of experience and mentoring, etc.

The interesting part is the similarities: craftsmen need to know how to market themselves and not just be good at their craft; their value increases with international exposure and nomadic habits; they are engaged on a project basis rather than a continuous basis; and this creates a higher inequality in compensation, where common skills become a commodity and rare skills are highly valued.

Salaried work in large organizations governed by scientific management methods is what we consider normal employment. In fact it will just be a blip in the history of labor relations. Let’s make the best of it and look in the future of the independent craftsmen that join to realize incredible projects like the cathedral builders of old!

You can continue this exploration of the new labor contracting approaches in a very interesting paper in ParisTech review about the new forms of employment (in French or English).

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How We Underestimate What We Can Do in Ten Years

“People always underestimate what they can do in ten years and overestimate what they can do in a week” says Hugh MacLeod of Gapingvoid (great daily cartoons and inspiration!). For the ten year time-frame, the cause is easy to find: it is clearly another effect of the ‘Exponential Deception‘.

A great approach to time, from day to decades!
A great approach to time and life, from day to decades!

I can confirm personally and in my project execution experience that people do for sure overestimate what they can achieve in a day or week, and have difficulty figuring out what they can really achieve in a year.

The decade is an interesting timeframe for further contemplation. In reality, trying to look in hindsight we can probably do so much in a decade that we can change our life and our worldview completely…

Ask yourself right now: what did you think you would become ten years ago? What did you think you would do?

If you are like me, what happened is vastly different from what I could just even envisage ten years ago (from civil service in France to expat consultant-entrepreneur in Singapore!).

And the thing is, achieving a transformation in a decade (just 3653 days) does not require to work harder or to improve much more on a daily basis – the power of the exponential secures dramatic changes even for minimum daily and weekly improvements.

Come on, what will you do in ten years? What do you want to do? Don’t limit yourself, the sky is the limit!

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How the Concept of Citizenship Is Shifting

I explained in the Fourth Revolution book how the concept of citizenship would have to evolve to face the reality of the onset of the Collaborative Age. The news from Estonia last year about the launch of the e-citizenship program is one step in that direction.

Estonia E-IDe-citizens get registered and can then use their pass for a variety of purposes including relation with the public service, authentication of documents, running a business in Estonia from abroad… (more on the current benefits on e-estonia.com!).

Of course that status cannot be used to enter Europe physically or vote in Estonia, but the experiment – which Estonia probably believes will be extremely beneficial to its economy – basically creates a virtual country with a much large citizenship, and possibly significant value creation.

This is just the start of the blurring of the lines of the nation state as it was formalized by the Industrial Revolution. I can’t wait to see what this experiment will lead to!

Some more links for those of you who are interested: E-citizens unite: Estonia opens its digital borders (New Scientist) and a detailed link about users on the official website.

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How Public Services entered a Competitive Market with the Fourth Revolution

We used to think of public services as activities outside of the competitive landscape. That’s maybe true in a country, but the new situation brought by the Fourth Revolution is that’s not true anymore: public services are in competition between countries.

Tax rates OECD 1981-2012
This schematics of effective corporate tax rates in the OECD shows the effect of competition between public services in the past 30 years (source: taxfoundation.org)

Effectiveness, performance of public services is today the most important competition parameter when it comes to economic performance. Countries that are not good at it do already suffer on the global market. In addition this competition puts a lot of pressure on tax rates (in particular at the corporate level) impacting further those countries which public services are ineffective.

The problem is that because this competition is somewhat remote, public services often do not realize this new situation. Finding a way to show them how competition is impacting the national welfare should be a great incentive for improvement. Unfortunately, defensive reactions against globalization often impede these discussions.

Yes, public services are now on a competitive market. They need to increase their effectiveness for the sake of national welfare. Let’s not shrink from it, and just realize that this situation will be even more real in the Collaborative Age!

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Why We Fear Freedom And How to Overcome That Fear

How come that we fear so much having opportunities and going after them? How come that we fear so much freedom and dream of coming back to a well-organized life with little surprises?

fear-of-freedom_morrisonA personal story: a few weeks ago one of my main clients terminated my consulting contract for some economic reasons that were not related to my mission. Suddenly half my occupation was gone… From a comfortable situation keeping busy more than full-time, I got propelled in uncertainty and the need to increase marketing and networking to find some new work. This situation was actually not an issue on the short term (enough reserves having been built over time), it was actually a great wake-up call to go out and do new, interesting things and meet new, great people. It was the opportunity to take time to create more great content. Still I was afraid.

I was afraid because of the uncertainty, because I could not anticipate where and when I would be in the next weeks and months. I got afraid when there was no problem in the medium term and only positives that could emerge from the situation.

And suddenly as I became open to new things, new opportunities started pouring in. Some more serious or more ripe than others, but from a trickle it soon became a stream of opportunities. Interesting possibilities that I had overseen by being busy became visible.

Still inside I remained somewhat fearful. It is difficult not to be afraid in the face of uncertainty. It is important to be able to overcome the ineluctable fear moments.

Don’t fear freedom. Breathe.  Calm down. Freedom is the possibility to change and get closer to what we want to be.

This post was inspired by the post ‘the Fear of Freedom‘ by one of my favorite bloggers Seth Godin, which got published just at the right moment for me in my small inner questioning!

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Why You Need to Choose Conversation Over Comments

Speaking about the web, Valeria Maltoni notes: “You have a conversation problem. And social networks have exacerbated it. People think they are conversing. Instead, they are commenting — big difference.”

conversation valueCommenting is about judgment. It is a one way affair. Conversing is about exchanging views, possibly opinions. It is a two way affair. It can generate new ideas and views from the confrontation.  And it makes all the difference.

How often in our lives do we comment, and forget to converse? How often do we pass judgment, without giving the opportunity for the other to explain or discuss?

We often need to consciously open the door to conversation instead of just producing a series of comments. We need to act instead of judging and avoiding the interaction.

Hat tip to Valeria Maltoni’s post ‘People don’t Converse: they Comment. Big Difference‘, originally written about online commenting and marketing – and blog commenting!.

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What Makes a Great CEO… And How It Applies To All of Us

“Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say, “I didn’t quit.”” – Ben Horowitz in his book ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things‘.

dont-quitDon’t quit… be persistent against adversity. It is true that I have observed that many successful top executives do show this capability. Weathering the storm, keeping calm but decided as to the general direction, getting all sorts of scolding and social pressure, and still persisting.

Your business, or your project, if a bit ambitious, will go through ups and downs. And sometimes the down moment will look abysmal. Note that’s where most people give up. That’s the great filter that separates the people who will make a difference and will create their mark for all to see. Not giving up. No quitting when (almost) everybody would quit. Sticking to it.

If you want to be successful, just don’t quit. Just stay when everybody else leaves running for cover.

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Why Good Strategy is About Making Sense of Complexity

As I was preparing a presentation lately discussing about the strategy role in organizations, I realized that what great strategy people do is making sense of the complex world so as to enable decision-making – developing and presenting a reading grid of the world so as to make decisions as to where to go possible and natural. Showing the path in the midst of the dark, unpredictable jungle.

Strategy is making sense of complexity to show the way
Strategy is making sense of complexity to show the way

Good strategies are defined by clear-cut directions that are followed by the organization to realize value; the best strategies can sometimes be wholly different directions from the current effort. “Visionary” leaders are people that have a certain understanding of the world and follow a path that is clearly marked for them.

It is only possible to determine a clear path if one makes sense of the organization environment. This environment’s main characteristic is its complexity, which leads to the usual consequence of unpredictability. And as the world becomes more and more complex, the need for good strategists increases.

How good is the strategic thinking in your organization? How well does it make sense of the complexity of the surrounding environment? Does it really provide vision of a clear path that can be followed through the jungle?

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How We Forget Too Often About the Value of Options

Having options for flexibility has great value. And we often forget to value them, or to get ‘free’ options at our hand when we can.

A method of Real Options valuation using a choice lattice
A method of Real Options valuation using a choice lattice

In finance, options valuation has been implemented for the last few decades – it allows to calculate the price of options to buy or sell equities or currencies in the future. There is even a specific field that looks into Real Options (tangible options in real-life decision-making) and attempts to give a value to those options.

Without going into the details of these approaches, which are sometimes tedious and rely on some parameters and statistical approaches that can always be discussed, let us note here that having an option to do something, in other terms to have flexibility in the future, has got a value, and that we often underestimate that value – or worse, we give it out for free.

In my commercial approaches I always try to keep as many options open as possible. Less flexibility imposed by a client needs to be compensated. Options at the hand of the client need to be compensated. It is not always easy to get the client to understand, but it is a key practice.

Options have value. Don’t give them away. Try to have as many as possible and keep as much flexibility as possible.

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How to Negotiate Properly To Reach Agreement

In the book “Getting to Yes” by Roger Fisher and William Ury (veterans of international and corporate negotiations), the useful approach of Principled Negotiation is exposed. It is based on four powerful points:

negotiating
Avoid this particular negotiation tactics!
  1. People: Separate the people from the problem.
  2. Interests: Focus on interests, not positions.
  3. Options: Invent multiple options looking for mutual gains before deciding what to do.
  4. Criteria: Insist that the result be based on some objective standard.

Of course proper and consistent implementation of these principles requires some practice. It also sometimes requires quite some work to get the other party to agree on this approach and play the game of that type of negotiation.

If I had to choose one of these points as the most important, the creative ability to come up with a number of options (and at the same time, to be sufficiently resilient from an emotional point of view to be able to assess the actual pros and cons of these options), would probably be my choice. Having as many options as possible a key asset in a negotiation. Be creative!

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