I am happy to announce that I will give a 1 hour + public talk on the 6 March 2012 at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business in Singapore at 7:30pm. This talk is hosted by SPMI, the Singapore Chapter of the Project Management Institute. More information on this event on the website of the SPMI.
Pencil already this event in your agendas to discover Project Soft Power, the Secret of the Great Project Leaders! in a unique occasion before the publication of the book later this year!
“The most successful project leaders rely not only on their technical and analytical skills, but also on strong personal and interpersonal practices. This speech will allow participants to understand the 5 practices of Project Soft Power, and how everybody can learn and practice them.”
Even if you are not involved in project management, this talk can still be of interest to you as it will describe those skills that are indispensable today for the K.E.E.N., as part of his leadership skills.
Did you hear about Kaggle.com? It is one of the most innovative startups of 2011 according to Business Insider. Agreed, it is an improvement on the model of “Open Innovation” developped by Innocentive or Ninesigma, but unfortunately it still misses the point of collaborative innovation, or Crowd-Innovation.
Kaggle is bringing together scientists (mainly data-scientists) to participate in collaborative competitions to solve difficult problems. It boasts a network of 17,000 PhD-level people.
Are you ready to contribute on Kaggle.com?
Have a look at their sites and the different possible competitions. The most well known is the “Heritage Health Prize” with a prize of 3 million US$: Can you predict who will turn up at the hospital next year based on people’s medical history / historical claims data?
Of course that’s the outlier; most competitions have a prize of 10,000$ or less, and are mainly rewarded by community recognition among the world’s best data-crunchers, or free trips or the ability to present in a well-known conference. You can help to improve prediction of insurance claims, rating of pictures, or help NASA bring evidence of dark matter!
It appears that Kaggle brings something more than Innocentive or Ninesigma, who also bring together the problems of large companies and a worldwide network of passionate problem solvers. Kaggle develops the concept of competition where people can see the result of others in real time, which is a form of deep motivation. Yet Kaggle still stops short of where the power of the Collaborative Age lies: collaboration between participants.
The right format of “Open Innovation” is still to mature. Will it be through companies, foundations, non-profits? How is real time feedback given about the performance of other competitors? How can we develop a spirit of true collaboration between the participants above and beyond competition, a tight community to solve the hardest problems?
The value of “Open Innovation” needs to be unleashed completely. Actually “Open Innovation” needs to be transformed into “Crowd-Innovation” because it is just that we want to achieve: getting people to collaborate meaningfully on a problem they are passionate about.
What will become of our Industrial-Age huge and rigid research organizations? They’ll have to open to the crowd or die.
Even Innocentive, Ninesigma and even Kaggle still need to go one step further or they will struggle to continue. Who will find the right concept, allowing cooperation between participants to develop?
In the last 3 months as I worked to prepare my company’s launch and my jump into the unknown of entrepreneurship, here are some useful learning points I wanted to share with you, or how I have started to look at myself differently:
building one's image
You learn a lot about yourself. After I resigned from my employment, there was no turning back – I needed to go for it. I found out it is more an internal struggle than an external one. A lot of things boil down to self-limiting beliefs. When you overcome them you find that the world is quite keen to hear about you and your project. So why hesitate?
People crave to jump into entrepreneurship: more than 80% of the people I talked to in my former company, after I resigned, expressed support and added something like: ‘I’d love to do this. It has been my dream forever’. And often, they actually provided support and contacts. So, what prevents you really from doing it?
Our mindset is very much geared towards security, and this impedes people to take action. Those people also added: ‘You have some balls!’. In effect, is it more secure to stay as an employee nowadays? I am not sure!
I went through some high anxiousness moments myself. They were not entirely rational for sure, because the short term future is assured by a contract that I managed to get, but the lizard repeats in your ear again and again, and louder if something happens like a rejection: ‘that will never work!’. Leaving employment to create your own company can be sometimes an uphill battle!
It is very important to benefit from the support of family and friends. In particular in these tough moments of doubts, or to find advice and resources. Support and excellent advice often come from unexpected places!
It is exciting to meet new interesting people and think in terms of what opportunities could be developed. As I try to grow my network I am meeting lots of interesting people and I attend great seminars, speeches etc. OK, I could have done that when I was employed but it gives an incentive to have to do it for your marketing! And that’s a side which I really like being an entrepreneur. I am also free to go to many new events, it’s just a choice by me how I want to spend my time, within certain reasonable bounds.
Take advantage of the cheap resources like books and blogs to know what to do and what not to do. Thanks to the Fourth Revolution, there are many resources available for close to free! As my development area at this moment is mainly in marketing, I read lots of books, in particular, ‘Book Yourself Solid‘ by Michael Port, ‘Duct Tape Marketing‘ by John Jantsch, and ‘Built to Sell‘ by John Warrillow ; I follow also many blogs or receive newsletters among which Michael Port’s, Pamela Slim’s Escape from Cubicle Nation blog and Tim Berry’s blog.
Just try and if it fails, you’ll have a direction for improvement. It is much better – faster and more secure – than thinking too long to develop the perfect thing, that might not appeal to anybody! Instead of going to a professional for branding, I have decided to give it a try. I’ll only pay a professional-looking website and branding materials when I’ll be very crystal clear about my niche and will have feedback from clients on the products. My first try at the company’s visual identity was not professional enough, and the feedback from prospective clients and esteemed relations hurt a lot. But it gave the incentive to go for a second try which is much better. In the meantime I had plowed my way through Michael Port’s workbook, had had some discussions with prospective clients and was much clearer about the identity and the tagline for the company, so the second version of the branding look is much more to the point, and much more focused.
Focus your niche as much as possible. I did not really believe in this widespread advice first, but it is very true, and it works. It helps you define your identity, gives a clear edge for all the resources and tools you develop, and helps you define very clearly what you intend to do. I have already met other entrepreneurs struggling with a too wide range of ambitions. Focus on a small niche first, it does not impede you to take other jobs, and you can grow later. In my case I started from general project management consulting, and now my tagline is “We Empower Organizations to be Reliably Successful in Executing Large, Complex Projects”. Much more focused isn’t it? Focus, Focus, Focus.
Professional associations are desperate for speakers, a good opportunity to get yourself known. It is relatively easy to get a slot to talk locally, and it is a good starting point for your marketing
In summary, I’ve learnt a lot already in these 3 months, mostly on myself. I feel like I am going on a steep learning curve and that’s what I like most. Stay tuned as I will continue to share with you my insights on my transformation into a Knowledge Exchanging Enhancing Networker!
What is cheaper? What is better? Going through an academic program to learn how to lead a company or just… do it yourself? Turns out, going out in an entrepreneurial project is less expensive and brings higher value!
I just received an advertisement for an exciting program at Tuck executive education center at Darmouth.
Tuck college
It is a nice color booklet including a lot of testimonies from high-ranking Vice-Presidents of large companies. The programs also features some well-known speakers.
Price tag for 3-weeks seminar? 33,000 USD including accommodation; include travel and some costs on top and it comes to a nice 36,000USD or so.
Thing is – that’s quite cheap! Want to go for INSEAD executive MBA? That’s even more hefty – quite more than 100,000 USD!
Companies around the world seem to be sponsoring these programs by registering their promising employees – it is also for them a way to retain them, of course. Isn’t it also a way to keep them in the Industrial Age?
Now let’s look at it in another way. Wouldn’t it be better to give these 100,000 USD to the person and tell them that they have 1-2 years to create a startup and learn by themselves, hands-on, what they need to learn about themselves and building a great company?
When I did my financial projections for my start-up service company, I figured out what my financial risk was, compared to staying in my cozy employed status. I am still relatively young, and I believe the entrepreneurial experience can only increase my visibility, my network and my employability; thus I suppose that I can find a job easily if I decide so. This taken into account, I will earn less, at the start, than being employed; and I have had to commit some funds as start-up capital. So I calculated that my exposure over 2 years (the time I give myself to decide whether that will work for me or not) was 50,000 – 100,000 USD, maybe worst case 130,000 USD – in relative terms, compared to a situation where I stayed employed and I save some money.
So, for the same kind of investment – and it is not money out of my pocket, but the possibility that I might get a bit less money than if I stayed in my executive career – I get a fantastic hands-on education. It is also a similar type of time-investment as most executives MBAs are one year full-time or two years part-time.
And there is a bonus too… if my entrepreneurial venture works, the sky is the limit: not only do I get the education and the experience, much more fun on a daily basis, I might also get a positive return in the form of a great value creation for my clients, myself and my company!
So, my conclusion was simple: dump the academic executive education. Go instead in the real world and figure out how to create and run a company from scratch. For the same price you’ll learn more about yourself, about leading, marketing, selling, networking, than in any kind of academic environment. You’ll be more engaged, focused. Just read books by the teachers of these executive programs to complete your education, that’s all!
It won’t cost you more money. It will bring you much more value in all its dimensions. Do it – get the experience in the real world!
If you have followed this blog you’ll know that in the past few months I have been busy setting up a consulting company in Singapore in the field of large, complex projects , called Project Value Delivery. And I now have left the corporate world! At first I am the only employee and I certainly hope that more people will be able to join before the end of 2012.
ready on the runway
That’s it! My last day in the corporate world is now past, as of end of January. I am standing at the beginning of the runway, in the cockpit of the plane. The last few months have been about engineering the company to have enough thrust and lift to take off before the end of the runway! Now comes the fateful moment where I will start the take-off run!
I feel both excited and anxious. I am excited to be free, and anxious to be free.
Luckily I have bagged a first contract so that the first few months are secured, at least as a freelancer. All the challenge is to continue to develop products and processes to be able to hire more people and become a real company.
It’s the beginning of a story. Like an airliner at the start of a runway, it takes the effort of running down the 2 or 3km of runway and after, once take-off is behind us, no more obstacle impedes to fly in any direction we want.
I see a trend where companies will first develop internal social networking tools. It’s less scary. This will greatly enhance internal global communication and demonstrate the power of social networks in terms of effectiveness.
Yet the main value will be when stakeholders and customers can be enrolled in a conversation spanning beyond the limits of the organization. Only when organizations will have the guts to move into this realm will they fully benefit of the value of the Fourth Revolution. And not many will do it. I guess that we’ll see a few of them try in 2012. Stay tuned!
This quote from Carl Jung is powerful. And so true.
Create your own way!
Our personal responsibility is immense to decide on what we focus on, what we do, what we choose. Most of us choose to let ourselves being carried away by the events of life.
We are not our past. We have to choose our future and this is not determined by our past.
It is our personal responsibility to become what we want and we should not shy away from it.
This personal responsibility is scary. It is challenging. Yet it is what makes us human beings.
With the Fourth Revolution, more people than ever before have more choices. Yet we are not educated, supported in making these choices: in the Industrial Age, somebody else was doing these choices for you.
The Fourth Revolution is the time and the opportunity for you to make a choice. To choose what you want to become. Not how you would like the world to see you: what you really want to be for yourself.
It is not anymore a lonely quest. Connect with the world and become what you choose to be. It is pressing. Start today. Because if you don’t make that choice, you will let the world pass on and disappear in insignificance.
I am not what has happened to me. I am what I choose to become – Carl Jung.
As I was about to write this post about destiny and choice I immediately thought about putting a very conventional picture like this
which road do you choose?
Which is just a nice way to express this choice problem, basically expressed by the following powerpoint – management presentation type drawing:
Decision point
But after some thought, I realized that this is not how it happens in life. It is not like you wake up some day and face a decision, which you have to take in any case. It is far more like being carried away on a train and deciding whether or not we should go down at the next station to start something anew, like this
will you go out at the next station?
I like the metaphor because obviously you don’t want to jump out of the train just at this moment where the train is on the bridge. Yet if you want to decide on your destiny you need to decide when and how you’ll disembark from the train of life you’ve taken a few years ago. Beware, if you don’t decide, where it could bring you. This man seems to be resigned to where he is being carried away. Don’t be like him!
Think about it. Will you choose to exit your train at the next convenient point? Will you force yourself to go against the comfortable train trip to discover new horizons?
It became a social media event, using a twitter account that broadcast the card’s balance live.
Here’s an extract of the card balance curve.
Jonathan's Card refills
See, people almost never refill before it goes to zero. But then they refill with a large amount.
Would we tend to use FREE until there is no more, but then be generous as we are in fact participating to a social event?
This pattern is often identical when people that know each other share a single resource and need to refill sometimes. What is astonishing here is that it happened with people who did not know each other. Yet they must have had a sufficiently strong emotional connection through their participation to the social network.
It just shows that communities that are emotionally connected over social networks behave like communities that are face-to-face in real life. Over considerable distances, community behavior develops. Social networks really break the distance factor!
After the tremendous success of the first Kindle promotion of the Fourth Revolution, to celebrate this new year – the Chinese new year, the Fourth Revolution book on Kindle is free for another 48 hours only!
Or, how two engineers, against all odds, against Apple itself, have worked hidden for a number of months in Apple’s offices, unpaid, to create a great product.
Autonomy: they did what they wanted to do, deciding by themselves what they would do and how
Mastery: this project allowed them to show how good they were in programming
Purpose: they wanted to create a product so great people computers could not ship without it
Why did they succeed? They were supported by the informal organization; they had a tribe of supporters; their enthusiasm and sense of purpose did communicate to others.
While this was all developed against the will of Apple’s managers, they were clever enough to see the interest when the product finally came out. That would certainly not happen in many organizations!
When I continue to see large organizations that think that they can retain and motivate people just by giving them money (or, the expectation of getting more money sometime in the future), I just see a total misunderstanding of the world they are living in.
The K.E.E.N. is not any more motivated by carrot and stick. She is motivated by challenge, a deep sense of purpose and her community. When will the standards of organization leadership change to accommodate this new reality?
This prescient quote by a visionary author is directly applicable to the Fourth Revolution, a major advance in civilization. The storm of the Fourth Revolution is upon us. Society will undergo a tremendous change. Are you ready?
