Jeremie Averous | The Fourth Revolution Blog

Best Single Word Career Advice: Squiggle!

I had an inspiring read of the latest book by Mitch Joel, a leading digital marketing guru, titled ‘Ctrl Alt Delete: reboot your business, reboot your life. Your future depends on it‘. It is an excellent book on the Fourth Revolution (which he calls the ‘business purgatory’), with one half about business reboot and the other half about personal reboot. (Unfortunately the book does not seem to be available in Kindle format, only paperback or hardcover, which might make it harder to get).

careerAdvice Anyway, I found there an excellent career advice, and a new concept, the squiggle:

Very few people set out in life to be the people that they have become. Even fewer know that they are going to be in a specific industry from a very young age. The most successful and interesting entrepreneurs and business people don’t have a very linear career path. In fact it is actually very squiggly. Always bear that in mind. Embrace the squiggle.

Let’s push a bit the concept. You won’t ultimately be successful in what you are doing now – both because what you’ll be doing tomorrow might not have been invented yet, and because it is by having a squiggly career that you will finally bring together the knowledge that will redefine your field.

Be squiggly to be successful. Ready to squiggle?

What Should Be the Time Span of your Business Plan?

“Avoid predictions that are impossible. That means, among other things, not trying to peer too far into the future. A narrow question in a time frame of six months to a year, fine” – that’s the general recommendation about forecasting by Dan Gardner in ‘Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail – and Why We Believe Them Anyway‘.

What you should absolutely not do when developing a business plan!

I am increasingly astounded by the boldness of those producers of business plans that extrapolate into the future… in 5 years or 10 years. That has been made much easier with Excel of course (just copy the formulas into the next years…) but how can that be used to support decision-making? How can we even entertain the idea that the future will evolve linearly and let the nice exponential formulas in our spreadsheet forecast huger and huger growth? Can you just remember how the world was different 10, or even 5 years ago?

For my company, I have decided not to have a business plan. Of course, I don’t need to seek external funding. When/if I’ll do then I’ll cook something knowing it is pure BS to please bankers or investors. In the meantime I just try to have an idea of what the next year will look like, and that’s enough to steer my venture… and end up widely off course already!

Stop spending time doing long term business plans, except maybe as a sensitivity. Concentrate on executing, now and in the next 6 months. You’ll get there much more easily!

If you are interested on some good elements on the limits of business plans, look up this interesting blog by Tim Berry. Although the founder of a business plan software company, his views on the matter are very refreshing.

How to Exploit the Fact that Life is Richer at the Interfaces

It is a constant biological observation that life is always richer at the interface. Take intertidal zones (the zones that are covered and uncovered by tides), the interface between the sea and the air, between earth and the atmosphere etc… On the reverse, life is much poorer in the middle of all single environments. And those animals and plants living at the interface are also much more adaptable to all sorts of new circumstances.

It is the same in life and business. However we have been educated to live best in a single environment and we are often unconfortable to sit at the edge of our environment or at the interface between two disciplines.

This is a mistake because opportunities are much richer there. First, there is much less competition because it means that you are able to be comfortable in at least two different environments. Second, it gives great opportunities to connect people and resources of both environments to create something new of high value. Third, it is the source of fantastic creativity when it comes to transferring to an other environment the knowledge gained elsewhere.

Don’t develop your career in a single environment. Make sure you can be comfortable at the Interfaces, at the fringe. This will give you an edge and allow you to create unprecedented value.

Next time you think about where to develop yourself professionally or personally, think about interfaces and how rich they can be in opportunities!

A glimpse into the developing world of online freelancing

ODesk, one of the online marketplaces for freelancers, released an interesting figure of the ‘long tail’ of freelancers, based on its database of job openings vs skills.

What this figure shows is that although the web-related specialties obviously dominate, a number of other skills are now visible on these marketplaces. What’s even more interesting is the emergence of more specialties including Engineering and Architectural Design.

An other interesting source of information on the freelance market is the ‘state of the freelance‘ study by Elance (an other freelance market place) in Sept 2012. Some of the data needs to be considered with caution as it is somewhat an infomercial, but there are some interesting observations:

lots of on-line freelance (38%) are from generation X, and not all are millenials!
most online freelance are full-time
overall, all these freelance marketplaces see a healthy grow in jobs and freelance revenue transiting.

It will be interesting to see how much this trend will spread in the next few years. While the number of skills will expand, my prediction and experience is that online freelancing is somewhat limited to simple tasks and cannot replace the need to organize a project team, which will remain the key competence, in particular if it comes to organize a project team of online freelancers!

More on the figure data origin and interpretation on the ODesk blog.

Are you another victim of the illusion of risk avoidance?

“If you risk nothing, you risk everything“

No risk, no view! At the edge of the cliff — No risk, no view!

That’s a famous quote that is too often forgotten. Our Industrial Age civilization tries to make us forget about risk. It provides all sort of ‘protections’ which might not be protecting us so well after all (think for example, unemployed persons’ management) and tends to hide sickness and death. It makes us think that great education can provide a risk-free life as an employee of some large organization.

It is an illusion to think we can live without risk. It is an illusion to try to avoid risks. Doing nothing, not moving is the biggest risk of all. Even if it is successful, it means avoiding so many opportunities, avoiding contributing your bit to the world.

There is just one single truth: our risk of dying someday has 100% probability. Our risk of dying someday without having contributed to build our world is… based on how much risk you take.

What about trying to take some reasonable risks just now?

How Career Risk Management is about Enhancing Your Brand

Career risk mitigation lies entirely in developing your own personal Brand.

As I was lately discussing career management with an acquaintance employed by an international company that just decided to shrink the local office, the conversation came upon career risk management.

When you work as a full-time employee and devote yourself 100% to your employer, your risk is to be made redundant and lose your entire income. In today’s world, showing fantastic abilities and creating great value for your employer might not be sufficient to ensure a total risk mitigation – things might happen at the other end of the world which you can’t do anything about and affect your position independently of your competencies and skills.

There is only one thing you should do to mitigate this risk: develop your Brand and your visibility continuously. Make yourself visible to the outside world, and develop your brand in your industry and beyond. Have references of publications you can show. Ensure that a Google search on your name will yield fantastic references.

It might not be natural for an employee, but think about it: the time is past where organizations were emotional about you as an employee. You need to be ready to walk away or to be pushed through the door any time. Your Brand will shield you. Even as an employee, you need to take time and effort to brand yourself and develop it. If you present it well, your employer will even be grateful of your increased visibility which will shine (temporarily) upon them.

What’s your brand? What are you doing to develop it?

Another great picture from Hugh MacLeod at gapingvoid.com!

Why Risk Management is Really about Long-Term Survival

Age old wisdom: In investing and in life in general, avoiding fatal situations that kill us generally means that we can’t strive for the best possible returns. In other words, trying to follow the best strategies giving the highest returns can be seductive but generally also entails fatal risks – great on the short term but unsustainable on the long term!

Jared Diamond just published a new book, ‘The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies’, in which he describes in details those cultural traits of traditional societies that we should maybe consider re-introducing in our modern world.

age-old farmer wisdom — Do you follow the age-old wisdom of having numerous small plots of value-creation?

In the field of risk management, he reminds us of age-old practices of hunter-gatherers and farmers, that evolved through time for their resilience. For example, traditional farmers generally farm a large number of different small plots (7 to 15 depending on the cultures) in different areas. This is clearly sub-optimal in terms of work, effort and yield. Yet it is the strategy that survived generations because it is the only strategy that ensures survival: diversity in location of the land plots means that even the worst years, some plots of land will give some returns and the farmer’s family will not starve. The current strategy of large fields and unique crops can only work in a developed system involving money where food can be bought in the case of a poor crop.

We are attracted by the stars that produce temporarily incredible returns on investment, that have incredible short-term success. We only forget that it always comes with substantial risks including bankruptcy or starving.

Success on the long term is about survival, and if possible comfortable survival; not great spikes of success followed by abysmal failures. Remember this the next time you’ll feel some hint of envy looking at some other young overnight success. It is defined by luck and in most instances, it is just the premise of a fatal evolution the other way.

Success is just about survival.

Overcome the Fear of Picking Yourself

Seth Godin says: “The problem isn’t that it’s impossible to pick yourself. The problem is that it’s frightening to pick yourself. It’s far easier to put your future into someone else’s hands than it is to slog your way forward, owning the results as you go“.

Most people wait to be picked (or to be lucky, which is a variation of it). That’s plain wrong. About all successful people did not wait, they just picked themselves. More in this great Seth’s post.

Again and again I find that you are what you believe you are. As I need to assert myself as a consultant in situations that are not always easy, I make sure that I act consistently with the identity I want to have. I pick myself for that activity, and I shape my identity accordingly. I am today what I want to become.

What about you? Have you picked yourself? Why wait? Just be what you want to become. Don’t be afraid: the world will bow to your will!

Why Reserves are Key to Face Uncertainty

It is a well known fact in military command that Reserves are the key to success in the uncertain world of battle. As exposed by General Vincent Desportes in his book “Decider dans l’Incertitude” (in French), an excellent book about decision-making in uncertain conditions, reserves are the main tool to manage uncertainty.

empty fuel gauge — How often do you run without reserves? Is that wise?

The higher the uncertainty, the more courage the commanding officer must have in increasing the size of its reserves. According to Churchill, engagement of the reserve resources is indeed the utmost responsibility of the one in command (and it often makes the decision in battle).

Jim Collins and Morten Hansen, in the book “Great by Choice“, come to the same conclusion: those organizations that thrive on the long term have a far more conservative view on balance sheet and establishment of financial reserves. They don’t necessarily seek the just-in-time; they don’t over-borrow; they don’t extend themselves too thin, even if they find an opportunity to do so. They make sure they are resilient to uncertainty.

Individually and in our organizations, reserves are important. Even if it means some loss of efficiency, they can make the decision when it comes to the realization of specific, unpredictable situations. Not to mention that reserves gives peace of mind when facing the usual ups and downs. Having some reserves is an important approach I also use in my small start-up even in growth mode.

What about you? Do you have enough reserves to face uncertainty? What about your organization? What will you do about it?

Why would “profits without production” be bad?

In a column in the International Herald Tribune “Profits without Production“, Paul Krugman explains how the world is changing and how corporations like Apple is the highest valued company in America and employs only 0.05% of the workforce, to be compared with GM in the 1960’s – also the most valued company in America but employing 1% of the workforce and thus spreading wealth much more through society. And that it is a problem for economic growth because of less redistribution of value throughout the economy.

Indeed as we defend in this blog, with the Fourth Revolution the value is moving from manufacturing into creativity. For Apple, manufacturing is a (low cost) commodity. The value lies in the creativity, the design and the service; in summary, in the experience. Marketing then takes care of selling us that experience at the right price – the price we are deady to pay for it.

Yes, we have a problem now of large corporations not reinvesting in the economy their huge profits; yes, we have a problem of the share of employee compensation shrinking compared to executives’ and shareholders compensation, thus slowing down consumption and growth. Yes, we have a problem of monopolies being created in new economic arenas that will need to be tackled.

However it serves nothing to complain that value is moving from tangible manufacturing into intangible creation. It is the sense of history. What we need to do is to find solutions so that this shift is accompanied by an appropriate balance in the distribution of value throughout society. We have not found the recipe yet but let’s continue to experiment and observe!

Launching the Innovation Renaissance, About the Law of Diminishing Innovation

Alex Tabarrok is economist and has written a short essay on ‘Launching the Innovation Renaissance‘. In this highly recommended book he analyses the current issues related to innovation – such as patents, education system and corporate rewards.

The Tabarrok curve of decreased innovation when patent protection exceeds a certain level

Alex Tabarrok is also known for the Tabarrok curve of decreasing innovation when patent protection increases beyond a certain level. Not dissimilar to the Laffer curve of diminishing tax returns when the tax burden increases!

His view on patents and how the increase in patent protection in the 1990’s in the US, in particular in the field of software patentability, is actually diminishing innovation instead of fostering it, is very interesting, and quite aligned with what we exposed in some early blog posts such as ‘How patent litigation cost half a trillion dollar inefficiency in the last 20 years!‘

It is quite a short book, very easy to read, and to the point. One small issue though is that it is very US-focused and would gain to be broadened more globally looking at the innovation issues world-wide. Issues are not the same everywhere, but at the end of the day innovation does benefit everybody.

Add it to your summer reading list!

How to resist the increased immediacy of our world!

We live in a world of ever increasing immediacy. This tends to change significantly the way we behave. We can’t spend a few minutes without watching our devices!

In social networks, our posting history is soon unavailable, after a few days at most. It is difficult to search for past posts. Even in the case of emails, data shows that people tend to forget ever sooner those emails that are not on the top of the pile (see “Is Email Open Rate Decay Increasing?” blog post by Christopher S. Penn). A reason might be increase in the use of mobile devices with a much more limited screen and usability of scrolling down!

Curve showing optimal twitter frequency for marketing (from marketingsavant.com)

The curve above suggests that for marketing purpose, tweets should be sent many times per hour!

In the same time, tools that allow to read content in an asynchronous manner like Google Reader are being discontinued by their producers.

So, are we supposed to be permanently hooked up to our devices so as to not miss the latest update or news? Isn’t it a conscious strategy by marketers to push us to remain hooked in front of our tiny screens? Does that really correspond to a need?

Every time I disconnect, or I stay in a situation where I can only connect once a day or so, like during holiday time, I feel like it is enough. Not so much changed in the meantime.

One of the skills in the Collaborative Age will be the ability to manage time. To resist to this behavior expected from us to remain hooked to our social network feed.

Will you use these holidays to get off the hook and disconnect for a while? Practice your time consciousness?

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