Career in the Collaborative Age | The Fourth Revolution Blog

Why We Should be Learners Rather Than Experts

“In times of change, the Learners will inherit the world while the Knowers will remain well-prepared for a world that no longer exists.” writes Eric Hoffer. Just right – and as we are now constantly in a time of change, this should apply universally.

‘Experts’ or ‘Knowers’ derive their views from an analysis of the past. Furthermore, in instances where the past is complex such as in history or economics, they add a layer of rationalization on these observations (such as correlations or implied causations).

The thing is, the future is not going to be a repeat of the past. And even more as time tends to accelerate. Even if is useful to study history to grab how random events create huge consequences, it can be disastrous to use this knowledge in the field of forecasting.

The observers, the ‘learners’, are those that will keep an open mind to new developments and will more quickly adapt. Be a Learner. Don’t seek to be a Knower.

Why You Need to Beware of Second-Hand Stress

Second-hand stress has become a commonly recognized issue in the workplace and life in general (with an interesting parallel with second-hand smoke). Many papers are written on the subject even in the Harvard Business Review (‘Make Yourself Immune to Secondhand Stress‘).

Emotional contagion in the workplace results in the dissemination of stress in the office: “if someone in your visual field is anxious and highly expressive — either verbally or non-verbally — there’s a high likelihood you’ll experience those emotions as well, negatively impacting your brain’s performance“. The HBR paper even goes as far that one can be influenced by sight, sounds and even smell!

The recommendation to fight second-hand stress is simple. It involves quite some self-awareness, and building defenses (counter-acting stress episodes with compensating thoughts and situations, and defending oneself against the spread by resolutely taking some distance from the events at hand).

Be aware about the negative effects of second-hand stress! Build your defense system and minimize the impact of any residual second-hand stress on yourself. Remember, in most cases it’s not worth it!

Why are we working the more the higher in the organization? The work-time paradox

Today, the higher people are in organizations, and the higher paid they are, the more they are expected to work. That is very much the opposite of the situation one century ago: it was rather the lower classes that had to work long hours to gain a meager living while the upper classes took advantage of a life of leisure. And in the meantime, productivity gains should have rather diminished the average work time, while automation should have reduced human effort.

overworked — Overworked in the bureaucracy?

Why this paradox? Is it representative of a societal shift? Where will it stop (when one hears for example about young interns in banks dying from overwork !?)?

The New-Yorker published an interesting column on this topic ‘You Really Don’t Need To Work So Much‘ following some recent controversies about work conditions in Collaborative Age companies such as Amazon.

The column I find does not give convincing explanations of the paradox. Some arguments are probably valid (such as ‘If you’re busy you seem important’ and the fact that the modern large organization does create a lot of occupation that diminishes dramatically the efficiency, not to mention the effectiveness). One can think also about the fact that the current organizational structures are not designed to tackle the increasing complexity of the world, and this creates huge work to try to catch up the increasing gap. And yes, it is probably possible to be as effective and putting less hours at work, removing some bureaucracy.

It seems to me that the fact that the higher one is in an organization, the more he/she has to work is a remnant of the pyramidal organization of the industrial age. This should disappear progressively with the Collaborative Age. However the increase of inequality counteracts this movement as many people have to work more to earn what they expect. And freelance people end up working more than employees in general, because they also need to do marketing and administration tasks they can’t easily delegate.

Please comment if you have a good explanation for this paradox and your views on its evolution!

How Creators and Artists still Thrive in the Collaborative Age

With the Fourth Revolution came the collapse of creative industries such as the music industry, the publishing industry etc. It is relevant to ask what became of the artists and creators. Were they also destroyed by the tsunami? In an excellent piece ‘The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t‘, the New York Times Magazine gives a clear answer: no, actually the artists are rather thriving. It is the industry around them that crumbled.

Focus the value on the artist, not the industry around him

The entire business model of creativity has been put on its head. The collapse was incredible: “The global music industry peaked just before Napster’s debut, during the heyday of CD sales, when it reaped what would amount today to almost $60 billion in revenue. Now the industry worldwide reports roughly $15 billion in revenue from recorded music, a financial Armageddon even if you consider that CDs are much more expensive to produce and distribute than digital tracks.”

Obviously, recordings don’t sell so well any more and their value has decreased. To compensate, live shows are an increasing part of the value creation, and their price has increased tremendously (“In 1999, when Britney Spears ruled the airwaves, the music business took in around $10 billion in live-music revenue internationally; in 2014, live music generated almost $30 billion in revenue“). And, in general, there are more professional musicians now than before, which shows that one way or the other, they get a share of the remaining value.

I definitely concur with the conclusion of the article: “I suspect the profound change lies at the boundaries of professionalism. It has never been easier to start making money from creative work, for your passion to undertake that critical leap from pure hobby to part-time income source. […] From the consumer’s perspective, blurring the boundaries has an obvious benefit: It widens the pool of potential talent. But it also has an important social merit. Widening the pool means that more people are earning income by doing what they love.”

Overall the Collaborative Age encourages expression and creates value and income for creators. The border between full-time and part-time professional is just blurring like in many other occupations.

Why Integrating New Experiences in Our Life is an Essential Skill

“The ability to process new experiences, to find their meaning and to integrate them into one’s life, is the signature skill of leaders and, indeed, of anyone who finds ways to live fully and well.” —William Bennis

I find this quote very much to the point. What is implied requires two skills:

the ability to venture beyond one’s comfort zone and be open to new experiences,
and the ability to process this new experience and change oneself

Both can be challenging to people. For example, I do easily venture outside my comfort, but I am not completely sure I take advantage of all this experience to change quickly enough.

In addition, I like the relationship that Warren Bennis makes between the ability to change and leadership. A leader must be able to entice followers to come, she must also be able to recognize the need to change herself. This might not always be easy to do both.

How able do you find yourself going beyond your comfort zone, and to process the experience to change yourself?

Why You Should Always Look Far Ahead

In life we need to look far away at our goals and intent to keep balance and keep our position with respect to our reference.

This summer I took some surf classes and I got some advice which I had already heard a number of times previously in other instances: to keep standing up, don’t look at your feet, but always look far ahead. Then you’ll get balance and direction.

It was the same when I was flying gliders close to the mountains: instead of looking whether your wingtip touches the cliff, look far ahead and you’ll find the right distance from the mountain.

I like this image because I think it is also applicable to life. We’re in life moving with some speed in a difficult environment, with obstacles around. We’re not static! And we need to keep balance. If we look to close, or if we look to what we think is the danger, we will lose balance and fall. We need to look far away to keep good references as to our actual situation.

Keep looking far, it is the secret for balance.

Why you Need to Carry the Scars of the Lessons You Learnt

“The lessons you learn best are those you get burned by, without the scar, there’s no evidence or strong memory” writes Julien Smith in a very interesting short book called The Flinch.

He continues, “The event didn’t actually happen or imprint itself on your brain— you just trusted those who know better. Adults know what’s safe, so you listen. Over a lifetime, those who listen too much build a habit of trust and conformity. Unfortunately, as time goes on, that habit becomes unbreakable“.

Reflecting on my own experience, it is true that those experiences that really created pain are those that are the most present. They inform the way I deal with certain situations.

The point of Julien Smith is that it is not enough to hear or read about situations, it is essential to live through them. Action is key, together with risk, and scars are proof of experience. They are needed, and there is no way you can gain experience without. Go for it!

Why Avoid the Organizational Comfort Zone Retreat Reaction

In the past months I have observed astonishing reactions from various leaders and organizations to an unexpected economical situation. When faced with a scary and stressful situation, it is amazing how thoroughly people tend to revert to their comfort zone – where they had been successful in the first place. The problem is that this comfort zone might be obsolete! This has dramatic impact on the organizations and individuals.

running back to the comfort zone — Running back into the comfort zone!

I am quite active in the Oil & Gas industry which has suffered a shock since a bit more than 6 months with the sudden drop of the oil price. Some organizations’ leadership have literally freaked out, with the result that they have undone what they had been building for the last few years in just one movement, fleeing back to their traditional business model – the one that made them successful in the first place. Of course, some organizations had taken some measured risk to expand and grow in the last years, but it is really astonishing how people revert to their basic nature when they freak out!

Going back to their comfort zone means often, reverting to business models and operating modes that are thought to be safe while they are in fact obsolete. Where a crisis should rather force to ask tough questions about significant changes in the business model, possible new industry structure and new alliances, those organizations that freak out retreat into their comfort zone and close the door, waiting for the storm to pass.

This creates a most depressing effect on the morale of the top people in the organization, who were at the forefront of building a sustainable new model. When they are not sacked they generally leave quickly.

It is in tough times that the quality of the skipper shows. Retreating into one’s former comfort zone is certainly not the best reaction. Yet it is amazing how leaders sometimes react, with dire consequences on their organizations on the long run.

How to Deal With Experts’ Arrogance

I am always struck by how experts can easily become arrogant and ego-driven, and how widespread this issue is, in particular among scientists. It is actually quite rare to find experts that remain sufficiently open-minded to consider potentially contradicting evidence without trying first to dismiss it based on their expertise.

This is a significant hurdle in a number of practical situations and needs to be overcome (without creating screams and damaging egos).

At the start of my professional career I toyed with the idea of going into scientific research. So I took the opportunity to work in an applied research lab. What struck me quickly was how arrogant most of the senior scientists were. It was the arrogance born out of expertise in an area. They thought they knew. As it happened that I brought in some novel ideas in a certain field, the debate was not scientific about ideas but immediately became ego-driven. And emotionally loaded it was! People screamed and finger-pointed on the basis of a detail in a remote scientific field.

Of course, this attitude is not scientific; in science a theory only holds until someone finds contradictory evidence, and at that point a new, a better theory must be developed.

This expert arrogance is a significant hurdle for multidisciplinary work, and also for improving science. It needs to be dealt with forcefully at times to enable discussion and progress.

I find the best approach with those arrogant experts is to show to them that the problem at stake is not fully contained in their field, but maybe only touching, or at least that their opinion is not going to be questioned in the narrow field of their expertise. Hence you need first to determine on what exact limits the expert considers himself to know everything; and then make sure that your problem goes beyond. You will be able to get the recommendation of the expert, and adapt or dismiss it without creating an ego issue, because the problem is in an other area! If you have several experts in different fields it works the same. This gives the freedom to aggregate all those expert opinions.

How the Collaborative Age Requires Generalists to Bridge Between Disciplines

While the Industrial Age required more and more specialists, the Collaborative Age increasingly requires generalists that are able to foster collaboration across disciplines. And this becomes increasingly recognized.

Complex problems require multidisciplinary approaches. This is very obvious in a number of areas today, and in particular in the field of Big Data analysis. Generalists that can bridge across disciplines are in high demand. They need to be able to understand the basics of each discipline and bring to the table analytical, facilitation and coordination skills to generate the expected outcomes. They also need to be able to translate between disciplines and calm down the spirits of experts who always find difficult to work with other experts.

I still remember some career advice I received not so long ago about the danger to be a generalist, and that I should rather specialize. I do not think it is such a good advice today. Of course it is always good to be a specialist in some field at the start of your career so as to understand what it takes, but as you advance I do think it is today quite an interesting alternative to become a generalist.

This generalist profile will become ever more valuable as the Collaborative Age spreads and the problems that need to be resolved become more complex. It also highlights the benefits of an education that includes a substantial amount of liberal arts and general knowledge.

Why You Need to Listen to What a Person Says of Others

I like this quote of Audrey Hepburn – “You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than what others say about him“.

I think this is very true, and reinforces the fact that we all need to act in the way we’d like others to act with regard to us, in particular when it comes to gossiping or managing confidential information!

It also reminds us to listen to really discover the person we have in front of us. Active listening is a great skill that can be developed with practice and focus. We need to constantly look beyond the superficial meaning of words to apprehend the person, how she sees the world and how she sees others.

Listening to what people say of a person is important but does not replace a direct contact with a person in a situation of full listening (which requires a face-to-face encounter). Foster the person to talk about others and you will certainly have a good idea of her character!

How I Became a Businessman

It is strange how sometimes we are not fully aware of our own transformation in the eyes of our environment. It so happens that people now look at me as a businessman but I did not realize the change – and they might be right to describe me as such!

business As an engineer by formal training, I still fill-in ‘Engineer’ when asked for my profession on official documents. In reality it has been a while since I crunched engineering problems, and I did a few identity-changing work and study (coach, senior manager, writer…), but I still feel like I apprehend problems with my engineer’s mind.

People tend to classify others in categories and we might not realize that we just changed category! The other day someone said that I was in fact a businessman, and identified that as my profession on an official document.

Ooops! This made me realize that I can probably be identified with this category: I have now created 3 companies, and spend a lot of my time trying to create working business models and combine products and markets. Indeed recently I spent a lot of time trying to establish business partnerships and business ecosystems, and that has become my major occupation.

This person was right. I am a businessman. I did not realize. Maybe I also did not want to realize because somehow I associate this category involuntary with some negative connotation, whereas it should certainly be a respected profession.

That’s how I became a businessman – involuntarily and gradually. With this realization I now embrace this identity and understand better what I need to do. But at the same time I intend not to remain stuck in this category like any other. I still see myself as well as engineer, writer, coach, manager… And further changes will come certainly and I welcome them!

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