Category: Career in the Collaborative Age

Why the Job Market Transformation Requires You to Develop Your Online Reputation

The value of inter-mediation for job search is moving towards reputation management. While before it was mainly making the job or the applicant visible and creating the connection, today’s platforms allow the potential employer to check the applicant’s reputation. This explains why once-major site posting players such as Monster.com etc are now being overtaken by sites that add reputation measurement.

Job postings board
Old-fashioned inter-mediation: a job posting board

That is one of the most interesting conclusions from Valeria Maltoni’s excellent post where she summarizes what is happening now on the front of job posting and job search, with different types of web-based sites and engines.

This reputation check happens in several ways:

  • on social-network based sites like LinkedIn, through the person’s network and reputation; and possibly on what the person published or linked as well.
  • On freelance hiring sites, reputation is acquired through the successive feedback from clients at the end of the jobs, which in effect rates the reputation of the person.

While providing the reputation data was once a service provided only by a few head-hunters for executives, this value of inter-mediation is now expected by most future employers and for most types of jobs.

Enhancing once’s reputation on the web is thus not any more an option, it is mandatory if you want to be successful in tomorrow’s marketplace – and even for conventional jobs!

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Why You Should Exercise to Regain Your Balance – and Not to Keep It!

From far, the lives of successful people seem highly balanced and straightforward. Not to from close – success breeds from unbalance and exploration beyond one’s comfort zone.

Sensei Aikido
O Sensei, the founder of Aikido, in action

After observing O Sensei, the founder of Aikido, sparring with an accomplished fighter, a young student said to the master, “You never lose your balance. What is your secret?” “You are wrong” O Sensei replied. “I am constantly losing my balance. My skill lies in my ability to regain it.”

Good lesson – We need to exercise our ability to regain our balance so as to stay healthy and continue to do what we need to do. But we should accept to be thrown off balance to thrive in action.

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How the Fourth Revolution Fosters both Smart Generalists and Super Specialists

While the Industrial Age was marked by increasing specialization, the “Return of the Generalist” in society is a common theme in many books. It has been recognized already in 2005 by Dan Pink in his book “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future“, and I found the issue further developed in an interesting book, “The Rise of the Naked Economy: How to Benefit from the Changing Workplace” by Ryan Coonerty and Jeremy Neuner.

generalist-specialist
Generalist vs Specialized, an obsolete opposition

In this book about the future of work and of the workplace, they identified two key players in the “Naked Economy” of the future: big-picture thinkers, who they call the Smart Generalists, and the small-bore experts, the Super Specialists. The two are complementary. In our future project-based working environment, Smart Generalists will coordinate the work of Super Specialists, and both will have tremendous value.

In the book, the author mention that “My value, like all generalists’, is to know a little about a lot. That means the onus is on me to constantly reach out to new people, read books and articles, watch the trends in a wide range of arenas, and generally be passionately interested in the world. Having that broad knowledge to draw on, and to be able to use it when I need it, brings me a lot of credibility when I’m dealing with people in business, government, or academia.”

The Smart Generalist is coming back, watch for the change in the workplace!

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Why You Should Ditch the 10,000 Hours Rule in Favor of the 1,000 or Even 100 Hour Rule

The 10,000 hours rule, popularized by the author Malcolm Gladwell, states that you need 10,000 hours of practice to become a master of anything. Great. That’s an awful lot of time in particular for focused practice.

10000 hour rule, or... 100 hour rule?James Altucher notes that “10,000 hours is a lot of time. It’s anywhere from 5-30 years of your life. And then you die. And what do you show for it? That you’re great at watercolor painting. Not everyone is going to be the Beatles. That involves some luck also.” He argues that in reality, 1,000 hours are often enough to reach a sufficient level to be proficient and well above the average. Maybe not a master, but at least a very good practitioner, and among the best in the world at it. And 1,000 hours are much more accessible. It means in particular that it is possible to develop high proficiency in a number of areas, instead of just mastery in a single area.

Even better, according to him, “In fact, if you get good at learning new things, then you can even take another zero off. The 100 hour rule. Or maybe 200 hours. This makes life a LOT better and more fun. You can take that zero off after you get really good at the first thing. Because then you have learned how to learn. So that saves a lot of energy on the next thing you learn.”

So, let’s start to learn how to learn and have more fun while reaching ‘best in the world’ proficiency in a number of areas!

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How the Conventional Organization too Often Crushes True Prioritization

Further to our post on “How to Truly Prioritize: a Vital Skill for Success“, I would like to mention how I observe that most organizations seem to be creating a Brownian movement that leads us in the opposite direction from correct prioritization (i.e., stop doing what is not a priority).

Meetings - one of worst killers of quality time spent on real priorities
Meetings – one of worst killers of quality time spent on real priorities
  • Meetings too often suck out time from real productive work on priority issues and are often unproductive
  • Other people constantly come with new issues and topics that add up on our list of to-do actions with no true priority ranking (or, worse, too many use a priority based on the rank of the originator multiplied by the implied urgency)
  • Emails and other interruptions caused by our modern communication tools pollute the time we could spend concentrating of priority (thus, hard) work
  • etc.

Ask yourselves how much time you really spend on what you have identified as your top priorities for the year. Got it? Really? Research has shown that the time you think you spent on these actions in reality was probably one half or one third of what you think, if an independent observer was really looking at what you are spending your time on!

Fight the natural trend of organizations to create movement for the sake of justifying their existence. Priorities once defined should occupy a significant chunk of your time. That’s the only way to be really effective. A good way is to define spans of time out of the usual operational emergencies to make sure to make good progress on what is really important. Are you ready for it?

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How Most Consulting Projects Fail For Not Taking Into Account Emotional Needs

“Why do most consulting projects fail? The reason is, processes (read: consultants) don’t normally link the outcomes of the project to the emotional needs of the people involved. How the little things they do, affect other people. This is where organizations with an entrepreneurial mindset have a powerful advantage.” – Hugh MacLeod.

lean sigma DMAIC
Will this improvement method touch the hearts of the contributors?

Consultants conventionally come with great rational methods to improve things, and often do fail in their implementation. Because clearly, they don’t touch the heart of people when it comes to changing. And it is not by developing even more rational methods – or putting nice, attractive colors on complicated diagrams – that they will get the required emotional involvement.

The more I am participating to change programs, or execution of projects, the more I realize that emotional connection is the single key that unlocks the potential of organization and enables change.

Do your emotional work first, create meaning, and just use rational methods as a useful support. Don’t do it reverse. That is the recipe for successful change and therefore, successful consulting.

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Why You Should Try to Belong (and Not so much to Fit-In)

There is a distinct difference between fitting-in and belonging, and this changes completely how we deal with situations where we try to enter a group.

fitting-in or belonging?“Fitting in and belonging are not the same thing, and, in fact, fitting in gets in the way of belonging. Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.” – Brene Brown in ‘The Gifts of Imperfection‘.

According to Brene, belonging requires authenticity (and including acceptance of our imperfections) while fitting-in is an attempt to disguise ourselves to enter a group. The latter is obviously, on the long run, due to fail or at least put us in a quite uncomfortable position, which can sometimes lead to psychological consequences.

It is great to belong – although possibly difficult and rare. Do not try to fit-in at all costs believing that it is the same. It is not, and it is very uncomfortable. So right now, do you belong or do you fit-in?

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Why the Fourth Revolution will Promote Meritocracy

I strongly encourage you to take a few minutes to go through this video/ transcript of a MIT research assistant about research on the impact of network connection on whether societies are meritocratic (people get rewarded in proportion of their contribution) or topocratic (intermediaries get rewarded, not the contributors). [The text on the page is the transcript of the video if you prefer reading].

A network model shows that as the number of connections increase, the system becomes increasingly meritocratic
A network model shows that as the number of connections increase, the system becomes increasingly meritocratic (click on the image for a large version)

Basically research shows that the more connected the network is, the more it becomes meritocratic. A very basic model suggests that if everybody is connected to 150 people on average (which is approximately the case on Facebook), the network is meritocratic only on a section of 22,000 people in your close network. The network is still topocratic (enhances the intermediaries’ value) at the size of a country. Now if your number of connections is larger, the size of the society subset which will be meritocratic will increase dramatically and you will receive increasingly more rewards from your contribution.

As the Fourth Revolution expands and the inter-connectivity of our world increases substantially, we can expect our societies to become more and more meritocratic even if it will still take time to avoid intermediaries at a country or at global level. What a better demonstration that the Fourth Revolution will bring tremendous changes to our benefit?

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How to Get Good at Life

“Getting good at change (big, small, tiny – every day) means getting good at life” – James Altucher.

Pessimist and Optimist vs Change
Churchill’s view of Change

Life is all about managing change. We change every day since we are born, and the world changes every day around us.

Let’s try to get good at change instead of trying to stick to illusory stability.

It can be scary at times, but so much more rewarding.

Change is pure opportunity.

 

 

“Do it without expectation. Wish for nothing. Care for everything. Happiness will be in between.”

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How to Unleash the Power of Connectional Intelligence

“In our new world of an embedded digital infrastructure that connects all of our lives, the power of connectional intelligence holds exponential, and previously untapped, potential for breakthroughs in ways we can barely begin to imagine” writes Saj-Nicole Joni in ‘Win Big by Unleashing Millennials’ Connective Intelligence‘.

Multicolored plugsShe continues “Connectional intelligence is your ability to make breakthroughs by connecting ideas, people, information, and resources. You use CxQ whenever you sift through multiple sources of information to put pieces of a puzzling problem together in new ways. It’s in your ability to build and realize value from networks of relationships, in your ability to convene communities, to marshal a various of resources to focus on a result, and to make diversity and differences productive.”. According to her, people with high connectional intelligence have always existed – but now it is much easier and much more widespread than ever before.

So, how much do you develop and exploit your connectional intelligence in your daily practice? If you do not – at least consciously – it looks like a good time to go at it – and enter the Fourth Revolution world in a more active way!

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In Truth, are You a Freelancer or an Entrepreneur?

Am I a freelancer or an entrepreneur? Contrary to what I thought I am probably in the first category. And before that realization I had some difficult moments – I should not believe I am an entrepreneur while I am just an elaborate freelancer. And that might just be good news that I just get this realization now.

Seth Godin quote on freelancer vs entrepreneurI had this realization listening to Seth Godin in a Skillshare class on entrepreneurship. This issue is actually explained at length in Seth’s post “The Difference Between a Freelancer and an Entrepreneur”.

Seth Godin goes on to explain:

  • If you’re a freelancer:
    • Ensure a steady stream of work
    • Create an environment where you don’t go crazy and melt because of overwork
    • Consistently increase the quality of your work and generate a waiting list for your time (and increase your prices) (at the same time).
    • Scaling will be limited, linear and occur through the hiring of a limited number of additional partners
  • If you’re an entrepreneur:
    • you look for an exponential scaling of your business, so:
    • Relentlessly hire people to delegate work to
    • Give yourself a promotion so you are constantly doing work you’re unable to hire anyone else to do
    • Build an organization that has the cash flow to permit you to do those two things…

The business I am building in consulting, focusing on high-end specialized consulting, without an army of junior consultants, will not scale exponentially. It does not mean that it cannot influence deeply and leave an imprint in the world. It means I should not be frustrated for lack of (exponential) growth but focus on developing the contents and depth of intellectual property, and grow linearly by recruiting a number of partners.

This difference between (elaborate) freelancer and entrepreneur is fundamental. When I look around I realize how many people call themselves entrepreneurs when they are freelancers. It’s trendy to be an entrepreneur but in truth there are not so many around.

Maybe someday I will venture into real entrepreneurship, building a product that has the capability to scale. Now, I focus on developing my business brand with a better understanding of what it entails in terms of business model. And with more excitement than ever.

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Why Organization’s Stability Should Be Used To Enhance External Disruption

Following on our latest post on the increase of the world’s unpredictability, Robert Branche makes also an excellent point that as nature designed living organisms that would dramatically increase the unpredictability of the world, it had to design organisms that were more stable inside. And actually, from plants to animals, to mammals, internal stability has increased dramatically with evolution.

storm and stability
A storm on stability

This is a very interesting contradiction: to enhance the world’s changes, internal stability is required. And this observation actually applies to many situations.

Robert Branche extends this observation to organizations: for him, companies or organizations are a way to build an internal stability to become able to transform the world. “Internal order and rules should not reduce uncertainty, but make its development and acceptance easier” states Robert Branche in the case of large corporations.

Organizations that would implement internal rules for the sake of increasing internal and external certainty are ultimately doomed. Organizations need to develop and nurture internal stability as a way to enhance their disruptive impact on the world.

What a challenge to all established organizations!

How does your organization fare? Is it really defending its stability to make a bigger, more disruptive impact on the world?

Reference is made to Robert Branche‘s latest book “les Radeaux de Feu” (in French). Visit Robert Branche’s blog (in French) for more about the author and his latest book.

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