Category: Career in the Collaborative Age

Those Who Matter Won’t Mind You Saying What You Think

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter won’t mind.” ~ Dr. Seuss

Ready to create a ripple effect?
Ready to create a ripple effect?

When you speak your mind, you will disturb. You will disturb the nicely arranged uses, customs and habits that are so easy to repeat without questioning.

That’s a given – you will disturb and the world will try to fight back to stay at the same equilibrium.

As a result, most people avoid creating this disturbance.

Yes, of course, if you say what you really think, most people will object. But not the few ones who matter. And that’s what is really important.

Be certain that the few that won’t object are those that really matter to you. So, just move on and change the world. What are you waiting for?

Share

Why Chronic Inconsistency is the Signature of Mediocrity

“The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change, the signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency” – quote from the book “Great by Choice” by Jim Collins and Morten Hansen. In this book, the authors explore what makes start-ups successful or just about mediocre, but that probably applies to us as well to us individuals as to organizations.

get rich quick ad
Attractive ways to make you believe you’ll get rich quick…Who do you think will actually get rich?

This view is a bit surprising, but upon closer examination it is so true. It is so easy to give up to the latest attractive fad and to change focus so often that nothing important really gets done! According to the authors, successful organizations are successful because they stick to a rigorous discipline day-in and day-out, whatever the latest trend and event. Only rarely do they adapt their way of working to deep seated trends.

Lack of focus is the plague of many people and organizations I know. The search for the miracle solution pervades our society – it is enough to look at all these get-rich-quick solutions to which so many must succumb to! Yet without continued focus on a very limited number of initiatives, nothing decisive will get done.

Being consistent is boring. It’s long winded. It’s not attractive and remarkable at first. Yet it is the only way to become an overnight sensation… 10 years after you started.

Be boringly consistent in the short term to become remarkable on the long term. Spread your focus inconsistently, enjoy thrill on the short term and you’ll remain mediocre on the long term.

Which one do you choose?

Share

How to Thrive in this World of Monkeys

Following our reading and review of  “The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust” by John Coates (How our decision-making is everything but rational), let us have a thought experiment for a while.

gorilla office worker
Did you check who’s sitting next to you at the office?

Let us imagine that the office where we are working in is full not of neat humans, but of monkeys. Big, large monkeys that obviously react with much less thought and rationality than what we’d expect from humans.

Monkeys that would snare when they’d feel threatened. Monkeys that would display all sorts of body language to assert themselves, show their superiority or their social rank. Monkeys that would react unwillingly to opposite sex presence – and high-ranking monkeys trying to get additional partners to show their superiority. Monkeys that would react by fear or show threat when cornered. Monkeys that would live in close bands per hierarchical level and defend their territory. Monkeys that would conspire to overturn the current hierarchical order to get more peanuts.

Well I must say that sometimes I really feel like we’re not too far from observing our jungle origin even in the coziest offices of the largest towns created by civilization. No mistake – we’re still very much governed by our biology. How can we make the best of it?

Share

Choose – be a critic or a hero?

Too often we praise critics instead of praising those that go down in the arena to do things – real stuff that is, that can change the world.

Facing fear in the arenaAs Theodore Roosevelt so well said: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better”.

Theodore Roosevelt continues: “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Are you exposing yourself in the arena or do you just watch from you cozy critic’s seat?

Hat tip to Robin Sharma.

Share

Why career management is like riding an absurd merry-go-round

A little useful etymology I stumbled upon – and which explains why career management is about riding a merry-go-round!

marry-go-round with adult
Do you feel you are going in circles on a never ending race? Maybe are you ‘managing your career’ Industrial Age style?
  • ‘Career’ comes from the Middle-Age French carriere (race-course), itself a deformation from Latin. It thus means ‘racing’, a competition in scarcity where the few top positions are reserved to those who will be fastest or the strongest.
  • ‘Manage’ comes from the Middle-Age French ‘mesnager’ or Italian ‘maneggiare’ which was used to mean ‘drive a horse’ or ‘hold the reins of a horse’.

I don’t know why and I associated the two ideas and suddenly I was looking at Industrial Age career management as people riding wooden horses on a merry-go-round, always racing and never getting anywhere. Just going around on an absurd race.

Strange thought?

Where is your current racing on the ‘career ladder’ really taking you?

Share

Do you master the Art of Asking?

How well do you master the art of asking? In a recent talk at TED, Amanda Palmer (the singer that raised more than a million on Kickstarter) speaks about how connection can be triggered by asking (and not just giving first!). And how by asking her tribe she got everything she needed during her trips.

“By asking people, you connect with them, and by connecting with them, they want to help you“. This redefines the economics of many fields, in particular music and arts in general: you create a connection by asking first; and then you can nurture this connection into a great relationship that is mutually beneficial.

Artists can and should be supported by fans, as broadcast of their art is becoming free. Like Amanda, can we make an art to ask?

From now, how are you going to Ask better?

Share

Good consulting or coaching is about simplifying complexity

What is actually good consulting or coaching? As a professional consultant and coach it might be time that I ponder on that question!

Zen Garden
Focus and reflection is often what people expect from external contributions

Reflecting on my most successful and satisfying moments, I can relate them to AHA moments for my clients, who were discovering an entire new perspective on things. This perspective was in fact often a way to simplify their life (or their organization’s) by providing new focus. Of course, consulting and coaching are not the same thing: consulting comes with advice and solutions; while coaching takes an open approach and lets the client come up with its personal solution. Still, again and again, the key of the intervention was to simplify real or subjective complexity. It often got realized through finding purpose, or what the actual, real, objective of the endeavor is.

Often enough most of the value is brought in when the coach or the consultant simplifies complexity, letting a clear path readily visible and less confusion as to the way forward. One consulting firm (KPMG) even has the tagline “cutting through complexity”. It can only take a few minutes – but the external eye, sounding board and independent perspective is essential in discovering that new path. I love these moments where coming with an independent, sometimes irreverent viewpoint suddenly simplifies years of artificially added complexity layers!

How did the coaches and consultants you’ve used performed in simplifying complexity?

Hat tip to Patrick Laredo, President of X-PM, a leading interim management company, for the thoughts and discussions on consulting and complexity

Share

What Makes Great Organizations and Individuals different?

According to Simon Sinek, what makes the difference for great organizations – and great leaders – is that they know their ‘Why”. It is from their purpose that they derive how they do things and what they do in detail.

All individuals and organizations know their “What”. Some organizations know their “How”, but very rarely their “Why”.

Watch Simon Sinek give a great explanation with fantastic examples related to the Wright Brothers versus the establishment, and other great examples in this TED speech (if you’re a hurry, watch from 1:20 to 5:50 – if you can stop then!):

(Here is the link if you can’t see the video)

“People don’t buy What you do, they buy Why you do it” – Simon Sinek

Simon_sinekSimon Sinek’s Golden Circle (Why-How-What) is an interesting approach. It triggers important questions for ourselves and for our organizations.

Is your personal “Why” clear and compelling? Is your organization’s “Why” clear and compelling?

If not, what are you going to do about it?

Share

Stop blaming, and take responsibility for once!

Naturally, we almost always blame someone or something else for our powerlessness to achieve what we would like. And the worst is that we often don’t realize it because it has become so second-nature to us! It sometimes take someone else to pinpoint this awful habit.

The search for someone to blame is always successfulWhenever in a workshop or a meeting, for example in organizations, I instill the rule of ‘no blaming’, it soon becomes apparent how natural it is for us to find (good) reasons why we did not do what we committed to, or what we intended to. When you pay attention to it, you’ll find people fall all the time into the blaming mode. Not only blaming others, but also blaming the weather, the system, their family and/or their origin, and so on (our inventiveness in the field of excuses is truly fantastic)…

By the way, the higher ranking the participants are, the easier they will find excuses, which makes it even more fun to instill that rule of no blaming in executive or board meetings!

What if we would take responsibility more often? What if we would take responsibility for the delay, for the screw-up, for our incapacity to exercise more or eat less? Just taking responsibility changes everything. It makes us in charge of our own life. It stops creating this tyranny of unchangeable fate and destiny.

Once you are aware of it, you’ll realize each time you use blame and excuses. You won’t bear it any more. And slowly you’ll become more responsible. You’ll become more human. And you’ll change your fate and destiny.

Share

What if we were all somewhat insane (and what we can do about it)

A nice definition of insanity is: to do things over and over again – and expect a different result.

How much of a creature of habit are you?
How much of a creature of habit are you?

It’s quite amusing to think that we are probably all insane to a certain point. In our lives we often repeat behaviors out of habit and still, expect that something different will happen. That, somehow, fate will overcome our lethargy. Look at yourself and ponder how often we tend to fall into this mode.

It is so prevalent that it is sometimes incredible. Is that not the dream of the average person to somehow become rich and famous (refer to all the relevant TV shows) – and still… not to change anything, not one detail, to their daily behavior and occupation?

So, stop doing what you have always done, stop blaming everybody and anything for the fact that things don’t happen in your life the way you’d like. Change, introduce new experiences, even serendipity if you can. In summary – stop being on the brink of insanity by repeating ever and ever again the same routine! Come back to sanity by changing something – or even everything if you dare!

Share

Being Open to New Beginnings is the Only Way to Grow

“New beginnings – professional, personal, or come what may – are always uncomfortable, but being open to them is the only way to grow.” – Marissa Mayer

Marissa MayerIn an interesting blog post where she describes her transition from Google to Yahoo, Marissa Mayer, the current CEO of Yahoo, describes the issues she faced in taking a key career decision. Her choice was to made in a personally challenging context as she was 6 months pregnant and that meant foregoing the long maternity leave she had been planning.

Big choices in our lives generally don’t happen when we are quiet expecting them – and they tend to happen in moments where we really would like to avoid them (and look significantly like additional worries!).

That’s possibly why most people don’t take those opportunities that come to them in those hectic times. Why most people don’t re-plan.

According to Marissa Mayer, “ In the end, we are all capable of so much more than we think.”

Whatever happens in your life right now, if it’s the right opportunity and the good decision… Go for it. And don’t look back.

Share

Why “Crisis” is a Subjective Concept You Need to Overcome

A crisis is “any event that is, or expected to lead to, an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, community, or whole society” (Wikipedia).

cannons fortress
Preparing for the crisis

Actually a crisis is often felt as such for people who have something to lose. For people that have something to gain from the situation, it is often called “opportunity”. It is the same event though. It’s just the way we look at it.

An event that is felt as a crisis leads to all sorts of defensive measures. It is important to isolate oneself and one’s belongings and entitlements from a threat that is sometimes difficult to understand. One hides behind walls and prepares cannons to respond to the enemy. It is a very sedentary reaction.

Nomads with a light luggage will be more on the side of the opportunity. They will see a crisis as a possibility for change, for the better or worst.

Crisis is a subjective word. It all depends how you feel threatened and how you respond to the situation. Be on the side of those that take changes for opportunities!

Share