Category: Career in the Collaborative Age

How To Find the Right Balance for Bureaucracy

I am always astonished as how fast bureaucracy can develop in any organisation, i.e. activities being created that keep people busy with limited value created for the client. In this HBR article (in French) ‘Le coût de la bureaucratie‘ some measures of bureaucracy and of its costs are developed. At the same time, some bureaucracy, systems and standards is needed to keep large organizations going and remain effective as they scale. How can the right balance be found?

Bureaucracy is measured by looking for example at the time it takes to get a given decision, and the HBR paper shows that it increases significantly with the size of the organization. This is obviously a problem. At the same time, some kind of control is required on decisions being taken, in particular when they can have a large leverage on the organization’s performance. Similarly, a minimum of internal coordination and systems are required when an organisation grows, to make work more effective; but they should not be too inflexible and unable to adapt to new circumstances.

There is a fine balance between not enough and too much bureaucracy. Those organisations that find the right balance are the most effective. The main issue, I find, is that principles of operation often become obsolete but remain in force in bureaucratic organizations. I believe that every few years, a hard look should be taken at how the organisation works, and an objective of replacing 30 to 40% of its operating principles should be sought.

Do you practice this periodic health check?

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How the Japanese Concept of Ikigai Increases Life Satisfaction

The concept of Ikigai has been floating around the web lately, like in this Medium article ‘Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life Might Just Help You Live a More Fulfilling Life‘. It seems to be a japanese concept aimed at locating the area at the intersection of what you love doing, what you are good at, what you can be compensated against, and what the world needs. Compared to other models, it is this last addition which makes the approach special.

The addition of values and seeking activities that the world needs is an interesting change to the more classical model of finding the soft spot between passion, career and capability. It definitely gives an interesting spin to the exercise of finding out where to locate what we are currently doing as our main activity.

As to whether finding one’s Ikigai is the best way to prolong life, that’s a stretched conclusion which we’ll not investigate further, although this claim obviously creates interesting reflections.

How close are you to your Ikigai?

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How Memos Are More Powerful Than Powerpoints to Structure Thoughts

I am always amazed at how Powerpoint presentations have become the standard support to structure thinking in organizations. I sometimes feel old-fashioned because I prefer to work on memos to get my thoughts in order. Luckily I am not alone: Jeff Bezos at Amazon has banned powerpoints in favor of structured memos, as explained here or here. And I truly believe that memos have substantial benefits.

Powerpoint presentations are everywhere in organizations. I even know some that use this support for their commercial proposals! This tool has great benefits in terms of sharing, but it also structures the thought process in a certain way: bullet points, overall structures that are fit for presenting.

Memos are of course less sexy when it comes to sharing ideas but I find that they allow a more structure thought build-up. That is possibly because a certain logic needs to be developed throughout the document, which is not so much the case in a powerpoint presentation. Also, there are much less possibilities to be distracted by some graphical representations.

My personal process when developing detailed thoughts about an issue is to write a memo and work around structuring it in a satisfying manner. If needed I may produce an additional powerpoint presentation, but I find the memo format much more amenable to the development of a structured approach.

If you find you are producing too much powerpoint thoughts, try to structure your thinking using memos. It is worth it!

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How AI trainer is the new trendy gig for students and young professionals

I was not aware until recently how the job of “AI trainer” is the new gig for students seeking some extra money and for young professionals. But as AI-based services and ‘deep-learning’ products increase, there is a need to help them learn faster from existing data. The job is about feeding the data to the software and manually correcting the outcome to help the algorithm learn faster.

AI teaching sweatshop in Asia

For some basic image recognition, there are even sweatshops setup in low-cost countries to teach the algorithms. For more complex matters, this is generally performed in the AI company premises by graduate students in the relevant specialty.

Of course, the intent of deep-learning algorithm is to replicate what has been taught to it in a scalable manner, therefore automatizing the job that was previously performed by junior personnel. But the irony is that it also creates the new job of teaching it on the basis of an initial set of data how to respond and what to produce.

Let’s not be astonished if the first jobs of new graduates in the years to come is ‘AI teacher’!

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How Creating Lateral Growth Opportunities Becomes Rarer in the Modern World

Following up from the previous post ‘How to Create More Opportunities in Your Life‘, I am concerned how modern technology rather tends to close us up to new opportunities.

Typical modern restaurant scene: everyone on their own screen!

This is extremely obvious in public transportation of even at restaurants: people are closing themselves in their own chosen world, sometimes including with headphones, and remain in their bubble. Human interaction and the possibility of chance encounters diminishes drastically.

In addition it is well known that most social networks tend to close us further in our bubble of interests and opinions. While they do give opportunities to meet with new people with similar interests on a global scale, they don’t encourage us to encounter contrarian opinions and views.

Therefore, there is a real premium to those that will know how to take some break off this modern addiction to create lateral encounters that can create substantial new opportunities and make oneself grow in new directions: read books that bring new ideas, participate and listen to meetings and presentations with new approaches, etc.

How much time to you take to create those lateral opportunities in your life?

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How the “Entrepreneur Struggle Myth” May Becomes Excessive

Following up in our myth-busting spree after our previous post ‘How Waking Up Early Is a Myth and May Not Be the Success Recipe‘, let’s turn to the masochist myth of the fact that entrepreneurs must suffer to be successful. In this excellent disruptive piece “No More “Struggle Porn”“, Nat Eliason busts a myth established by prominent bestselling authors and entrepreneurs.

As Nat Eliason explains, “There are [always] two messages being sent. The first, the obvious one, is “Entrepreneurship is hard, work hard and you can succeed.” Nothing new or wrong with this. The issue is the second layer, the message underneath much of what [bestselling authors] broadcast: struggling is good.”

As he explains, “Entrepreneurs devour this message like doughnuts at a WeWork because most of them are failing.”. It gives a reason for the situation, while in many cases it is probably down to poor luck and circumstances, and not the lack of hard work. “Struggling and hustling become success proxies unsuccessful people can brag about to give themselves the dopamine hit they would otherwise get from, you know, actually succeeding at something.”

So if you catch yourself to complain too much that you’re struggling, it might be because you’d need to try something else. Watch out! I must say this piece has given me a lot to think about….

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How Waking Up Early Is a Myth and May Not Be the Success Recipe

One of the key recommendations of a lot of self-help books describing successful people is that ‘successful people wake up early’. It is for example, a key approach of Robin Sharma and of a lot of entrepreneurs. In this Quartz paper ‘Waking up early won’t change your life—but it’s awesome for capitalism‘, this assumption is examined and is not found to be particularly relevant.

We learn there that this waking up myth is so widespread and deeply engrained that some people take it so extreme that they wake up at 2:30 in the morning!

The paper makes the point that “the cult of early rising seems to miss a pretty obvious point: There is an opportunity cost involved“. Basically, it is linked to spend a larger proportion of one’s waking hours doing work: this includes not having long evenings to do alternate activities, and starting earlier to work and be productive (before the lazy ones wake up presumably, so that we won’t be interrupted).

It seems to me that the issue is to find some time without interruption to be more effective. It can be early or late, depending on one’s own rhythm. But at the end of the day we still need our night’s sleep to be productive. As the paper recommends, the best is simply to have such a rhythm that we don’t need an alarm to wake up!

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How Poor Management is a Hurdle to the Automation of Repetitive Work Tasks

In this excellent Atlantic piece ‘The Coders Programming Themselves Out of a Job‘, the dilemma facing employees that manage to automatize their work tasks is described in detail: what should you do if you manage to automatize your 8 hours’ task and then have nothing more to do?

Some fake it and try to look like they’re hard working – until they are caught. Some others transparently declare the situation – management is generally surprised (but not necessarily awed), and often takes too much time to reorganize the work. The central question is “Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I’ve automated my job?”

In my view, this article just shows poor management quality that is unable to imagine that job tasks can be automated, or respond positively to employee initiatives. This is the reflect of an unhealthy corporate culture, which is unfortunately too widespread.

It seems to me that we should celebrate people who manage to automatise their tasks, give them a raise and see if they can contribute further. There is no fun performing repetitive tasks all day long if they can be easily automatized. And it is definitely not future-looking. It is much more fun to devise and code creatively and shift the value elsewhere.

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How Proactive Career Moves Are Better Than Defensive Ones

Following up on my previous post ‘How Most Executives’ Should Plan For a Second Career after Age 45‘, I would like to share my experience and view on how a proactive career move at that stage is better than a defensive move – and thus, why it is so important to anticipate the ceiling of corporate career.

When placed in a defensive situation, i.e. having been terminated forcefully from an existing position, the executive often has some benefits in the form of termination premium which can sometimes be sizable. However, it is often not sufficient for the following reasons:

  • the executive’s personal finances are not adapted to the new career path with a high running expenditure flow, and often he does not have sufficient reserves to experiment with a new career keeping calm about the time it takes to build something new
  • if not anticipated, the time to change one’s mindset can be very long, in particular if it only happens if the executive spends too much time trying to find an equivalent corporate position and only considers a new career after a long time. This strains the cash situation

Therefore it is essential that executives take a proactive career change approach as soon as they identify that their corporate career seems to approach a potential ceiling. Proactive planning can even involve taking active action in parallel to the executive role, and even negotiate a mutually beneficial severance package with the corporate employer, leveraging on possible social benefits.

I can only recommend executives to consider proactively their second career early enough. Once awareness sets in, their dynamism will do the rest – still it takes time for awareness to set in and mindsets to change.

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How Most Executives’ Should Plan For a Second Career after Age 45

I read in an article written by a leading executive headhunter how the reality of most executives and senior executives’ career, with few exceptions, is that it growths and will reach a ceiling around age 40-45: seats in the executive management committee are few and far between. Therefore, for executives, it is important to realize and understand this fact, and plan accordingly for a second career.

This issue is becoming particularly acute nowadays because organizations will not any more keep deserving executives in their payroll for past services rendered, if they don’t have an operational role. I meet too many executives that for a reason or another have been made redundant and are struggling with their identity and career prospects between 45 and 55.

It is really amazing how this issue is not part of the collective consciousness. The reason is probably because the corporate world first and foremost presents as role models those exceptions that continuously rise throughout their careers.

There are plenty of interesting and exciting second careers open to executives that have reached the ceiling of their corporate career: founding or taking over a smaller business, investor, interim management roles, independent professional, leading a para-public organization, being elected into political roles etc.

But too few are planning ahead for this second career and life, as they are too committed to trying to be successful in their corporate life. Statistics don’t lie – most will have to change. This is why I am now recommending executives I meet that ponder this issue to figure out something of interest, and start building this new second career in a proactive way, which is always much better than doing it in a defensive manner.

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How “Entreprenants” are different from ‘Entrepreneurs’

Following up on our post ‘How The Definition of Entrepreneurship and Start-Up Can be Confusing‘, I stumbled upon a new concept in France developed by the Ecole de Paris management school, differentiating between “entrepreneur” and “entreprenant” (enterprising). And there is actually a manifesto, ‘le manifeste de l’entreprenant‘, and even a website Le jardin des Entreprenants – the Enterprising’s garden) showing various stories (all in French only).

The idea is a bit similar to the one developed in my original post. “Entreprenants” combine the invention of solutions and unexpected activities with a commitment to create meaning, thus reinventing the world in a powerful way.

In the manifesto, several recognition traits of those new actors are given, some of which are really differentiating with regard to the standard concept of entrepreneur:

  • “Entreprenants” are not necessarily entrepreneurs, and their initiatives can grow outside incorporated entities
  • An entrepreneur can be an “entreprenant” if he/she has a social vision of this initiative
  • the “entreprenant” is a gardener and not a builder: he grows plants accounting for environmental conditions and stress

I conclude from this that there is a growing awareness that the traditional concept of ‘entrepreneur’, at least as it is being implemented nowadays, is limiting and that alternate concepts should co-exist.

 

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How the Business Model of Business Book Writers Changes

An interesting discussion on the evolution of the business book writer model is detailed in the post ‘The quiet revolution in business book publishing‘. With the increase in self-publishing, books are increasingly conceived as a part of a personal brand rather than “solid tomes by well-respected experts based on years of research and published by big name or specialist houses“.

The description of this evolution resonates with the way I envisage my books: the poste describes how for many authors “the book is not so much a product as an enhanced business card, so giving books away is their favored modus operandi, and income from retail sales is a non-essential bonus.” As a result, “The average business book is now closer to a slim 40,000 words than a substantial 80,000”

“Business authors want to get their book through production and to market in the shortest possible time to maximise the currency of their content and freshness of their offer. So for them, the business model of traditional publishing – with its focus on broad market titles, slow, intensive production cycles, and well-known authors to generate maximum sales – does not work.”

I’m quite happy to see that my approach to business books is becoming quite mainstream. In any case, this is a massive disruption for traditional publishing houses.

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