As we are getting close to the end of the year, time for the festive season and for the period of deciding good resolutions for 2012, I want to make sure that you get the opportunity to read the Fourth Revolution book: understand the main drivers of the world’s transformation to be successful and thriving tomorrow. And act and change accordingly!!
Fourth Revolution book (Kindle version)
Because it is important that you be successful, the Fourth Revolution book’s Kindle version is being sold temporarily at the astonishingly low price of 3.99$ or 2.98 euros*. Think about the value you’ll get to understand the world at this price!
This promotion will not last long. Get your copy today from Amazon’s Kindle store!
We can change. We should change. But we can’t change against our identity.
We can’t change against this identity which we have developed, voluntarily or involuntarily, over the years.
Looking at one's identity
This identity, which currently defines ourselves in society. This identity, which we like or not, which sticks to us.
It is extremely hard to try to change against our identity. The effort is tremendous, because we not only fight against ourselves, we fight against our environment, which does not understand why suddenly we take actions that do not fit with our identity.
For successful, profound changes; for easier deep change, there is only one solution. Change your identity first. Change that reflection of yourself. Step out of the conventional identity associated with your career, evolve and create your new identity.
Then, only, change.
How can you do that? There is an extreme solution: travel 10,000km away in the middle of people who don’t know you, or engage yourself in the Foreign Legion, and create a new identity. That’s a bit extreme and time consuming. A softer solution is to start progressively shaping a new identity by engaging in some less conventional practices, and evolving the type of people you mingle with.
We all crave for change but not a lot of us succeed. Start by modifying your identity to prepare for your fundamental change. When do you start?
As the Fourth Revolution Blog starts to foster discussions, we have migrated the comments system to Disqus to make it easier to have meaningful discussions.
By registering on Disqus.com you can follow your comments on all blog posts, like or dislike, and in general, create easily a conversation.
I expect that we’ll have a lot of thoughtful conversations in the near future!
It does not happen too often to me, but right now I am upset that statistics are being misinterpreted.
In these times of crisis, of 99 percent movement, of demonstrations against the financial and corporate world, numerous charts are disseminated that show how the proportion of wages in percent of GDP is declining (and how the proportion of corporate profits is increasing). Here is an example from a recent post on the Daily Beast titled “the era of corporate profit”:
typical historical curves for wages and corporate profit
Now, what does that really show? Obviously, it shows that the proportion in the GDP of the wages and salary income of people employed traditionally by corporations is decreasing. Does it show that the average worker earns less? That’s quite a stretched interpretation even if most commentators just mean it!
As an avid reader of the Fourth Revolution blog, the fact that the share of salaries in the overall income should not surprise you: salaried employment by large corporations is a model of the Industrial Age, which is declining – BECAUSE THERE ARE LESS PEOPLE THAT ARE SALARIED (and not, because each of them gets less money!!). In fact, the diminution of the share of conventional salaries in the GDP is another precursor of the Fourth Revolution!
The US Bureau of Economic Analysis provides historical tables on the revenues in the USA. Here is a curve anyone can obtain with a little bit of patience:
why wages and salaries are only a small part of people's income
So what? Yes, wages and salaries have a tendency to decrease, but the income from non corporate business, sole proprietorships, and non-profits organizations increase dramatically. These are organizations which certainly create value for only a few individuals (to obtain the curve we have reclassified their profits as income for the owners)! These are the organizations of the K.E.E.Ns…
Stop the fallacy of showing decreasing salary curves as an indication of the impoverishment of the average citizen. The future lies in other forms of organizations, and their importance increases dramatically.
Welcome to the Fourth Revolution. The future and the Value is elsewhere than salaried employment. When do you jump to other forms of organization?
Basically, a twitter or facebook post lifespan (in terms of viewing, clicking, re-tweeting etc) is a mere matter of minutes. Only Youtube videos have a lifespan of a few hours.
Is that really true? All this information is staying somewhere. The information is still there, more or less accessible, but searchable. Even where we thought his information was not accessible, it can come back: Facebook is right now digging the information out for its timeline; tweets can be searched. Beyond the flurry of the initial re-tweets and sharing, a long tail of search results and clicks still keeps the information alive.
This is the paradox of modern data on the internet. The flow of information is so immense that our attention span becomes ever shorter. Yet, the information remains there, accessible, searchable, available for us to build upon it. More and more information from more and more contributors, worldwide.
And those will be successful in the Collaborative Age who, beyond the instantaneous, will know how to dig the heap of historical information for the nuggets they are looking for. That’s certainly a K.E.E.N. skill. How often do you dig deeper for more information instead of letting yourself be overwhelmed by the present notifications? Just do it more often!
It is a fear that comes from far. A fear not to be able to support my family. Of having taken the wrong decision.
Logically, I know I should not be so scared. I have savings to allow for some idle time. I am finalizing a significant contract for my new company that should allow to secure sufficient income in 2012.
Still, I can’t avoid to be scared. I have to learn to face my fear. And I am going through a tremendous learning curve now.
Of course I toyed with the idea of creating a company for some time. I spent hours on numerous simulation spreadsheets, studied the market, involved friends and sought advice. Still, now that I am in it, having cut the bridge to the company that employed me, WOW, fear hits big time! And it is not reality that hits, because reality seems to be OK – it is an irrational fear of the unknown with the thought that my life is at stake.
Now I do face my fear. And it is huge, scary, smelly. It is incredible. As I stand up to face it I feel exhilarated to look at my fear in the eye and with the internal belief that I am going to overcome it.
Because facing my fear makes me realize how committed I am and how deeply resilient I can be. Much more than I thought, actually.
Beyond fear I discover myself.
Maybe that’s an experience everybody should go through to discover oneself?
It is certainly one of the most powerful coaching tools I know. It works extremely well in change situations – personal or organizational.
What is it about? Often people and organizations know they have to change. They know what they need to change. And they often go in negative spirals like “we have never been able to do that”, “that’s not possible”.
Appreciative inquiry challenges this by pushing people or organizations to find situations in the past that were different and had a little bit of what we intend to change. To the heavy smoker: What were situations where you managed to smoke less? To the organization that never seems to be able to innovate: what were situations in the past where you managed to be a bit innovative?
There were always such occasions, because of the intrinsic variance in the way we behave, in the way things happen. Appreciative inquiry then digs appreciatively into these past events to find what were the factors that elicited those changes, and how it did feel.
It shows that the individual or the organization is able to do the change, and identify what needs to be done more or less to achieve the change that is needed today.
Appreciative inquiry requires external help, and is deeply powerful. It allows to figure out the highly emotionally engaged simple actions that make successful large changes.
Next time you think you are faced with a dead end, something you think is impossible, turn to appreciative inquiry. Dig into your past and recognize how you can change.
More so, appreciate your past and build your future upon the lessons you learnt. They may be hidden but they are there. Go and find them.
Why is there so much frustration and so many people that don’t really do what they long to do, what they dream to do?
Ever since I have written a book, every time I present it, I get more questions on how I managed to write and publish it, than on the book itself! So many people dream to write a book, or have written a book already!
Ever since I have announced to the world that I was leaving the comfortable corporate environment to be an entrepreneur, I get more questions on how I manage to do it than on my actual project itself! So many people dream to start their business, so many people have a truly good business idea ready for application!
The answer is obvious, of course: fear, which often hides behind busy-ness (being busy on actions with little impact, spending one’s time). All of this entertained by Industrial Age institutions, which repeat endlessly how inappropriate it is to be weird, to have initiative, and lock us into a system from which it is difficult to escape.
Of course these institutions look like they provide us with a stable, safe environment. That was maybe true in the past, but today we know that’s really overrated. No job is really safe today in any corporation. Still, we cling to that mindset for lack of another safe haven. And the Industrial Age system also cleverly provided barriers to our dreams: large mortgages that limit drastically our financial freedom; tax, professional and immigration legislation that limit our freedom of movement or of choosing our activity.
do you need a buddy for tandem jump?
There are ways to minimize risk when starting a venture. Have good advice and support from people who have gone through the transition (like you stay safe during your first free fall jump by having an experienced person jumping in tandem with you). Have a parachute already open that slows down your scary dynamics (a signed contract, savings…) and gives you more time. Have encouragement and support from your family and friends.
You know what? It is rare to find someone who has jumped out of the Industrial Age system and has really, deeply failed. Of course people go through temporary failures until they find their way; they might not seek and get those shiny things that Industrial Age ego would crave (a larger car, a larger house, etc); still, overall I find that people who jumped are more happy. And above all their contribution to the world is just tremendous.
I can barely imagine how the world will be when a significant portion of people will have jumped outside the Industrial Age, when the number of K.E.E.Ns will have increased dramatically, and when all these people will share their talents and contributions with all of us, creating a very different place to live.
Let’s go and do it. Overcome your fear. Become a real K.E.E.N.. Come on, jump!
I quit my cosy position as an executive in a large international organization to go down the path of the Fourth Revolution entrepreneur.
In my book I have described how the Fourth Revolution K.E.E.Ns (Knowledge Exchanging Enhancing Networkers) drive their career by being more of free agents than conventional Industrial Age employees of a Corporation. That they drive their career, moving from project to project, over the world.
Although I am involved on a day-to-day basis with project management, my professional life was not just quite according to this model. Now, I just did jump into it. I just completed my transformation.
Yes, that’s right, I am leaving the comfortable corporate world for the adventure of the entrepreneur. I have incorporated Fourth Revolution Private Limited as a company in Singapore. Fourth Revolution Pte Ltd will be the vehicle for my publishing, speaking and entrepreneurial activities.
My first entrepreneurial venture will be in a company setup with some partners, that we have called Project Value Delivery Pte Ltd (see Project Value Delivery Pte Ltd website here), a consulting company to support organizations in setting up and executing projects, and in particular, large infrastructure projects. I hope ultimately to help organizations become effectively the open, fluid organizations of the Collaborative Age, learn firsthand the obstacles on that road, and the solutions to overcome them. And see the organizations we will support unleash the unprecedented Fourth Revolution value, at the same time developing irresistible competitive advantage, and changing the world!
I’m both scared and excited by the prospects and the infinite potential of the future.
Follow me on my blog in the next few months as I go through this transformation from the conventional corporate executive to the Fourth Revolution entrepreneur! I’ll start this new life early 2012!
According to Nielsen studies, the time spent on Facebook on average in the US is now (August 2011) almost 8 hours per month – up from a bit less than 6h in August 2010.
That’s the average for 163 million US Facebook users. Or, in total, an astonishing cumulative 54 million days spent by all US Facebook users during that month. Communicating, chatting, sharing, collaborating.
It’s a flood of collaboration. Is that time wasted or time used appropriately? Some bloggers seem to think it is time wasted: see for example http://mashable.com/2011/09/30/wasting-time-on-facebook/. The name of the link is revealing of the mindset of the writer, although the post itself is just named “You spent 8 hours a month on Facebook [STATS]“.
Well people obviously find an interest and prefer to go on Facebook rather than watching TV. And although many Facebook posts are quite superficial, no doubt there are nuggets there ready to be harvested.
The Fourth Revolution is just kicking off. Time spent on Facebook and other social networks generates value. How do you benefit from this value?
