Dan Erwin

The New Career Paradigm: Matt Damon vs. Johnny Depp and Steve Jobs

Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne is the classic reflection of the American career--linear and mechanistic. Bourne, like many business professionals, focuses on the choices and the actions available to achieve his objective. Driven by incentives and desires, he focuses on a single objective and takes the necessary actions to achieve that objective. Ten minutes into the movie you’ve got a pretty clear lay of the land and where it’s liable to be going. Laying out the sequences of the movie on a storyboard would be simple. It is a very traditional, linear plot.

In stark contrast, last week I went to see Johnny Depp in The Rum Diary. Both my movie storyboards and career models got waylaid. Badly.

The movie, a semi-autobiographical depiction of the early years of the life of Hunter Thompson—the famous journalist and novelist—got underway with Thompson’s alter ego Paul Kemp (played by Johnny Depp), coming to consciousness, having ravaged the minibar in a dark, trashy Puerto Rican hotel room, overlooking a glorious beach. It’s the 1950s, and his bleary disorientation is accentuated by the small plane that flies by with the banner, “Puerto Rico Welcomes Union Carbide.” Yep. Pave paradise with parking lots! Ugly Americans infest the bowling alley. Right wing capitalists plan vulgar resorts on the unspoiled army testing range at Vieques.

Aside from the enjoyable script, filled with absolutely hilarious, cynical, insolent patter, after the first twenty minutes, I was stymied. Where the hell is this going? The only objective in sight was that the young Kemp (Depp), newly arrived from New York, got a job at the San Juan Star, a newspaper edited by a lunatic. The movie quickly introduced a garrulous, frustrated news photographer and a brain-damaged crime writer that initiated him into a round of barhopping, alcohol-soused benders, and cockfighting that result in a trip to the slammer. At the end of the first thirty minutes, two things were obvious: I couldn’t storyboard the plot like a Bourne movie if I tried, and I was the only person laughing in an audience of about 50 people. But just one thing was clear about the plot: it was jumbled and chaotic, not linear.

Even the ending failed to tie the threads together. The newspaper collapsed, and Kemp (Depp) got out with his life still intact, though flawed and, I assume, made even more cynical by his experiences.

Initially, I thought, rather superficially, that it was a crappy way to begin a career. Still, the movie wouldn’t let go of me. The audience didn’t give evidence of liking it--but I couldn’t let go of it.

Indeed, the more I thought about it, the more I decided that rather than a crappy way to begin a career, it was a highly auspicious beginning for a brilliant career. The Rum Diary, in contrast to the Bourne trilogy, depicts human experience in all its warts: chaotic, fragmentary, deviating from cherished values and given to imponderable ambiguity. Thompson was a successful writer, at the least, because of his rich exposure to a variety of encounters and involvement with the discomforting unfamiliar.

Johnny Depp’s Rum Diary was a classic break with the past. In profound contrast to the calculated, linear life of choice, the sense of Rum Diary is its focus upon the vagaries of human experience. Like real human experience, the Diary is messy and filled with misadventures.

The 21^st century is going to require competencies that are not easily derived from our incrementalist business schools and linear developed careers. Think about it. The key expertise for success in a globally volatile marketplace includes adaptability, exploration and entrepreneurialism.

Take adaptability as an example. Adaptation comes out of encounters with novelty that may seem chaotic. In trying to adapt, we often have to deviate from cherished values, behave in ways that we’ve barely glimpsed and seize on clues that are merely fragmentary. What better teacher than novel experiences?

It’s obvious today, that careers and work are experiencing a break with the past as significant as that in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when parts of the world began the long process of industrialization. The twentieth century mindset ruled our careers. It was, as the Bourne movies revealed, a highly calculating, narrow, specialist’s view of career. And though I’d be the last person to reject that career model, I’m also very certain that, of itself, it’s inadequate for the demands of the 21^st century.

It was Steve Jobs, of all people, that brilliant, painfully difficult and dysfunctional executive, who pointed to the same problem when discussing professionals in the technology industry.

A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

It’s this journey of experience that The Rum Dairy so eloquently points to. And it’s this very important career shift that businesspeople, desirous of a career future, had best pay attention to. When someone can’t adapt to changes, lacks creative insight, has difficulty resolving complex problems or making decisions, one important conclusion becomes obvious: he (or she) doesn’t have enough dots to connect.

Picture: Flickr..Celine Q.

How to Make a Smart, Zig-Zag Career Move

This is a riff on a fantastically simplified, even out-of-touch article in the latest Fortune, entitled How to Make a Smart Lateral Move. It’s obvious, as the article admits, that moving straight up the hierarchical ladder is not as common anymore. The article suggested that that this is a new approach to careers from the past five years, that it was due in part to the economy and that the conventional wisdom is that it’s a dead end. Baloney!

The economy just escalated a 20 year old strategy. The IT and marketing people in my Contacts list knew from organizational flattening--by the end of the 1980s--that the most prevalent opportunities were not up, but lateral zig-zags between companies. Many of them managed their career on that basis way back then. Even Ibarra’s seminal book on career change, Working Identity, published in 2003, shows an intimate knowledge of lateral moves as the primary means for career change and success. For that matter, Doug Hall, wrote on the issue in the 1970s. And if you want to get fussy about it, Dante Aligheri demonstrated its power at the turn of the 13^th century AD.

Still, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Lateral career moves offer terrific career opportunities. I suspect that the best opportunities in the future will be mostly lateral.

Certainly, as Fortune suggests, it’s true that many execs and ordinaries are willing to take jobs with similar titles and pay in exchange for little more than a shorter commute to work. According to a poll from Right Management, 84% of employees planned to look for new jobs in 2011, which is up from 60% the previous year. A lot of people are yelling, “get me out of this job.”

The writer, Jena McGregor, says that lateral moves may not always carry a stigma these days. Hmmm. She must have been interviewing dyed-in-the-wool traditionalists. The people I talk to view laterals as an astute move. Of course, as she suggests, you want to do your homework about the potential firm’s financials and the real responsibilities of the new job. I thought that was a given. Anyway, it’s still true.

But here are the real issues. The key question is not about leadership opportunity as much as it is about developmental opportunity. Leadership is just one issue among many. It's also an overworked buzzword, used to catch the attention of people who don’t understand the necessary development beyond “leadership” required for success in the New Economy. Jobs go obsolete within 3 to 5 years, and if there’s no opportunity for a new job with a 3 year tenure, it’s time to start looking—unless you want to become just another obsolete worker. Recognize also that a lateral in this environment may provide the best way to get out from under a crappy boss.

I’d want to know the potential for mentoring and coaching within the potential firm. Just how much of an orientation to learning will you find at the company? I’d also want to be sure that the firm is strongly oriented to developing its technology. Above all, I’d want to know how astute the firm is around the issues of social intelligence. In today’s world, you need your own technology as well as a growing amount of social intelligence if you’re to succeed.

Furthermore, as a Deloitte exec pointed out, a key issue in your move is assessing how many future choices a lateral move might provide. A final accurate comment from the article is the admonition to be certain you’re going to comfortable with the new culture. Cultures vary greatly. Not only do you want to make certain the new culture makes decisions on the basis of evidence, but also that’s it not too concrete. Many cultures represent a specific, narrow psychographic within their employees. 3M, for example is classic. If you don’t perceive reality through the lens of chemical engineering and R & D, you’re going to be out of pocket. My friends in classic marketing always struggle in that culture. In contrast, if a culture is highly entrepreneurial, nailing few other constants down, you’d best make certain you’re going to be happy with lots and lots of change. You’d be surprised at the difference in cultures within the same industry. Old Pillsbury was strongly oriented to change, restacking in the high-rise, remodeling and creating new groups with new objectives all the time. General Mills, in contrast, was not at all entrepreneurial—always sticking to the tried-and-true. As you look back in time and say that General Mills now owns Pillsbury. Yeah, but they bought Pillsbury precisely because of its entrepreneurial nature, replacing many of the General Mills execs with Pillsbury people. Technology companies can be shockingly different. Moving from Microsoft to FaceBook could be trauma for plenty of people who have difficulty with rapid change. “Nuff said about culture distinctions.

The pay and promotion issue is still another complex matter. It's astute to prioritize development opportunities first, then future choices second. Indeed, some in IT won't accept a two-year position that provides no learning. In a good economy, IT people won't accept more than six months on a job without development opportunities. These complexities play out in surprising ways. Because of the insistence upon development opportunities and future choice, pay and promotion become secondary issues. The consequence is that numerous employees willingly and wisely take a pay cut for future opportunities. Titles and promotions seem to have far less cachet than in the past. Others accept similar salaries, some opt for more money and no promotion. You'll also find that many from all the disciplines, not just IT, are looking not to the first lateral, but to the next two moves to make up for salary and even promotion needs. Lateral moves are for people who are thinking several years ahead. The zig-zag assumes a strategic role in career thinking. It's not just a one-shot deal.

In sum, for the bulk of the working population smart laterals may well be the wisest way to go. Don’t get caught up in the dead idea that your company is going to take care of you. You’re going to have to take care of your own career—or end up on the streets.

Should the US Be Worried About China?

China is not much of a threat, says Lee Kwan Yew, in a conversation with Charlie Rose.  According to Yew, the man who shaped Singapore during 31 years in power, the US is the only mover and shaker, the only real leader on the globe.  Yew dissects China's real agendas with a scalpel.  China is the second-largest economy, but she has no world-wide interests.  Because of its history, the Chinese culture is notoriously self-centered.  (We might be too, if we'd gone through all they've experienced.)  Her interest is in herself, and so she concentrates on those areas where she needs oil and other resources.  Yew believes that it will take China more than 20 years to become a technological power.

So what, according to Yew, do the Chinese need?

• China needs the US market.  It has a growing middle class, but the inequalities and poverty in China outside the coastal cities are profound.  The social disparities are so significant that the politicians always worry about civil disorder and severe discontent.
• China needs US technology.  To a high degree American technology grows out of its entrepreneurial culture.  It's well known that the Chinese culture is not entrepreneurial, but driven by state capitalism.  Not a formula for adventuresome technologists.
• China needs to have students go to the US.  Without a backlog of US trained grads China will be cut off from information and technology.

Perhaps the better question is what the US should do.  One thing for sure is that Washington should not cut off research support, one of the first moves of the new congress.  Somebody needs to challenge that political idiocy whenever there are attempts to limit student support, university and research funding. That's not an issue of can't support the institutions, it's an issue of gutlessness and lack of strategy.  I expect that of two-year wonders in the House of Representatives, but not of the Senate.

Many business leaders talk out of both sides of their mouth about taxes, but when it comes to supporting research most of them are not too upset over a shaking down.  After all, business gets more tax subsidies than the population.  I will never understand how the population stays so unaware of the tax advantages and subsidies government provides to business.  I believe that business tax advantages have gotten far too large.  The only remedy will be tax reform to remove the thousands of loopholes.  The business tax loopholes are a far larger piece of the deficit problem than taxpayers realize.

So should the US be worried about China?  Not especially.

Women and the Pay/Career Gap

This is basically an FYI post:  I doubt that I could write an article on women and the pay/career issues conundrum without screwing up, getting accused of chauvinism or making irrelevant statements.  So let me frame the issue with a bit of history, and then suggest a number of articles on the subject.

First, I am husband of a professional woman, and father of three daughters, all professionals.  Although I grew up in a highly male, though not especially macho family, I recognized when my daughters were in grade school that women were getting the short end of the stick and that I needed to help them make wise career/mate choices.  (The father/daughter stuff is very potent.  My daughters more quickly tell me I'm screwing up than my wife.  On numerous occasions, and to my obvious delight, they've told me to "buzz-off," and rightly so.  I've also engaged in some of the most enjoyable conversations in life with my daughters.)  My wife, who's in her seventies, has told me that growing up, she had three choices of profession: teaching, nursing or secretarial.  After two summer stints as part-time assistant to the senior executive for General Motors Overseas (Opel cars, etc.) he offered her the position of his personal assistant, with a pool of a dozen assistants, but she chose to become a teacher.  (She's a very exceptional woman.)   After our first was born, her father offered to pay her way through law school, but she said no.  (I learned much later that she thought I'd have been too intimidated.  Aaaargh!  No comment.)

It was obvious that for me to feel secure about our daughters' future they needed to go to the best schools and get a graduate degree.  (That was more my agenda than my wife's, although she certainly was supportive.)  All three daughters completed graduate school, and they've been highly successful.  My wife and I both have happy smiles about that.  We recognize that that was not possible for the majority of women of that generation, but we were given three daughters and that was our family objective.  I should also say that over the years I've had the good fortune to consult to numerous women.  I'm not certain why, but a number of my clients have been exceptionally capable females at the executive level.  I am certain I gained as much from them as I gave.  When the issue is women in the workplace, I should say that though I've been blessed to meet a number of very enlightened males, I also know an awful lot of dumb-ass ones from mid to executive levels from all the generations.  I count two sons-in-law among the enlightened.

Both men and women of the younger generations should be aware of the current statistics (although some writers are pointing out that these are not really the important issues). 

• Pew research finds 26% of women out-earn their husbands.
• More women than men are starting American companies.
• Women earn 6 out of 10 bachelor's and master's degrees.

So, men and women of the younger generations, here are a set of articles on highly relevant women/workplace issues.

Recognizing the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, Newsweek has a fascinating overview on the gender gap:  Why the gender gap still has not closed. 

Harvard blogs has a series of useful articles on women in the workplace, some challenging the usual stuff: Why the gender pay gap misses the point;  What's in a (last) name? A bigger paycheck, maybe.  Those two articles refer to research from a number of articles, and also reframe much of the gender/workplace issue. 

Why Escape from Cubicle Nation?

Why escape from cubicle nation?  Three of the smartest thinkers in business weigh in on this highly relevant question, a question made public by Pam Slim in her intriguing book, Escape From Cubicle Nation.  Their belief, however, is that we really need big companies.  Admittedly, many big firms still work out of the cost-containment, standardization model, which authors the unfulfilling jobs and dysfunction that Pam Slim and Daniel Pink refer to.  Still major firms are beginning to understand that a different organizational model in which organizations value their employees will be required for competition in a highly innovative world and many are starting to put that in place.

But what's most significant is the writers' insight into why we need large organizations:  Large organizations can provide "platforms for individuals to systematically experiment, learn, and innovate" and they will be the "best positioned to support and develop scalable, long-term, trust-based relationships."

Furthermore, large firms can provide the stability that makes it possible to keep up with the fast-moving global economy and this unpredictable world.  They will be able to provide learning opportunities for growth, more growth and still more growth in a world where company existence will be built on employee competence and innovation.

Having consulted for start-ups, small firms and multi-national organizations, I've noticed significant differences in personal opportunity--especially for those in the early years of their career.  Although the media hype the youthful entrepreneurs who succeed, statistically they are such a small piece of the total that the pattern they set serves only to hype the imagination rather than build genuine opportunity for more than a few.  

Among the writers of that Harvard blog on big organizations is the highly knowledgeable John Steely Brown, whose work, The Social Life of Information, published in 2000, remains the last word on the information side of technology.  It's light years ahead of anything on the web from any generation.  It does point to the tunnel vision that information-driven technologies breed and is not necessarily welcome input to the conventional wisdom surfaced by so many bloggers. 

By no stretch of the imagination would I deprecate the orientation to free-lancing (I'd be shooting myself in the foot), and escaping from the dysfunction of the macro organization.  But those who have thick skin will find much of value in at least a short-term tenure at one of America's major organizations. 

As a free-lancer who consults largely to huge, multi-national firms, I accept Brown and his colleagues' argument in toto.  Actually, it's the best rationale for a major corporation that I've seen in the last ten years.  The truth is that no matter how effective a small firm's network of experts, it can't provide the platform and resources often needed for major projects and much innovation.  The article, deserving of much study and thought, is found here:  http://bit.ly/1a9Y35

Dan Ariely and Business (Economic? Personal?) Optimism

If you like Martin Seligman (Authentic Happiness, etc.) and David Goleman (Emotional Intelligence, etc.,etc.), you'll really like Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational).  In contrast to Seligman and Goleman who begin with psychology and suggest its applications, Ariely begins with an ordinary subject like sex, gambling, economics and then brings the psych research to bear on it.

Case in point:  Optimism.  The August 24 and 31 issue of Business Week is devoted to the case for optimism.  Ariely brings basic psych research to his intriguing and enlightening article:  The Curious Paradox of 'Optimism Bias.  With his background in behavioral economics and the financial meltdown, he's regularly asked about his attitude toward the future.  He sees two question in the inquiry:  Where does he fall on the optimism spectrum?  And, can we be optimistic in the face of the recession? 

Ariely responds with a discussion of the optimism bias:

The basic idea is that when people judge their chances of experiencing a good outcome—getting a great job or having a successful marriage, healthy kids, or financial security—they estimate their odds to be higher than average. But when they contemplate the probability that something bad will befall them (a heart attack, a divorce, a parking ticket), they estimate their odds to be lower than those of other people.

 

Your question might be so what?  Obviously, the bias can both help and hurt us.  We can suffer because we're too optimistic and end up poor and in the bankruptcy courts.  Yet, as Ariely argues, society often benefits from behavior "spurred by upbeat outlooks." 

 

What would our nation be like without entrepreneurs willing to risk creating startups, developing new medicines or openning new businesses?  In spite of the fact that the success rate of start-ups is very low, people start them all the time.  Optimism is a half-full glass.

 

But as this meltdown has shown, optimism can also be folly.  Thankfully, we can and do learn from these failures.  Some of the new banking regulations, for example, will be found to be useful.  As Ariely concludes, changes like these "are unlikely to prevent all future financial shenanigans."  Yet he's optimistic about the ability of at least some of the regulations to have a positive impact.

 

If you're an optimist like me, how do you check your occasional over-optimism?  I have a wife, a smart daughter, clients and friends that give me feedback on my ideas.  I'm proactive about getting it.  I've learned that a "filter" to push back can be very useful.

 

On the other hand, what do you do if you're regularly "under-optimistic?"  In today's world, the need to manage ambiguity and an optimistic outlook to support your creativity is one of the few differentiators in business.  I'd spend time around the over-optimists to see what I can learn from them.

Change Is Good for You--So Get Used to It

The June 22 issue of BusinessWeek reviews Michael E. Malone's provocative new book, The Future Arrived Yesterday, the latest description of how technology will reshape corporate reality and engage in yet another act of innovative deconstruction.  Malone, the original technology newspaperman of Silicon Valley, has a flawless record as forecaster-in-chief of technology impacts.  As BW says,

The central idea here is both simple and powerful: The global economy has entered a new era, and a mercurial corporate form Malone calls the Protean Corporation will become the dominant species by the middle of the next decade.  "These Protean Corporations," he writes, "will behave like perpetual entrepreneurial startups, continuously changing their form, direction, even their identity.  They will be true corporate shape-shifters."

Whether or not business will play out in precisely that scenario, it's clear that based on the drastic changes of the past ten years business is in for yet another decade of chaotic, competitive innovation.  The real question for us is how will this affect the business professional?    

In a recent post, I emphasized the importance of entrepreneurialism as a key attribute for the successful professional in the coming years.  That will be true whether you're running your own business or an organizational employee.  Malone's book is setting up the same argument for business and management and it's a notion we all need to embrace.   What's encouraging about entrepreneurial expertise is that studies make it clear it is a competence that you can learn.  So what's a professional to do?  I'd make certain that I got into innovative projects with experienced professionals who can initiate me into the basic competencies.  

But the deeper and more profound issue is learning to deal with change in most any setting.  Dig into my research paper, Getting Yanked Around Is Good for You, a title generated by a senior exec who, with her people, found that their continuous change experiences were a great training ground for managing change in their work life.  Indeed, the neuroscience plainly indicates the long-term value of dealing with change:

It has become accepted that the better connected a brain is, the better it can connect new facts with old facts, retrieve older memories, and even see links between very different facts. This is a superb setup for complex pattern thinking, problem solving and creativity. The research revealed, and continues to reveal that in stark contrast to the traditional perspective on intelligence, brain circuits will continue to develop in response to the changing demands of technology, evolving business processes, and unique and difficult decision making—the typical setting of many leading-edge businesses in a competitive environment.

It needs to be repeated and internalized by every professional:  Change is good for you--so get used to it.

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Getting Yanked Around Is Good For You

GEN-Y SQUISHY SKILL #2: ENTREPRENEURIALISM

The first thing I think of when I hear someone referred to as an entrepreneur is a business person who has successfully built a business from scratch, inevitably a wealthy executive.  However, in a Wall Street Journal article by Sue Shellenbarger, Raising Kids Who Can Thrive Amid Chaos in Their Careers, she goes at entrepreneurialism from a more generic perspective.  It is the ability to take "initiative and risks to put new ideas into play."  In short, entrepreneurialism is the squishy skill of finding useful and/or profitable solutions to problems.  

Studies from as recent as the turn of the 21st century found entrepreneurs in all kinds of organizational settings: product design firms, business model inventors, knowledge traders inside consulting firms and knowledge brokers inside multi-national firms.  Although the business markets and settings were diverse, the study by Hargadon and Sutton showed that the entrepreneurial process was remarkably similar across all companies and industries: 

• capture good ideas
• keep the ideas alive
• imagine new uses for old ideas
• put promising concepts to the test 

All of this is best summarized by Thomas Edison who once said, "To invent you need a good imagination and a pile of junk."  One myth about Edison needs to be dispelled:  he worked with teams of people, not alone.  Thus, contrary to conventional wisdom, he was not a singular creative genius.  In fact, the Bell laboratories were the result of Edison's entrepreneurial process of using groups to develop and commercialize his products.  

The simple marketing practice of enlarging market share by a product line extension (adding to a product line by changing one ingredient or process) is what the entrepreneurial spirit is all about.  For example, since Cheerios is very successful, perhaps we can build on that success by developing Cheerios with nuts and honey.  Anyone who has ever worked around product development knows that it is the entrepreneurial contribution of many hands.

What's most striking--and encouraging--about who fails and who suceeds, is that there is no entrepreneurial personality type.  Smart entrepreneurs surround themselves with colleagues who have complementary skill sets.  The entrepreneurs who succeed are actually very risk averse and look to hedge their bets with skilled partners and multiple investors to spread their risk.  High-risk goals rarely get you very far.

One of my long-term acquaintances is Manny Villafana, the "Cardiac Kahuna," who was among the founders of Cardiac Pacemakers, St. Jude Medical and GV Medical.  He is certainly not a guy who has always hit home runs:  exceedingly risk averse, a penny-pincher, networked to an immense base of world-class physician-scientists from the Mayo Clinic and the possessor an extensive Rolodex of future colleagues.  Yet in spite of those built-in success factors, he was always spreading the risk.  He's far more representative of the entrepreneur than those bloated images of billionaires floating around the ether.

There are millions of those with an entrepreneurial attitude who will never be millionaires, but who are characteristically entrepreneurial and consistently work to develop practical solutions to complex problems.  One of my clients has two locations in the Midwest, one with a sterling marketing program and the other with superb organizational smarts.  After trying out their model for more than a year, they found organizational weaknesses in the marketing branch, and marketing weaknesses within the other organization.  Because of the size and needs of each organization, permanently moving employees around was not a feasible solution.  How did they resolve the problem?  They trafficked organizational smarts to one organization, and marketing smarts to the other.  The 300 mile distance between branches was surmountable.  In doing so, their willingness to pursue unique solutions was indicative of an entrepreneurial spirit and resulted not only a solution to a problem, but eventually to a more financially profitable organization.

One of the things we know about entrepreneurs is that they are good "noticers."  As Shellenbarger says, they notice "unmet needs and imagine ways to fulfill them."  A Gallup survey released last week, found that "more than 60% of 1,100 employees and managers say entrepreneurial attitudes are important for workers of all kinds."

President Obama like President Bush has touted entrepreneurialism as the "tonic our economy needs."  In the 21st century, nearly all professionals will need to add entrepreneurialism to their toolkit.  Like adaptability, entrepreneurialism is grown, not born.

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