The old school method of job progression is dead for two reasons:<ul><li>Job security is dead, no more staying at the one company forever.</li><li>The internet and technology has created the means for much more flexible work styles.</li></ul>

The Death Of Job Security

Entrepreneurship is like dating – failures are unavoidable and are a part of learning. What matters most is resilience.If the pursuit of a risky dream imparts useful business skills along the journey, then even in the worst case, the pursuer ends up learning useful skills.

That Risky Dream

<ul><li>Street smarts & practice, where you’ve learned it “in the real world” and know how to apply it. Only learned by doing it.</li><li>Theoretical, abstract knowledge you get from books and school that doesn’t have a tie to your experience and the real world. Harder to apply.</li></ul>

Two Kinds Of Knowledge

Impact requires venturing into the unknown (whose risk most people avoid) and leadership (which acts as a multiplier of impact).Four steps:<ul><li>Get financial stability: Get rid of debts, and have some savings.</li><li>Create room for experimentation: Figure out a job schedule which allows for experimentation</li><li>Begin experimentation: Use money from step 1 to experiment around (while keeping the source of money around)</li><li>Strike out on your own: Either as a part of the current organization or on your own, follow the direction set by a successful experiment from step 3</li></ul>

Making An Impact: On Your Own

Two powerful questions for making connections and providing value to people:<ul><li>What’s most exciting for you right now in your life/ business?</li><li>What’s challenging for you in your life/ business right now?</li></ul>

The Two Questions

Great networking is not about the back-and-forth, it’s about giving with no expectation of anything in return.There are two basic ways to find great connections<ul><li>Find people with great future potential and help them in reaching their goal</li><li>Add some value to the life of someone who is already established (common areas being personal finance, relationships, health, hobbies, and causes or a specialized skill which could be of use to the receiver) or connect them to someone where a connection could create a win-win potential for both parties</li></ul>

Making Worthwhile Connections

The general perception of marketing is that it’s sleazy and manipulative, the reality is that good marketing is making your potential customers know about you (or your company).A lot of businesses fail because they are not able to reach out to the right customers.

Marketing: Don't Let Your Company Remain Obscure

People don’t talk about the best-writing author; they talk about the best-selling author.

<ul><li>One can get better at a particular craft but being able to sell oneself is equally important (successful people in a craft are not always the best individuals of that craft).</li><li>Success is a skill – it consists of the skill of marketing, the skill of sales and skill of leadership.</li><li>Sales are about knowing what customer needs and if you have a good solution/product, offering it.</li><li>Leadership is about being able to influence (not manipulate) people not control them.</li></ul>

Sales As A Leadership Skill

Learning as an adult: Adults need a reason to learn something, they are involved in planning as well as evaluation, more interested in subjects having immediate relevance, more interest in problem-oriented (as oppose to content-oriented), and prefer more self-directed education (as oppose to taught).

Investing for Success: Learning

Your brand is what people think about when they hear your name.One should have a website under his/her name to establish the brand.<a href="http://scobleizer.com/">Robert Scoble</a> started blogging when there were ~200 blogs in the world. Worked in NEC sales dept, eventually hired by Microsoft and that did not go well. Currently, working as the public face of Rackspace. His biggest credential being able to build his professional presence at the right time.

Building Your Brand

<ul><li>An entrepreneurial mindset focuses on contribution, outcome and moves towards big decisions even without authority.</li><li>The employee mindset, on the other hand, focuses on entitlement, output, and turns away even from small decisions.</li><li>Entrepreneurs see current circumstances as temporary, but employees seem them as permanent.</li></ul>

Entrepreneurial vs. Employee Mindset

Entrepreneurial mindset people carve out their path as oppose to working on the path carved out by someone else.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9sar_Ritz">Caesar Ritz</a> started as a waiter, but he looked at himself in a waiter role, as a transitional point, to hotel manager one day.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Marx">Louis Marx</a> fought hard with his employer (Ferdinand Strauss) to shut down the retail business and focus solely on toy manufacturing. He failed, so, he left and started his own company (Louis Marx and Company) which became the largest toy manufacturer in 1920s.

Work Yourself Out Of Your Job, To Take A Bigger Role

Move out of that bad job and do something on our own.

Some of the smartest, most successful people in the country didn’t finish college. None of them learned their most critical skills at an institution of higher education. And like them, most of what you’ll need to learn to be successful you’ll have to learn on your own, outside of school. Michael Ellsberg set out to fill in the missing pieces by interviewing a wide range of millionaires and billionaires who don’t have college de­grees, including fashion magnate Russell Simmons and Facebook found­ing president Sean Parker. This book is your guide to developing practical success skills in the real world: how to find great mentors, build a world-class network, make your work meaningful (and your meaning work), build the brand of you, and more. Learning these skills is a necessary addition to any education, whether you’re a high school dropout or graduate of Harvard Law School.

Stashed ideas

The Education of Millionaires

Relationships are where a lot of our business and personal connections are formed and fostered, and they are an integral part of our growth. However, by learning how to best utilize your podcast's platform and following, you will observe just how much of a networking and connection-building vehicle your podcast can be for you and your business.

Building A Professional Network

<ul><li>Podcasting is a less formal method of establishing brand presence and credibility with other influential industry leaders.</li><li>Your podcast itself can be utilized as a gateway for additional networking opportunities.</li><li>Review your content as frequently as possible to ensure its quality, credibility and integrity.</li></ul>

Networking and Podcasting Go Hand-In-Hand

The underlying goal of podcasting is to connect with other professionals. Once that connection is made, both parties can find mutually beneficial ways to help each other (and your businesses) grow.One way to bring each other value is to have each other as guests on the other's podcast, if both parties have a podcast platform.

Unlocking Opportunities Through Podcast Networking

<ul>
<li>Being straightforwardly transparent and honest with your connections is just as important as it is with your audience of listeners</li>
<li>People are more likely to pay attention to your brand and content if they know you are genuine</li>
<li>Vulnerability is a key factor in establishing rapport with your network</li>
<li>Achieving this will create more impactful, engaging content for your listeners as well as further opportunities to network in the future</li>
</ul>

Building Rapport Supports Your Professional Growth

How to use your podcast to build your credibility and your brand.

Networking Through Podcasting: The Key to Professional Growth

In a study,  Angela Duckworth, psychology professor and author of Grit,  found that SAT or ACT scores can not reliably determine grit. What did work was a "Grit Scale" that included statements such as "I finish whatever I begin" and “setbacks don’t discourage me."

Measuring persistence

Duckworth argues that grit - perseverance and exclusive pursuit of a single passion - is severely underrated. Grit can be developed and is as important as IQ in predicting educational success. What differentiates high performers is mostly how they process feelings of frustration, disappointment or boredom. While others take these signals to cut their losses and move on, high performers have been conditioned to believe that struggle is not something to worry about. Instead, it is more important to delay the quitting point.

Grit can be developed

On the surface, people think effort is more important than talent. Employers say they value industriousness more than intelligence in an employee. But deep down, they hold opposite views. Studies show people prefer a "natural" over a "striver". This bias has practical implications.  “If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all,” Michelangelo observed. It suggests that grit is essential, but it is not attractive.

The natural bias

When successful people keep their practice hidden, it can be costly to society because it obscures the amount of failure that goes into success. We only see the final products.  When we experience messy frustration, we are too eager to believe we don’t have what it takes and give up.

Hidden practice is costly

Directional consistency, the ability to stick unswervingly to a single, superordinate goal over a period of years is perhaps not the best approach in an economy where career paths can twist or even disappear over a short period. However, we need some direction to get anywhere. Even if are forced to switch paths, that also requires grit.

Grit is needed to get somewhere

The downsides of dogged, single-minded persistence

Is Grit Overrated?

At the peak of the pandemic, businesses and leaders saw it as a huge inflection point, a great opportunity for individuals to redefine strategies, workplaces, teams, and social contracts. But what they are afraid of is that, after this great opportunity, people will crawl out of the rubble and go back to old ways of working that frankly, hadn’t been working for us for decades.This time is your opportunity to learn from your peers. This is your opportunity to open up your curiosity, and make sure that you, your team, and your organization never goes back to work, but only goes forward.

Never go "back" to work; go forward to work

There were two myths of collaboration prior to the pandemic. One myth was that all collaboration starts with a meeting. And the other was that the more people you get involved in collaboration, the slower the decision-making. But that is just not true.In fact, we can utilize simple, high-return practices of asynchronous collaboration.That’s the most powerful takeaway from hybrid work: Instead of sticking to our old ways of synchronous meeting and collaboration, we can use a valuable new set of underutilized tools.

Collaboration starts before the meeting

In the olden days, mental and physical well-being were dealt with as individuals, sometimes shamefully in the shadows.But at the peak of the pandemic, we saw more vulnerability. We saw more openness. And with that, we saw more bonding and team cohesiveness.

Resilience is a team sport

Add a five-minute agenda item to your team meeting - the “foresight five minutes.” Before a meeting, everybody has been designated to come to that five minutes with a distinct way of looking at the world.One individual or group is looking at the world relative to competitive threats. Another one is looking at the world relative to technological changes and customer changes and macroeconomic policies and then the question is asked, “What risks and opportunities do we need to potentially move into an analysis meeting?”

Foresight is crowdsourced 

Today, we have to negotiate very clear outcomes-based weekly sprints of our work.What are each of us and each of our teams going to do this week? And then you allow empowerment during that week to achieve as much as they can achieve. And then a standup at the end of the week determines, what did we do? Where did we struggle, and where are we going for the next week? There’s a negotiation among the team to make sure that everyone is aligned, and off we go.

Move from "Crisis agile" to agile as your primary operating system

Insights that will allow you to compete in the future of work

Most of us would prefer to think long-term about our careers, rather than just veering randomly to snag perceived opportunities and avoid pitfalls. But how can you adopt a strategic lens when you might not be entirely sure where you want to end up? Four strategies:<ul><li>Start by figuring out what you don’t want. </li><li>Pick one direction as your “provisional hypothesis” for where you want your career to go.</li><li>Double down on foundational skills and knowledge that will make you better, no matter what direction you ultimately decide to pursue. </li><li>Take stock of your emotional and mental energy. </li></ul>

Your Long Term Career Progress: Key Takeaways

One of the most important elements in thinking strategically about your career is understanding that our lives operate in cycles — or “thinking in waves” — and we have to recognize where we are in that process.

Thinking In Waves

Get clear on what you don’t want, and then take steps to avoid that. It’s much easier to identify things you know you dislike, rather than ideating about a hypothetical future.For instance, you might decide you never want to work for a micromanaging boss again, or you’re done with your current industry, or you no longer want to work hands-on and only want to take on advisory roles. Those are extremely useful pieces of data pointing towards what you do want By asking: How can I make sure I avoid these things in the future?, you can follow the resultant path that unfolds.

Decide What You Don’t Want

We all know it’s impossible to do everything at once. And yet it’s hard to resist the lure of <a href="https://hbr.org/2020/01/dont-bog-yourself-down-with-too-many-goals">too many goals</a>. Instead, we need to get disciplined and narrow down our focus. Think about how you can narrow down your options (by focusing on what you don’t want) and then pick one direction as your “provisional hypothesis” for where you want your career to go. You can always change your mind later, but you’ve made an informed choice and will be strategically working toward a plausible goal.

Develop Provisional Hypotheses

focus on the professional equivalent of basic research and double down on foundational skills and knowledge that will make you better, no matter what direction you ultimately decide to pursue. Learning to code in a particular computer language may not be helpful if you decide to leave engineering — but becoming a better public speaker or honing your time management skills are likely to be useful in almost any profession.

Make Progress on The Basics

You may have been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/well/mind/covid-mental-health-languishing.html">languishing</a> during the pandemic, but now feel ready to shake off the torpor and dive into new projects with zeal. Or you may have spent the past two years working at the outer edges of your limits, just trying to keep everything together. If that’s the case, this probably isn’t the moment to go all in at work. Instead, you may need to <a href="https://hbr.org/2007/10/manage-your-energy-not-your-time">manage your energy</a> and recognize that the best thing you can do for your long-term career success is to take a well-deserved break.

Take Stock of Your Emotional and Mental Energy

Short-term pressures always intrude on our long-term career planning, and that’s especially true when we’ve been through a collective period of crisis. Even if we’re not entirely sure where we want to end up, by following these strategies, we can ensure we’re taking the right steps to move away from what isn’t working for us, and toward a future that seems more hopeful.

The Bottom Line

Even when you aren’t entirely sure where you want to end up.

How to Make Progress on Your Long-Term Career Goals

<ul><li>Scrum is the dominant Agile framework.</li><li> Kanban is a method for visualizing, managing, and continually improving a process' ability to deliver a service. </li><li>Metrics provide actionable feedback to guide Agile teams.</li><li>User stories shift the focus from writing requirements to addressing customer needs. </li><li>Product development must become customer-centric. </li><li>Test-first practices ensure that application developers build the right software the first time. </li><li>A key tenet of agility is that practitioners be open to learning new skills.</li></ul>

Core skills

<ul><li>In collaborative development, more than one team member works on a single feature or application at any given time. </li><li>Ownership and collaboration. Workstyle, attitude, and interactions with others impact success as much as any technical or professional skill. </li><li>Agile architecture. Traditional approaches to software architecture do not support an Agile development life cycle.</li></ul>

Value-added skills

<ul><li>Agile database management. Agile teams quickly find that database changes become a constraint that limits velocity. To increase the speed of delivery, cultivate database management skills to become more self-sufficient and reduce dependence on database administrators.</li><li>Scaling Agile. Expanding the validated success of Agile pilots to the broader enterprise is both challenging and rewarding for organizations. </li></ul>

Specialized/emerging skills

As agile adoption spreads, software and application developers need these skills to succeed.

12 Agile Skills for Software Developers

People have defined themselves through their labour for centuries—think of surnames such as Baker, Brewer, Potter, and Weaver that spell out a person’s profession. But Americans’ work and identities intertwine particularly tightly, thanks to the country’s <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/puritans-american-society/398138/">industrious Puritan roots</a> and capitalist ethos. There is a sudden mental adjustment that so many people taking part in the “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/great-resignation-accelerating/620382/">Great Resignation</a>” have had to make:More and more Americans are realizing that voluntarily leaving your job today isn’t always just about securing a better lifestyle; it’s also about the redefinition of self.

We Are What We Do

The idea that our society is a meritocracy is also hammered into us from childhood. It’s common to believe that making our job a central component of our identity is noble because it’s sure to lead to some great payoff. So even though the coronavirus pandemic upended people’s lives and changed their priorities, the idea that an individual’s worth is tied to their productivity remains deeply ingrained in many of us.

The Job Is The Center Of Our Universe

Though the maxim goes that finding a job you love means you’ll never work a day in your life, the past two years have unearthed a counterpoint: Devotion to an employer is often a one-sided romance.In many industries, the pandemic revealed just how transactional the workplace is, and how hollow and fickle the relationship is.

Your Employer Does Not Love You Like You Do

Many people who participated in the Great Resignation have the capacity to be a friend who says yes to weeknight plans, a present partner to their fiancé, and a son or daughter who checks in with their mom regularly. These people can have thoughts on their own that have nothing to do with work and are no longer just careerists.

Not Just A Careerist

That a job doesn’t have to be a defining feature of your personality—or even a passion—is a new mindset for many Americans.The Great Resignation is not a complete rejection of work. For many, it’s about redefining themselves as people first instead of workers. As Americans discern that their job title isn’t the most central part of their identity, smart employers will realize they need to give more space to employees to develop other parts of themselves and develop other parts of their lives that they’ve been sacrificing for so long.

The New American Identity

The “Great Resignation” isn’t really about rejecting work—it’s about redefining one’s sense of self.The people who have found new fulfillment outside their career remind us that tectonic change in American society begins with individuals realigning their life to reflect their deepest values.

From Individual To Universal

The “Great Resignation” isn’t really about rejecting work—it’s about redefining one’s sense of self.

What You Find When You Leave Your Job

Professional young athletes expect their talents to taper off in their early adulthood, and many prepare for a second career in advance. Musicians are similar and often find that their abilities decline over time. Studies found that knowledge-based professions, such as lawyers, financial professionals, doctors, also decline between their late thirties and early 50s. Startups favour the young, between 21 and 34. This is called the fluid intelligence curve. However, the better people perform, the steeper the decline. The more attached they are to their success, the harder its loss hits them.

The striver's curse

The decline is not all past 40. Certain abilities grow during middle age that favour wisdom, teaching, and sharing ideas. Language skills tend to increase. Moving on to a second intelligence curve means people should take on a teaching or mentoring mindset in the field they're in. For those willing to make the jump, the reward is huge.

Finding a new calling

You know it's time to look for the second curve when you don't enjoy your work as much as before: <ul><li>You feel your competence declining.</li><li>Others close to you notice you're not as sharp as you used to be.</li><li>Other people receive the social and professional attention you are used to.</li><li>You have to decrease your workload.</li><li>People you meet don't recognise you or your previous work</li><li>You feel like no one.</li></ul> Moving toward the second curve:<ul><li>Evaluate and improve relationships. You'll be good at that.</li><li>Don't wish for something better, work for what you want.</li><li>Value and hire for wisdom in the C-suite and on boards.</li></ul>

A roadmap to the second curve

Ageing isn't all bad news. In some specific ways, you'll get smarter and more skilful. The trick to improve is understanding, developing, and practising your new strength. <ul><li>As people age, their vocabulary and grammar increase. They are better Scrabble players and can do well in foreign languages.</li><li>With age, people become better at combining and using complex ideas. They may not be that good at coming up with new inventions, but they get much better at expressing and interpreting existing ideas to others.</li></ul>

Understanding the second curve

People possess two types of intelligence. <ul><li>Fluid intelligence is the ability to reason, think flexibly, and solve problems. You learn quickly, focus on what matters and create solutions but can't maintain this as you age.</li><li>Crystallised intelligence relies on a stock of knowledge. It increases through middle adulthood and does not diminish until very late in life.</li></ul> If your career relies only on fluid intelligence, it will peak and decline early. But a career that requires crystallised intelligence will find that decline happens much later. If you can go from one to the other, you will thrive.

Defeating the striver's curse with two intelligences

Letting go of past glory can pave the way for life's "second curve."

The second half of your life could be better than the first. Really. In the book From Strength to Strength, Arthur Brooks shows how letting go of past glory can open the possibilities of life's "second curve."

When Working Harder Doesn’t Work, Time to Reinvent Your Career

It’s okay to think of your job as “just a job.” It’s still important to do it well, but there’s no harm in thinking of it the way the dictionary does:<ul><li>“a regular remunerative position”;</li><li>“something that has to be done,” like grocery shopping or filling up your car’s gas tank;</li><li>or “something done for private advantage.”</li></ul>The point is, a job is just a job: an exchange of your labour for your employer’s cold, hard cash. But it’s also something that you can use to your advantage to help you further your personal goals.

It's Just A Job

If your work provides resources for learning and development, use them.<ul><li>Learn skills that will increase your pay.</li><li>Learn skills for personal fulfilment.</li><li>Learn skills to switch roles. Find someone at work who has the role that you want, and reach out to them to learn more.</li></ul>

Use Your Job to Learn New Skills

If your employer provides benefits, max them out as much as possible. Whatever form they take, you’ve earned them. If a store clerk was giving you $5 in change, would you refuse that?Sometimes those benefits might not be flashy, but you can still use them to your advantage. It could be a free meal offered by your company or some allocated budget to upgrade your wi-fi.

Use Your Job For The Benefits Package

When you spend 40 hours a week with other humans, you’re bound to develop some kind of relationship with one or more of them (hopefully positive ones?). You don’t have to be interested in becoming lifelong friends with your coworkers, but there’s at least value in networking with them.

Use Your Job To Build Relationships

I like my job, but it doesn't define who I am. As much fun as fussing over words can be, technical writing is not my passion.. And that's ok.

My job is ‘just a job’ — and that’s totally fine

Do a little soul-searching into what’s not working about your situation. Understanding what’s great, awful, and so-so about your current job might give you some ideas on how to fix things, but it can also help you avoid ending up right back where you started—in a whole new job you don’t love either. Maybe you’ll realize jumping ship is the right option, but you might also uncover a way to feel more excited about the job you already have. Plus, if you do end up giving notice, you’ll get clarity on what to look for in your next opportunity.

That Feeling Of Wanting To Leave

Either your pay is below industry standard, or you’re getting a reasonable wage, but it’s not sufficient for your goals. Both scenarios are equally important, but require a different approach.If you aren’t being compensated fairly, you deserve a raise whether you’re planning to leave or not. But if the industry standard simply isn’t cutting it, you may want to weigh your options a little more carefully. Either way, you may be able to make better money without leaving your job.

The Money You Get Paid

People don’t quit jobs, they quit managers. Poor experiences with management (and colleagues) are the #1 reason people quit their jobs. Work is about relationships, and together, those relationships create the culture and environment of your workplace. Your working experience is shaped both by your direct interactions with others, and the broader policies (for example, around remote work or time off) that organize them. Don’t readily assume quitting is your only option. Whatever the source of the problem, you may be able to resolve it without jumping ship entirely.

Work Environment Challenges

If you don’t care about what you’re working towards, you’ll have trouble staying engaged. That doesn’t make you lazy or ungrateful, it makes you human! Research shows that people perform better when they feel connected to their purpose at work.  If your company isn’t open and communicative about its vision and goals for the future, it’s easy to feel like just another cog in the machine. Forward-thinking companies include everyone in their mission and dreams because they know it will help people do their best work!

Purpose And Values Misalignment

You’re right to feel like you need to move forward—in today’s labour market, in-demand jobs (and the skills we need to do them) change more quickly than ever before. That makes learning, development, and professional advancement more important than ever. If you’re unsatisfied even though you’re growing and performing well, it’s worth asking yourself if the job is taking you in the direction you want to go.Work isn’t just about the daily grind, it’s about where you’re going. If you feel stuck, unchallenged, or like you’re not honing your skills, you’re probably considering quitting your job.

Lack Of Growth And Opportunity

Before you write a resignation letter to your supervisor, assess whether the issue is something you could address or resolve. Whatever the problem, it’s almost certainly worth an honest conversation about your needs, and whether your role can meet them. On the other hand, if there are multiple compounding issues behind your desire to find a new job, it might be wise to start looking. While good managers will often try to work things out, there’s only so much they can do—if you need better pay, a sense of purpose, and to escape toxic culture, you may actually just want a new job.

Getting Clarity On Your Decision Of Leaving

If your concerns are financial, it’s worth explaining that you need to prioritize earning more, or that your pay isn’t representative of your skillset in your industry. You likely have more leverage than you think—depending on your specialization, it can cost anywhere <a href="https://www.simplybenefits.ca/blog/employee-retention-what-is-the-true-cost-of-losing-an-employee">from 30% to 400%</a> of your salary to replace you.

Options: Financial Concerns

If it’s the work environment that’s the issue, that can be raised as well. Obviously, don’t tell your manager you despise their management style—even after you give your notice, that’s needlessly burning a bridge, and insulting someone’s abilities could even trigger a defensive reaction. Instead, keep an eye out for internal opportunities, or try asking to work on a different project or team. If it’s a harsh policy (like no flexibility on working remotely) that’s the issue, you can always explain your reasoning and ask for an exception. The worst your boss can do is say no.

Options: Work Environment

If you’re looking to find growth and meaning, or get connected with your organization’s values, exciting internal opportunities might be another good thing to try. Just make sure people know you’re looking for them, and what your goals are! Your job might even have extra budget allocated for education, to help you evolve in a direction that matters to you.

Options: Growth and Purpose

The only constant is change—especially in our careers. Learn how to identify the signs of whether or not it's time for your next career move.

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Lucy
@lucy_d

The Education of Millionaires

Networking Through Podcasting: The Key to Professional Growth

Is Grit Overrated?

Insights that will allow you to compete in the future of work

How to Make Progress on Your Long-Term Career Goals

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

Lucy @lucy_d

The Education of Millionaires

Networking Through Podcasting: The Key to Professional Growth

Is Grit Overrated?

Insights that will allow you to compete in the future of work

How to Make Progress on Your Long-Term Career Goals

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Lucy
@lucy_d