Category Archives: Career Development

Finding purpose through self-reflection

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We hear a lot about “finding your purpose” these days, whether it’s to develop a personal career plan, or to validate a business idea. My colleague Carolyn Tate, founder of the Slow School of Business, spoke on “purpose” at the recent Huddle Design Fest drawing on her TEDx talk for Telstra entitled “Profit on Purpose”. During her presentation, Carolyn referenced the Japanese concept of 生き甲斐 (“ikigai” = “a reason for being”) which is sometimes represented in the following diagram:

Ikigai-EN-optimized-PNG

“Finding the purpose of your life”. Graphic representation by @emmyzen (Emmy van Deurzen). Image sourced from Wikimedia Commons

Variations on this theme include, for example, the work of Lianne Bridges and Susan Biali. Earlier, more prosaic, interpretations might be found in the work of Richard N. Bolles (“What Colour is Your Parachute?”) or Spencer Johnson (“Who Moved My Cheese?”).

What it all boils down to is connecting with your values and interests, and finding a balance between what motivates you, what rewards you, what you can contribute, and what people want from you.

For me, a the starting point is developing a personal narrative, to understand how you have arrived at this particular point in your life and/or career, in particular your influences, achievements, challenges, experiences and insights. Through this self-reflection, some common themes should emerge that can form of the basis of defining your own purpose. This should include your core values, the things that are important to you, and your own particular passion.

Where I may differ in my interpretation of “purpose” is that I believe that our purpose can change over time. I don’t see purpose as singular or even linear – it’s multi-dimensional, dynamic, situational and contextual. Our needs and our circumstances don’t stay the same. Likewise, our relationships and the the external environment are constantly changing. So our purpose will likewise be different at different points in our life. For example:

  • Early in our career we may be technically qualified, but without relevant experience we may not be able to command the most senior roles or the highest pay – so our purpose may be to hone our skills and knowledge
  • Later, we may find that our focus on things like marriage, children and a mortgage means we may be willing to get well-paid for work that we don’t actually enjoy – someone I was coaching recently stated that “I’m caught in a job” which was preventing him from pursuing his passion (thankfully, he has since decided to pursue a portfolio of interests, rather than stick with a single job he no longer enjoys)
  • During the “third act” of our career, financial or material rewards may not be so important, but we still need to be engaged in work that we enjoy, that motivates us and which can still sustain us at more than just a basic level of food and shelter
  • Throughout, I think it is essential to keep connected to our true passions (especially creative outlets), in part to provide a counterbalance to work/financial/external imperatives, in part to explore alternative ideas, find linkages between our other interests, and even to connect with new technology – for example, in my own case, my interest in electronic music has led me to recording an album using iOS devices, releasing it via social media sites Soundcloud and Bandcamp, getting it broadcast on the ABC, and beta-testing new music apps

When working with clients to help them re-connect with their business or their career purpose, I like to do an audit of where they are now, and where they could be in 3-5 years time. Through a process of exploring what might be possible, and reframing the present to re-position it for future growth and development, we can discover ways to regain balance by prioritising what’s important, reconfigure or even abandon what isn’t working, and re-establish goals and objectives.

While it is important to strike a balance between the “four pillars” of the ikigai model, my experience is that rarely will all four be in equilibrium – at times they may even be in conflict with one another, or at least in a state of flux. But it’s the resulting points of friction, when we look at them objectively, that can be the source of ideas, context, clarity and resolution. Making time for regular self-reflection enhances our pursuit of purpose, and allows us to take stock of our current situation, without undermining our core values or abandoning our particular interests.

Next week: Challenging Monocultures via Crop Rotation

#StartupVic launches new-look #pitch event

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The team at Startup Victoria have been working hard over the summer: not only have they brought on a whole bunch of new commercial sponsors, but they have also launched a new format for their pitch nights. The idea is to invite startup founders to register their interest in pitching to a panel of judges. The contestants get the opportunity to compete in front of a live audience, for a chance to win face time with local VC’s, along with some other startup goodies.

global_446720634It’s not Shark Tank (there’s no hard cash on offer), nor is it an open mic night (there is a pre-screening and audition process) – but it does enable entrepreneurs to test their pitch, get some early exposure, and receive some great feedback and advice. It also doesn’t matter what stage the startups are at, although businesses that already have some market traction or have built and tested an MVP are probably in a better position to compete.

The launch night saw pitches from four startups, who are at various stages of development. In no particular order they were:

Ad Hoc Media with Passenger Pad, a digital Out Of Home advertising medium for taxis, using interactive touch screens inside the cab. To date, there has been a low take-up rate of this technology by the taxi industry in Australia, mainly due to regulatory issues, but the landscape is changing. With a background in taxi electronics and hardware, the founders are about to launch with 400 taxis in Melbourne, and plan to expand to other cities. There is no doubt that using a combination of passenger, location and fare data (duration, time of day, pick-up and drop-off points), the screens will be able to offer brands and their media buyers targeted audiences and in-depth customer analytics. The challenge will be to offer advertisers a competitive rate card, especially as this is essentially a new medium: it offers viewer choice like TV, can serve up targeted content like web or mobile, and is ideal for special offers linked to location and time of day.

Global Patient Portal offers a free platform for e-health records. Having already launched in Kolkata, India with 40,000 users signed up in 11 weeks, GPP is aiming at lower socio-economic communities and emerging markets. The initial business goal is simple: to support ownership of e-health records by users. Using a combination of bootstrapping and NGO funding, GPP has been able to hire a team of “scribes” in India who sit in on patient consultations and capture the medical notes, which can then be referred to at the next consultation. (Currently, a lot of time and resource is wasted because patient records are captured on paper, which is easily lost once the patient leaves the clinic.) Commercial revenue will come from selling anonymized patient data (subject to legal compliance, privacy obligations and data accuracy) for research and policy planning purposes. In choosing to launch in Kolkata, GPP was aware that in some more affluent urban communities in India, the favoured means of patient communication is WhatsApp?, so they would be less likely to adopt a separate platform. Also, in Australia, having talked to GPs about the various government attempts to establish the e-health system for patient records, I am aware of a reluctance within the medical profession to buy in to the scheme: first, there is no financial incentive for them to capture patient data via a common e-health platform; second, why would they want to share patient data with their competitors?

prevyou is aiming to disrupt a large part of the recruitment and job ad market, by directly connecting students with job opportunities at SMEs. The two-sided market effectively crowdsources available jobs from SMEs, who typically do not have access to the hiring market or to full-time and dedicated HR resources. The goal is to streamline the hiring process, and to offer a mix of standard and premium services (e.g., video resumes, applicant screening, skills matching, personality profiling etc.) and later to add validation of applicant credentials and qualifications. In return, the business will take a commission once a job has been offered and/or candidate hired. While the focus is initially on capturing the market for casual and part-time jobs, the judges urged them to look at the enterprise HR market (under an outsourcing or white label model?). Looking ahead, there is the opportunity include student internships (although, like the legal issues with Year 10 work experience, internships and placements present additional challenges such as achieving student learning outcomes and other employment law issues).

OurHome is an app to help families manage, share and track household chores, so that children learn to take some responsibility around the house, and they can get rewarded for their contribution. It emerged out of an earlier app, Fairshare, that was aimed at shared houses. Apparently, people living in shared houses don’t care enough about whose turn it is to clean the bathroom, or are happy with paper charts and lists on the fridge door. Describing itself as “an integral household tool with indirect network effects (i.e., like Google, not Facebook)”, OurHome also claims to be the #1 chores app. Using advanced algorithms, and other features such as customisation and Dropbox integration, the app also introduces an element of gamification through rewards (intrinsic and extrinsic). For busy families, it replaces those fridge notes and task charts (although, as the judges noted, there’s no calendar yet). Of particular interest is the very positive feedback the team have had from families who have children with ADD.

Despite a few technical glitches (concerning mics and audio quality), the first new-look pitch night was a success, and Global Patient Portal won the on-line audience vote. I was luck enough to meet with one of the teams a few days later. They thought it was a useful experience, but they hadn’t quite known what to expect, and they had anticipated more of a grilling from the judges and tougher questions from the audience.

Next week: More In The Moment

 

 

 

It’s never too late to change….

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Few things annoy me more than when someone in their late 20’s or early 30’s says: “I’m stuck in my job, and I can’t do anything about it.” My immediate reaction is to shout, “No you’re not, and yes you can!” But I stop myself, and ask instead, “What’s stopping you from making a change?” Usually, there is a mental blockage, and an inability to think outside or beyond the immediate situation. In turn, this is often linked to a distorted perspective about how they got to where they are, coupled with unreasonable (and therefore, unrealised) expectations.

Sculpture, Ueno Park, Tokyo (Photo © Rory Manchee, all rights reserved)

” A new perspective?” (Ueno Park, Tokyo – Photo © Rory Manchee, all rights reserved)

Helping my clients to identify the barriers in their way (in particular any deeply entrenched obstacles), and to explore ways to dismantle or overcome them usually leads to alternatives: a new job opportunity, a potential career transition or a new business direction. It may not be an easy or comfortable process, but it’s not impossible. At its heart is the need for self-awareness, the willingness to embrace change, and the commitment to making it happen.

“See You At The Barricades”

Here are some of the initial objections I hear when people say they can’t make a career change or transition:

  • Financial security
  • Lack of time
  • No access to resources
  • No idea what to do next, where to look, how to plan
  • Enjoy the job, but not the organisation (or vice versa)
  • This is the only work they know, or studied/trained for
  • Non-transferable skills or inadequate training

My usual response is to get them to re-contextualize. It’s rather like using cognitive behaviour therapy, to reframe the situation. “How could you look at this differently?”, “What if you did this?”, “Who could help you overcome that?”, “What would be the ideal situation?”.

“Money’s Too Tight To Mention”

I understand that financial insecurity can be a major cause for concern. The certainty of a regular salary (even if you hate the job) can be preferable to taking a pay cut for a more rewarding role, or having to forego immediate financial return during a period of retraining or re-skilling. But if you are only doing a job because of the money, the likelihood is that you may never be entirely happy in your role, you may come to resent the work you do, and eventually you may lose sight of what is important to you. Plus, the knock-on effect on your personal well-being and that of your family can be significant. After all, no job has a lifetime warranty or even a 2-year guarantee, so the paycheck will probably run out anyway.

“Time Is On My Side”

Even if your financial circumstances or apparent lack of time mean that you can’t leave your current job or explore other options without securing a comparable income in another role, there are several ways to prepare for a career transition:

  • Re-train in your own-time – use on-line courses, evening classes and weekend workshops to access new skills and education
  • Ask your current organisation about options for study leave or flexible work hours
  • Suggest a personal development plan that draws on existing resources – e.g., shadow another colleague, or do a rotation or secondment to another team or department
  • Workers in some industries or older employees may be able to access public funding to support retraining and re-skilling
  • Use your annual leave to intern or volunteer at an organisation where you might like to work in the future

“Possibly Maybe”

There are many new opportunities for personal development through short courses, skill sharing or peer-to-peer platforms, and alternative learning paths to re-connect with your purpose. It might even be possible to reconfigure or restructure your current role to better suit your needs. Besides, the job you were originally hired for (or the industry and/or the career you trained for) has probably changed significantly; if you are not doing some regular re-engineering, you risk being confined to outdated thinking or processes, or worse, becoming obsolete.

“This Is Your Big Opportunity”

In fact, you have an obligation to yourself to invest in your own career, by re-training, updating your skills, or embarking on new challenges. Increasingly, organisations expect employees to take personal responsibility for self-managing their career, their professional development and to maintain the technical currency of their skills. Even better if you can demonstrate that learning a new skill can support innovation, generate efficiency gains, or deliver customer benefits. There are increasing examples where collaboration, co-creation and cross-pollination of ideas, skills and people between organisations and their suppliers/vendors/clients/distributors can have mutual outcomes, and employers are looking for people who can identify these opportunities.

“This Is The Way”

From personal experience, curiosity, pro-active networking, asking questions and generally taking an interest in what is going on in and around the organisation and wider world can reap huge rewards. In my own case, having a sense of enquiry prompted a transfer from London to Hong Kong to open a new Asian office for the company I worked for. Earlier in my career, I took evening classes so I could transition from a role in the public sector to a new career in publishing. And I continue to find new learning opportunities through meetups, hackathons and startup pitch nights, and attending workshops on innovation, collaboration, design thinking and technology.

I’ve written previously about the changing economic relationship of employment, because it’s incumbent on all of us to learn resilience and adaptability. We have a duty to equip ourselves in order to cope with and prepare for the continuous change and volatility we are all experiencing in the nature of the work we do.

Finally, for anyone who says they are “too old to change”, consider this: I recently met a man in his 60s, who had retired from a lifelong career in teaching, quickly got bored, and so he went back to college and is now a licensed horse trainer. He gets up earlier than he used to as a teacher, but he has connected with a passion and made it his career choice.

Declaration of Interest: I am a member of the Slow School of Business Advisory Council, which delivers Slow Coaching and Talk on Purpose

Next week: ANZ’s new CEO on #FinTech, CX and #digital disruption

Technology vs The Human Factor

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Several times over the past month I have been reminded that the pursuit of technology for its own sake can give rise to misguided innovation; so-called solutions that are divorced from real world problems cannot justify the effort or resources. It feels like we are entering a new phase of the post-industrial revolution era, where a lack of “the human touch” will render many new inventions as worthless, irrelevant or redundant.

Street scultpure, Nagoya. Photo © Rory Manchee (all rights reserved)

Street sculpture, Nagoya. Photo © Rory Manchee (all rights reserved)

In no particular order:

  • At the second Above All Human conference in Melbourne, there was a consistent theme: how do we make sure there is a real connection between human needs and bleeding edge technology?
  • A Slow School of Business excursion to an eco-friendly homestead in rural Victoria offered a practical lesson on how to create harmony between technology and nature, and still achieve a modern (but modest), highly personal and comfortable home.
  • The economic debate about whether technology is improving our standard of living (as reported in the latest CPA magazine), which also echoes a recent CEDA report on automation and the implications for job losses.
  • A Q&A with Shayne Elliott, the new CEO of ANZ Bank, which prompted the observation that big data analytics, process automation and digital disruption are all very well, but will prove meaningless unless they can improve the customer experience. (But Elliott also conceded that the likes of Uber and Airbnb have succeeded because of complacency among industry incumbents.)

Advances in technology don’t have to lead us to the dystopian worlds of “Modern Times” or “Metropolis” (or any of the other post-apocalyptic visions that cinema and literature like to give us). However, the understandable focus on innovation must take the “human factor” into greater account when making design decisions, undertaking cost-benefit analysis and opting for one technology format over another.

Conclusion? It’s not totally clear whether we are entering another dot.com market correction, but there is a case to be made for whether or not we are seeing enough of a “technology dividend” from the current digital disruption and economic displacement centred on the use of cloud, social and mobile platforms; and whether we need a new methodology to measure the impact of the Internet of Things, robotics, AI, nano-technology, AR/VR, cognitive apps, wearables, 3-D printing, etc.

Next week: It’s never too late to change….