The Role of Adaptability and Reinvention

A few years back, an engineer at SONY predicted that music CDs would eventually disappear, rendering the SONY Discman unusable. This was due to the rapid advancements in the internet and information storage and transmission. This is commonplace now, but imagine 10 years ago.

Word has it, the engineer suggested a switch to a device that would store and reproduce music, rather than a device that would depend on external means of storing data like discs and the like. SONY executives ignored him claiming that the switch would be too costly and that it went against Morita-san's original vision of the Walkman. Poor guy. And then came the Ipod and the rest is history....

The point here is that adaptability, reinvention, innovation and vision should be at the core of a company's development. I think the same of our career lives. Adapt and grow or risk stagnation. 

I previously mentioned the Adverting Age article Reinvention, Not Just for the New Year by Darryl Ohrt.  Darryl suggests innovating and revisiting various aspects of the company quarterly or biannually.  I suggest regularly revisiting the following points to avoid career stagnation:

Your brand: How are you seen by others or portray yourself within the organization?
Your operations: How can you innovate in your day-to-day activities to further improve?
Your role in the organization:  What other roles can you play to further contribute?
Your network:  How solid and updated is your professional network?


What can you adapt or re-invent to spice up your work?

Reinventing Rather Than Resolving

The first week of the year has gone by.  We're into a new decade and what a decade the last was. Have you kept up with those resolutions?  You may have started off  the year trying to lose weight and make up for the lack of exercise over the holidays.  By the way, my gym was deserted last week and packed today.  I knew it.

I would presume that most of the resolutions you made are either now history or will become a thing of the past in the coming days.  To give you the benefit of the doubt, let's say your resolutions like mine spread over the year rather than come alive by year end and die at the beginning of the new year.

I came across a great article on Adverting Age:  Reinvention, Not Just for the New Year by Darryl Ohrt. The article is aimed at small advertising agencies with the suggestion to revisit their brand, operations, employee relations and social  media presence every quarter, rather than annually in view of the drastic changes in social communication and the economic climate we now live in.

Darryl suggests ditching the resolutions and annual plans and going with clear conscientious revision and reinvention of these key aspects of the company.  The world as we knew it in 2007 or 2008 is no more, especially in the area of job estability and employment, so I would also suggest that we apply the same advise to our professional goals, ditch the resolutions and annual plans and take a more regular and proactive approach to our work lives.  More on that to come.

Forget New Year's Resolutions

It's that time of the year again: Celebration, gift giving, partying and well-wishing. All very well intended and deserved. Then, we are confronted with the reality of the reading on the meter below our feet and the prospect of going back to work after yet another holiday that came and went without us even noticing (or so we say).

But we can always come up with New Year's Resolutions to feel better after all the eating and drinking and lazing around during the holidays. I do not want to sound negative, but NYRs end up being just that, wishes made out of guilt or feeling that making a promise we will probably not follow through with will make us feel better, at least for a while. Where will the resolutions be by January 20th or so? Forgotten maybe?

Instead of New Year's Resolutions, we should identify, schedule and execute quarterly goals, even bi-annual and yearly goals made out of true resolution and objective planning, not guilt. Simple example: You should make it a point of updating your resume at by the end of every quarter to record achievements and successes (not just before applying for a job..which usually happens when you desperately need to....the worst timing ever). Have the discipline to schedule the 'Update Resume' task on your calendar and actually sit down and do it. Ask a friend or 'resume buddy' to work on his/hers with you and exchange feedback and views.

A resolution is just an empty promise if it lacks continuity and a clear plan or schedule for completion. Build accountability and support around any goal you set for yourself.

Thank you for your support this year and may 2010 be full of new challenges.

Follow your Heart and Intuition

I have heard terrible things about Steve Jobs. I have actually met a couple of people who worked with him closely at Apple HQ. They both agreed that, with his bad temper and mood swings, he could give anyone a heart attack....rumor has it he actually did. Regardless of his flaws, his contribution to the world of business and technology is undeniable. My Ipod and I are truly inseparable.

I came across this video of his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address. This is a guy who never finished college and chose to follow his intuition to achieve his dreams. Fired from his own company and having defeated cancer, he came back swinging and stronger than ever. It has been said many times and probably at every commencement speech, yet here is a living example of someone who followed whose gut feeling told him where to go to achieve success.



My next installment: Why New Year's Resolutions Don't Usually Work

The Road Not Taken

I majored in English and education at uni. As an English major, writing and reading filled my days. Having had to read hundreds of books and literary pieces, one of the pieces of writing that really inspired me and that has become my mantra was a short poem by Robert Frost called The Road Not Taken.

The Road Not Taken (also known as The Road Less Traveled) describes a traveler that coming to a fork on the road, had to make a decision as to whether to go right or left, one way or the other, choice A or B, sort of speak. The traveler decides to go where less had gone, the least traveled road. Years later, he or she remembers that having gone where others had not made a much greater difference. The deduction here is that that crucial decision proved more challenging, fulfilling and ultimately rewarding.

In your career or life mission, what if the road less traveled? What less explored route, idea, experiment or challenge could you try today that will make a difference in your working life?

The poem:

Predictability: Blessing or Curse?

Marissa Mayer is the Vice President of Search Products & User Experience at Google. She said in a recent CNBC documentary on the company that what enticed her to join Google (she was the 20th employee to be hired out of the current 20,000) was the every day challenge of doing something she was not prepared to do.

You get ready to go to the office, get there and, the whole time, on the back of your mind you probably know what 90% the day is going to be like. Your day, your week, your month, quarter or even your year may be filled with predictability, certainty and fixed routines. A day may be pretty much a carbon copy of the next.

What Marissa meant is not that she was not prepared to do the job, but that, Google, as probably one of the most ground breaking companies ever, set the stage for her to have days filled with challenges and unpredictability. This may be encouraging to some and equally disturbing to others, especially the type of people who need to know what they are having for dinner next Thursday night. I know a few people like this. I`m sure you do, too.

Indeed, there has to be some kind of structure: Meetings, reporting and the like and some big picture type frame work to guide us daily toward a goal, be it key performance indicators, quarterly goals or budgets to meet regardless of what your day looks like. We do not want chaos. The Google headquarters in California have pool tables, a gym, a cafeteria, a swimming pool and even a place where employees can drop off their laundry...they don`t even need to go home. Yet no employee escapes the ultimate goal or the reason for them to be there in the first place: To produce quality products and services that will generate a profit.

Simple advice: Find new ways of doing things for better results. Locate that one activity that, if you did a bit differently, may give you better and bigger results.

Self Proficiency

Dave Olson Ulrich, author of “The Leadership Code: Five Rules to Lead By,” has been ranked as the #1 management educator and guru by NewsWeek magazine. He touches on some of the points I have covered earlier in the blog.

In a recent Harvard Business Ideacast, Dave talks about 5 key proficiencies of a leader or manager. Listening to his advice, I realize that these qualities not only apply to leaders, but also to all professionals regardless of the type of work we do or position we hold in our organizations. I also realize this applies to those looking to make a transition or already in the process of changing jobs or careers.

According to Dave, as your job pressures increase and the business world gets even tougher, especially now, it is essential that we work to improve our self proficiency with focus on 5 areas. Here they are briefly:

1.Physical: Take care of yourself! Watch your nutrition, exercise and get enough sleep. Feel better.

2.Social: Build a network of friends or professional contracts, people you can rely on. Have a best friend at work (and of course outside work as well). It’s not just about you and your job.

3. Emotional: Know your strengths and weaknesses, what motivates you or drives you. Be willing to work on weak areas, keep and further grow key skills.

4.Intellectual: Develop your capacity to learn. Be curious about the world. Analyze what has worked for you in the past and what hasn’t. Get better.

5.Spiritual: Find meaning in your work, your mission or purpose in life. This is not necessarily about religion (could be if you practice a religion), but spirituality and the intangible, the bigger picture.

Any thoughts? I will leave it here and just invite you to think about what you are doing to improve in each of these areas.