An exercise in seeing and self-reflection
What follows is a highly self-indulgent post. You have been warned.
Since the beginning of the year, I have spent most of my waking hours thinking about the future of organisations, and how to better integrate innovation and adaptiveness into their fabric of being. This interest stems from two sources: Firstly, I have been consulting and coaching organisations especially in the area of Experimentation-Driven Innovation for the past two years. Secondly, when I was doing research on how to manage uncertainty in innovative projects, I stumbled on the concept of complex adaptive systems, which fundamentally changed the way I see organisations.
This different way of seeing and thinking about organisations presents a huge opportunity. The 20th century management practice effectively treats organisations as mechanistic systems – an approach that is both outdated and ill-suited to today's fast-changing business environments. Just consider how much waste can be found in information flows and organisational practices, such as meetings, decision-making, budgeting, talent management, etc.
Complexity (not complicatedness) is not that easy concept to grasp, especially if your belief system is firmly rooted in the mechanistic Newtonian/Cartesian worldview. Yet it is an essential principle for successfully integrating the exploitation of existing business opportunities to the exploration of new ones – a characteristic that long-lasting organisations have in common, and one that seems notoriously difficult to reach.
As I am currently on the lookout for a new job opportunity (while also to developing my own consultancy and expertise in these areas), it occurred to me that I should try to communicate better what I mean by organisation design and innovation management. Although I treat these as separate topics, there is significant overlap because an organisation that is not designed to innovate is also not likely to survive in the long-term.
What started from an attempt to visualise these two focus areas and the topics that fall under them (and in which I have expertise), turned into a deeper exercise in self-reflection and how I see myself. Because of this I decided to write this blog post, and perhaps encourage you to try it as well.
What follows is the mind map of me.
Front-End
These are the things I talked about above. This is how I see myself creating value. There are the two main focus areas (Innovation Management, Organisation Design), and more specific concepts, topics and practical approaches that guide my thinking and doing. The hands-on work in both areas comes down mostly to consulting, facilitating, coaching, training, speaking and writing.
Back-End
These are the things that work beneath the surface and enable me to create value in the world. You can think of the Front-End stuff being about creating outcomes, and Back-End stuff about the sustained ability to do so.
At first I wanted to divide this section into two areas: physical performance and mental performance, but that would have been somewhat contrived. There is no clear dividing barrier between the two. Take sleep for example. It is a physical activity with significant impact on both physical andmental performance. Same goes with exercise and nutrition, although to a somewhat lesser degree.
This is why I ended up calling these three things the essentials. If one of them is not in order, everything else will suffer as a result. This is also about more than just recognising their importance. I have spent hundreds of hours studying the three and their relation to overall health, and as a result profoundly changed my life.
Thinking habits are activities that help especially in the mental performance -side of things. You can consider them as exercise for the mind. Reading nonfiction is something I have been doing for years. If you are what you eat, then your thinking would be what you read. Books are tremendously valuable in challenging and expanding your mental models of the world.
The two other practices in this category are meditation and journaling (a form of reflection). My main inspiration for both has been Josh Waitzkin, who is a top-end performance coach, and vouches for their importance. Granted, these are somewhat new parts in my daily routine, but they have become sticky enough during the past few months that I dare to present them here.
Lastly, there are certain principles I try to adhere to, and given my knowledge of them warrant mentioning. I am definitely an advocate of the human performance aspects that stem from positive psychology. To me philosophy is largely about morality, ethics, contentment and living a good life. In this area I am particularly drawn to the practical aspects of Stoic writings.
Balance and effortless productivity are somewhat unspecific, but nonetheless important things that I want to try to keep in mind. The former is more about life in general and being wary of single-mindedness, whereas the latter is about trying to be more aware of my energy levels and clarity of thinking. Getting more things done without inner resistance.
Misc
There are things that have a meaningful role in my life, but which are not really related to the created value or outcomes, nor to the internal processes. When it comes to relaxing, I enjoy watching quality movies and tv shows with my wife, playing games - not just for fun, but also tactically to improve productivity – seeing friends, reading fiction and listening to music. One big thing that usually results in peak life experiences is traveling (which I forgot to put to the mind map). Photography is another one.
Then there are the networks that I am actively in touch with. I was prompted to open them up in the picture, because frankly put they play a huge multi-faceted role in life, and are increasing in importance as the boundaries between traditional groups and segregation of activities are disappearing.
I was wondering if I should also have a section here called IT, considering that I'm pretty handy with anything related to computers. On top of that, there are more specific knowledge areas such as my expertise in SAP User Rights Management, image manipulation, Wordpress, and HTML, CSS and Swift programming languages. But then again, I cannot really see how these would play a large role in the areas where I feel I can create the most value.
What do you think? Do you feel like you understand who I am a little better now? Or was this, as I warned in the beginning, nothing but self-indulgent mumbo-jumbo? For me the greatest value was not in listing the individual items, but in categorising them. This is where insights were born. Especially when it comes to balancing the Back-End and Front-End activities.
How would your "me map" look like if you made one? Please let me know in the comments.
Maybe pursuing a career is not such a good idea after all
In an earlier post I wrote about the distinctions between a job, a career, and a calling. In any given profession it is possible to find people evenly distributed among the three different classifications.
To summarise, if you see your work as a job, your focus is on financial rewards and necessity rather than pleasure or fulfilment. A job in itself is unlikely a major positive part of your life. If you consider yourself having a career, you are focused on advancement and what comes with it: power over others, status, higher paycheck, and other similar benefits. A calling, on the other hand, is characterised by work that you consider socially useful, and derive enjoyment and fulfilment from. (1)
In this post I want to focus specifically on the notion of careers. Open up Brazen Careerist - a website aimed at 20-somethings and recent graduates looking for career advice - and you see headlines like "Why Success Can be Dangerous for Your Career," "Careers That Work Best If You Have Multiple Passions," "Is Gen Y Delusional About How to Have a Successful Career," "Why Being Selfish is the Best Way to Get Ahead in Your Career" etc.
If the website is to be believed, having a career is something good, something we all should aspire to. But why? I mean really; why should you concentrate on building a career in the first place?
The way I see it, a career is means to an end. Or at least it should be. But many people I know have turned their careers into end goals. They have bought into the notion that success and happiness in life is related to their ranking in an arbitrary man-made hierarchy: a CEO is better than a vice-president, a vice-president is better than a general manager, a general manager is better than a department lead, and so on. Not to forget that the one with the most toys in the end wins.
When you are single-mindedly focused on your career, the things that are more likely to actually make life worth living become secondary. Epicurus identified friendship, freedom (from the whims and requirements posed on us by others and the norms of the society), and thought (analysed life) to be the pillars of a life well lived. There are no luxuries or prestigious positions in that list: "...expensive objects can feel like plausible solutions to needs we don't understand. Objects mimic in material dimension what we require in psychological one. ... We buy a cashmere cardigan as a substitute for the counsel of friends." (2)
Now some 2200 years after the times of Epicurus, the positive psychology movement has come up with scientific evidence of what makes people flourish. The list includes things such as involvement in flow activities, experiencing mental pleasures, experiencing renewable physical pleasures, close social relationships, pursuing goals that are intrinsically motivated, and using and growing one's character strengths. (3, 4)
These are not exactly new findings. Many of the questions concerning how to live a good life have been answered hundreds of years ago. What the scientific method is giving us now is validation. For example, the last two items on the above list can be traced all the way back to Aristotle, according to whom true happiness was identifying one's virtues, cultivating them, and living in accordance with them. (5)
Advancement is an integral part in career-thinking. If you are not moving forward, you do not have a career. Most companies are pretty decent at estimating how well you can handle a higher-level job before giving you a promotion, but only you can tell whether or not you will actually enjoy it. It is not rare to hear of people who could have moved forward in their careers, but realised that it would come at a cost in their happiness. Pursuing a career is not the same as pursuing life satisfaction or subjective well-being, and we should stop pretending it is.
My intent with this article is not to say that all careers are automatically bad, but to get you question your assumptions about what a career is and why you should pursue one. It can be a source of great satisfaction, but also a source of great distress. To make it the former rather than the latter, it should be in accordance to the aspects of living a good life. Here are some helpful questions:
Do you feel in flow (the state where you are so immersed in what you do that you lose sense of time, and even yourself) at work? How often?
How often do you get positive feelings at work, compared to negative ones? The ratio should not be less than 3 positive feelings for each negative one, and the higher the better.
Are you close with your coworkers? Do you also cultivate friendship outside the workplace?
Are you able to use your strengths and pursue your interests in your work?
Lastly, there is ample evidence showing that those who enjoy extraordinary career success are usually the people who derive great life satisfaction from the work they do: "They willfully migrate toward positions that fit their natural strengths and passions and where they can work with people they like and respect." (6) Overall psychological well-being has been found to be much better predictor of job performance than job satisfaction, and one should also consider the groundbreaking study lead by Sonja Lyubomirsky that showed that in the long-term, career success follows from happiness and well-being, but success alone is not enough to cause lasting happiness. (7, 8)
References:
(1) Wrzesniewski, A., McCauley, C. R., Rozin, P, & Schwartz, B. (1997). Jobs, Careers, and Callings: People's Relations to Their Work. Journal of Research in Personality, Vol. 31, 21-33.
(2) de Botton, Alain (2000) The Consolations of Philosophy. Penguin Books.
(3) Diener, Ed (2000). Subjective Well-Being: The Science of Happiness and a Proposal for a National Index. American Psychologist, Vol. 55, No. 1, 34-43.
(4) Hodges, T. D., & Clifton, D. O. (2004). Strengths-Based Development in Practice. In: Linley, P. A., Joseph, S., & Seligman, M. E. P., ed. (2004). Positive Psychology in Practice. Wiley, 1 edition. Ch. 16.
(5) Peterson, Christopher (2006). A Primer in Positive Psychology. [Kindle edition] Oxford University Press.
(6) Citrin, J. M., & Smith, R. A. (2003). The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers. [Kindle edition] Crown Business; 1 edition.
(7) Wright, Thomas A., Cropanzano, R. (2000). Psychological Well-Being and Job Satisfaction as Predictors of Job Performance. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Vol. 5, No. 1, 84-94.
(8) Lyubomirsky, S., King, L., & Diener, E. (2005). The benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happiness lead to success? Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 131, No. 6, 803– 855.
Who controls your life?
This is a topic I have been wanting to write about for a long time, but it has been difficult to gather my thoughts and more importantly find the resolve required. Perhaps because this is something that makes me want to scream inside. Here goes.
Do you feel unhappy about some aspect of your life? Not in the perfect relationship you dreamt about when you were young, but hey the guy/girl you've settled with is not that bad. Maybe you drift through workdays in a state of semi-consciousness, hoping to lay low enough not to raise any unwanted attention while browsing celebrity gossip sites. Sure, it's not the job you wanted. Not even the profession you secretly desired, but your parents got you convinced that you'd be better off studying law instead of breeding miniature pigs. One day you realize that those love handles are starting to really show, but what's a girl to do? After all, you spend good 4-5 hours a week on a treadmill in the local gym and always eat your vegetables.
Guess what, no one is going to solve those problems for you, or otherwise change your life for the better.
Step 1
You have to take complete no-bullshit no-excuses ownership of who you are and where you are in your life. You have to man up. Not happy with the job? It's your fault, your responsibility. You've made some bad decisions. Not happy with your guy? Nor the ones before him? You have bad taste. Your fault. Always turning off the lights when having sex because you don't want him to see you naked? Your body, your fault, your responsibility.
You cannot change your life and fix things unless you are ready to take full, absolute, complete responsibility of your actions. The past and future ones alike. What you need is naked honesty. Because only by going through this necessary step will you be able to truly own your problems. Ownership leads to control, and control means you can finally start changing things.
I cannot stress enough the importance of this part. Stop. The. Fucking. Excuses. You don't eat Ben & Jerry's in evenings, slouched in front of the tv, because "it was a hard day at work." You eat that shit because you choose to do so. Relationships, jobs, friends etc., they are all choices. If you are not satisfied with something, it's time to choose again. If you are not the one who controls what those choices are, then who does? If you are not the one living your life, then who is? How can you call yourself a free individual if you won't accept the responsibility that comes with freedom?
You can take control of your life if you want to, but before that you need to take responsibility of every single aspect of it; all the decisions, actions, and their outcomes. No one else can do that for you. To imagine otherwise is to be a puppet, a subject to other people's machinations. Do you think the company you work for has your best interests in mind? Or your spouse? Or your parents? Fuck no. They may believe so and even get you convinced, but they are not you. They can't possibly know what it's like to wake up in your skin every day, or what really goes on inside your head.
Step 2
Start making some decisions. After you have accepted raw, unfiltered, naked responsibility, it's time to identify what you want to change. What aspect of your life is in most desperate need of improvement? Don't try to do everything at once. This is big stuff, so it's better to proceed one issue at a time.
After you've acquired your target, you need to decide how to tackle it. What will you start doing differently?
Don't like your job? Start scouting for a new one, but this time actually spend some time figuring out what your heart desires to do. Unhappy in your relationship? You have two options: you can leave, or you can work on it and see if it can be turned into a happy one. What doesn't work is sitting on your ass and expecting things to change on their own. Or repeat doing the same things that got you where you are now. This is about taking responsibility of your life, remember? And if you indeed eat your vegetables and spend 4-5 hours a week on a treadmill but are not getting the results you want, your method is obviously not working. As Einstein said; "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Step 3
Do your research. I have to admit that this step might be something that is more suited to a geek like me. However, I have found it to be extremely effective in multiple domains. What it means is that instead of making just any decision, you strive to make an informed one. Not sure what you want to do for a living? Read a couple career guides, find out what your Myers-Briggs personality type is, and see if you can identify what your values are (you know, things like integrity, learning, love, joy, honesty etc. that guide your behaviour in both conscious and unconscious level).
I was never able to lose weight following the "eat less exercise more" adage, but after I eliminated sugar and grains from my diet and started lifting weights instead of spending endless hours doing cardio on the "fat burning zone", I got in the best shape of my life in a matter of months. This probably would not have happened unless I had started questioning my assumptions and studying nutrition and exercise more in detail.
Change tends to be difficult as it is. Don't make it more difficult by using inferior methods.
Step 4
Act. Decisions alone are worth nothing unless they are followed by actual changes in your behaviour. This won't be easy. The single best book I have read about the topic is Switch by Chip and Dan Heath. Read it if you are serious about improving your life. Nevertheless, here is a quick summary about how to improve the odds of succeeding in a behaviour change.
Make sure you really understand what your goal is, and more importantly why you want to achieve it. Is your goal really to hit the gym 4 times a week, or is there a deeper goal, e.g. the desire to lose weight, and you simply assume that going to the gym is the best strategy for achieving that goal? The goal should also be your own. Not something someone else tells you should do. Change is easier when you know where you're going and why it's worth it.
Knowing something isn't enough to make change happen. Every single person knows that smoking is unhealthy, stupid, and pointless, yet they keep doing it. What you need is a catalyst that propels the change forward. This is not something you know or learn, but something you feel. Try to find the feeling that keeps you motivated to change.
In most cases it is easier to break down the change into small steps, and tackle one step at a time. This builds momentum and confidence that you can actually achieve what you set out to do. Want to eat healthier? Don't overhaul your entire diet at once, but start by fixing your breakfast. After it has become a routine and takes no conscious effort, move on to the lunch, and so on.*
Behaviour is largely environmental. We see something that triggers a familiar thought process and we act automatically. The more often we repeat a behaviour, the more ingrained it becomes. For example, if you often buy some last-minute candy at a check-out counter in the local grocery, the script for that behaviour gets triggered every time you are at a check-out counter, and it takes willpower to overcome it. Willpower, as we know, is a limited resource and when it gets depleted the impulses take over. The trick is to tweak your environment in such a manner that it prevents undesired behaviour while supporting desired ones. Eating healthy is a lot easier when you don't have cupboards full of beer, candy, cookies, and chips. Even small environmental changes can have a surprisingly large effect.
One way to create a trigger for the desired behaviour is to determine beforehand when, where, and how you will behave in the new way: "When I am in the coffee shop, sitting opposite to my date, I will smile a lot and be genuinely interested about his life. I will also listen to everything he says, giving my complete attention." Visualising yourself behaving in a situation has a similar effect on your brain than if you actually did it in real life. This will make the desired behaviour more natural, familiar, and easier to trigger when the actual situation occurs.
* As I said, this works in most cases. If, for example, you have a gluten intolerance this kind of approach is just going to keep you feeling miserable. Sometimes a zero-tolerance approach is a necessity.
In the end, you decide. Do you want to cruise through your days more or less on an autopilot, as a bystander to whom life just happens, or do you have the guts to take control of it? Let me know in the comments.
How to find your calling
One of my oldest friends turned 30 last weekend. As a happy coincidence, I met more than a few people in the birthday party who I have known for a long time, but haven't seen in person for years. We are all in our late 20s, and one thing kept coming up again and again as we talked: almost everyone had changed - or was thinking of changing - the direction of their life.
A guy I hadn't met in eight years had graduated with a Master's Degree from a technical university, only to find out that working in front of a computer was not really suited for him. Now he is in medical school with a year and a half to go. Another friend had been doing odd jobs, even graduated as an electrician, but is now studying fish industry in a university.
I have a similar story. I spent 5 years (give or take, as some of that was part-time) as an IT consultant at Accenture, despite realizing after the first year or so that working on enterprise IT systems is not really what I would consider my calling. I didn't even know what my calling was, just that it wasn't IT. And by calling I mean what I find interesting enough to be intrinsically motivated to do in the long-term, preferably for a living.
It took me years to find something to do that I am genuinely excited about. The important point is, though, that I did not just stumble on it. I was purposefully searching for it and keeping my eyes open for anything that might hint me to the right direction.
I am a reader, so reading became my method of discovery. As I was trying to find out what it is that I want to do, I read career guides. I read books on personal development. I read books on business, entrepreneurship, philosophy... And I started to discover certain themes that interest me. I could not pinpoint one particular thing or profession I wanted to do, but I was able to identify elements that an ideal profession should largely consist of.
Some of these elements came from what I was reading and fascinated about, and some from my past experiences. For example, I don't know why, but I am genuinely interested in the human aspects of business; organizational cultures, workplace dynamics, and entrepreneurship. I love to learn and get bored easily when the learning, or growth, stops. I get excited when I have a chance to speak in public, and doing something creative makes me feel alive.
During the process of discovery I also forayed into some entirely different directions. After having a minor role in the Korean TV drama Athena, and knowing my interest in photography, I entertained the possibility of making my way into film industry. However, before making any huge life-decisions I bought some books on cinematography, directing, and screenwriting to get an idea of what working in the film industry would be like. I still find certain aspects of it interesting, but eventually I decided it is not the best fit for me. I came to similar conclusions about designing videogames. Although, as a byproduct of learning more about how games work, I have become very much interested in gamification; especially how game mechanics could be used in management and business contexts.
One guy who was in the same class with me in elementary school told me in the party that he had been training to become a machinist. However, what he really wanted to do was to work with computers, and was trying to get into a university to study programming. The thing is though, as I explained to him, that in all but few cases you actually need a degree to do something. If programming is what you want to do, then what are you waiting for? You don't need to study it in a university in order to get a permission to do it. If that's what you really want, then search online for some programming tutorials and just start learning. Start a personal project that helps you learn and keeps you motivated, and just start doing.
As it is uncertain that my friend will get into the university, and considering the classes won't start until fall, I asked him to imagine if he'd spend just couple hours every day learning to program. How much he would already know after a month, 6 months, a year..? He would have something as a proof of his skills and something concrete that would help him land a job.
Assuming of course that he actually wants to do what he told me. Maybe he is still somewhat uncertain. In that case getting into a university and graduating four years later into a wrong profession is a huge price to pay. A price that could have been avoided by experimenting the work beforehand. You can do this kind of experimentation as a purely mental exercise, visualizing different aspects of the work. Or even better, you can actually "simulate" the work - in this case by sitting in front of a computer and actually doing some programming.
There seems to be this quest that calls for many of my generation; we are trying to discover where our talents and interests meet, and how to make a living of it. For me it took over three years of active searching and in the end the answer was nothing I would have expected it to be. All I had was hope that someday I will find it, and the knowledge that at least I am constantly doing something about it, instead of just sitting on my ass hoping for something to happen.
No one else can figure out the answer for you. It is your life and your responsibility.
Create a calling, not a career
You can either have a job, a career, or a calling.
Fifty years ago a job would have been fine. You sell your time to an enterprise and get compensation for it. You can then spend the money in activities outside the workplace and find enjoyment and meaning for your life there.
For some it is not enough to have a job. They want a career. And by definition a career is something that is fluid. If it starts to stagnate it's not a career anymore. Career and rat race are synonymous. They are both characterized by the endless pursuit of increased pay, prestige, status, and advancement within the corporate hierarchy. If you try to find meaning for your life through a career, it only works as long as you can do better than the people you compare yourself against. Good luck with that.
Then there is a calling. You work for the sake of fulfillment that the work itself brings. You are not after financial rewards or a promotion, but instead find meaning in the actual work itself. In the daily grind. In getting your hands dirty. In doing the work.
If you have a job, it is nothing but a means to an end. A way to make money. A career might make you more engaged with the work you do, but only as long as you are able to achieve the rewards, positions, power and status that may or may not come. There can only be so many people at the upper levels of a pyramid.
But if you have a calling, then the actual work itself is enriching and meaningful. It becomes your main focus instead of leisure or relationships outside the office.
The empowering thing is that at least to some extent you can create this meaning yourself. You can turn a job or a career into a calling. Think of a doctor who memorizes the names of every patient and shows care by paying them personal visits in the ward even when it's not required. Or a manager who takes a different subordinate for a lunch every day to give some individual coaching.
A calling is not a job description. It is a deeper meaning that people can find or create, and then proceed to do despite what the job description says. It is a bout making a larger contribution to the wider world. A world that exists outside specific job roles, to-do lists or performance goals.
It is your job to turn work into a calling - if you so choose - but it is the job of the organization to support this behavior. It can either respond to it in positive ways, creating more possibilities, or inhibit such actions from occurring in the future.
And why wouldn't an organization support it? There is scientific evidence that groups with more people who consider their work a calling perform better in multiple aspects, and even increase the performance of other individuals for whom the work necessarily is not a calling.
So what of groups where the majority consists of career-oriented people? The results are a complete opposite. Something to consider the next time you decide what kind of people to hire.