I am sure you completed the sentence and read it as:
Every cloud has a silver lining.
That’s how I would do it.
But I had an “Aha Moment” earlier this month. January 2nd was my 40th birthday. I had mixed feelings about it – mainly because Kavitha and Sumukh were away in India. It didn’t seem like the day was complete without them. The day was salvaged a bit because of a few close friends and I am thankful for them.
Rajesh: Welcome to the big four o. Have a wonderful day and year ahead.
With the mood I was in, this was my response:
Thanks Karthik. I tried to tell GOD to push that out a bit but he wouldn’t listen So, I can see the cloud of 40, I just have to find the silver lining
So far so good but the Aha-Moment came when my friend Kathy McManis Holzapfel (aka Cate Noble) added to the conversation and said:
God said to tell you she always listens And she’s got wondrous things planned for you…things she needed you to be older and wiser for. Oh, she also hinted that your lining might be gold. Ha! And there you were looking for silver.
Happy birthday, my friend. Remember: 50 is the new 30, so at 40 you’re practically a teenager.
God bless Kathy. Those were kind words and most importantly, I needed to hear them right there and then.
Suddenly, “every cloud has a silver lining” seemed like trapped in a box. Once in the box, there was no way for me to be thinking outside of it.
In other words, every cloud may have a golden lining is totally “out of the box” and I could not see it.
I wrote a while ago, that you are always in a boxing game. People want to “box” you whether you want it or not. If that is happening anyway, why not do something to help them “box” you right – for example, creating a compelling elevator pitch for yourself?
Now you need it. More than ever. People have only a tiny bit of attention span for what you are saying. What they hear have to meet their “filtering criteria” to make them decide to give “more attention” to what you will say next.
As a first step, you can start with creating a six-word memoir for yourself. Since most of you may not be at an age where you write memoirs, imagine yourself sometime in the future and think about what your six-word memoir should be. Mine is here (after multiple attempts) and there is no guarantee that this will stay what it is. But the the journey to reach there was fulfilling in itself.
Everyone needs an elevator pitch. I was at a coffee store at Calistoga (north of San Francisco) and saw their elevator pitch right on their wall.
This year, make it a point to create an elevator pitch for yourself. As I said earlier, the process of creating one will provide you with rewards (knowing more about yourself) along the way.
We are obsessed about measuring everything. We want to know the number o connections, number of followers, number of pageviews, number of minutes someone spends on our website, number of clickthroughs, number of times the shopping cart was abandoned, number of repeat visitors, number of new visitors.. and the list goes on.
Sometimes we forget that most of what we measure is means to an end and not the end itself.
Sometimes we forget that many things we should focus on cannot be measured with any scale (caring, love, joy, happiness, compassion etc.)
Sometimes we forget that we are in a rat race where everyone including the winner loses.
Sometimes we forget that we forget to see the forest for the trees. We want to improve on the metrics for the sake of improving on the metrics.
Sometimes we forget to measure the amount of time we spend being obsessed with measuring the metrics.
Measuring the wrong things is like running fast in the wrong direction.
End of the year is a great time to stop, reflect and think about what are the metrics that really matter most to you.
I have created a ONE PAGE self-asessment checklist called “Metrics That Matter for 2010.” You can download it by clicking on image to the left or the download button below. No registration required. You are, of course, welcome to modify this by adding your own questions.
Although it’s only one page and you can skim through that page in less than a minute, my request is not to rush through it. Reflect on each question for the last two years and make a promise to yourself about that number for 2010. Good luck with the exercise.
Bonus: Send this blog post or the PDF to one or more people that you care and help them create an year that they will remember for the rest of their lives.
Bonus 2: If you are in an organization and would like to explore a version that will suit the corporate world, please reach out to me to discuss further.
Dan Pink talked about the rise of the free agent nation a few years ago. While the trend is in full force, the majority of people opt to work for companies (small to large) and for a foreseeable future that is going to remain the same.
Stages of Career Growth
The stages were simple:
Stage 1: Fairy Tale
The first few years of employment where everything goes. You can be a cog in the wheel and survive. You will get a raise every year. The raise is a function of pure market reality and less about your performance and contribution. It is almost like a ritual for companies to give a customary raise for everyone.
You are at the bottom of the pyramid. This is typically where the company gets the highest leverage. The company is looking for efficiency here. If you can get the commodity work efficiently, you are golden for the company.
Stage 2: Skirmish
You cooperate and compete. You cooperate with your team members but you also have to compete with them to get into one of the slots in the next stage. Remember that there are far fewer slots in the next stage than you can imagine. These slots are opened either because of the company growth or because some people in the next group have moved on.
You are at the next level in the pyramid. Your goal is to extract maximum leverage from the people at the bottom of the pyramid. You are the chosen one for that job and the more you can get out of them, the better you are.
Stage 3: Street Fight
These are tough times for anyone who has not worked on distinguishing themselves. The slots in the next stage are far fewer than you can imagine. You have to show to your employer (and whoever matters) that you are “special” and not “one among the crowd.” In simple terms, you should clearly not part of the commodity crowd.
Stage 4: Combat
This is where you compete for even fewer slots available on the top. You need skills (e.g: dealing with office politics, uncommon influence, charisma) beyond what is in the job description. These skills, unfortunately, cannot be developed overnight. There is no contest for you with someone who has built these skills over the years.
I have taken the first two decades of your career. The larger the company, the more levels there are.
What has changed today?
Outsourcing, Open Source, Globalization, Free Agents and other such trends are eating the commodity layer of the pyramid. There are too many options to get the commodity work done. If you are part of the commodity layer, you are in trouble now or you will soon be in trouble.
The experience you gain from doing commodity work is no longer considered “experience” as the organization can get this experience from anywhere.
You are not competing just with your colleagues but from commodity crowd everywhere in the world. Remember that elsewhere in the world, an equivalent of minimum wage here is “good money” so they will happily compete with you.
Your option is to just ignore this trend or wake up now and do something about it.
If you didn’t get the notice, the fairy tale of engaging in commodity work has ended forever.
What can you do in 2010?
Here are a few suggestions:
1. If you are engaged in commodity work, get it redefined and walk the extra mile to build on skills that won’t fall into the commodity category.
4. Check if you are being overcompensated for commodity work. That is a catch-22 situation. You can’t leave because nobody outside will match the salary. If you stay, you will become a vegetable.
6. Remember that even if you are employed by a market leader, your career is your responsibility. Nobody but you can take responsibility for where you are going.
7. Lastly look back at your entire life. What is the best year so far? Now fast forward 20 years to 2030. What should you do in 2010 so that when you look back at this year you consider this the best year of your life?
I am sure you have seen many smart people around you who are reluctant to share what they know.
I have seen many of them up close.
You might think the reasons for this may be:
they don’t have time
they are selfish
they don’t care
they don’t have an incentive to do it
I was perplexed on this and over the last six weeks I spent some time talking to many of these smart people to understand what could be the reason. The results were very interesting. The rest of the article is based on those findings.
Note: This is about smart people who are not sharing enough. So please don’t generalize this about all smart people.
In summary,
Smart people want to give their best and as they learn more, they learn that they need to learn a lot more before they start sharing. They learn some more and they learn they need to learn some more. What they forget is that most of the expertise that they already have is either becoming “obvious” to them or better yet, going into their “background thinking.”
Becoming obvious means that there is nothing special about it.
Becoming their background thinking means that they don’t even realize that it’s knowledge. It becomes part of them. For example think about alphabets and multiplication tables. It is in our background thinking and we don’t think about that as knowledge.
Take a look at the following schematic. On the X-axis is time as they build their expertise. On the Y-axis, is the level of expertise.
Think about your own passionate topic on which you are an expert.
(A) You start at level 1. Things are new and exciting and since you are passionate you just realize how much you don’t know and there is a new level of hunger for the knowledge.
(B) You are in level 2. You are at a new level of expertise. The earlier level (Level 1) seems obvious and common.
(C) You are in level 3. You are again at a new level of expertise. The immediate previous level (Level 2) knowledge is now obvious and common. The levels below that (in this case Level 1) is in your background thinking. Remember that what’s in your background thinking is almost invisible to you. You have that knowledge but you don’t think about it.
(D) You are in level 4 – a new level of expertise. Level 3 knowledge is obvious and everything below that is in your “background thinking.”
You can go on. You feel that you are not ready to share the knowledge at your current level and there is no point in sharing what’s obvious. And, what’s in your “background thinking” has become part of you. So it’s invisible so there is no possibility of sharing that.
So, what are you missing?
Two things:
1. The point that what is obvious to you is not obvious to many other people who are not at the same level of expertise so it is worth sharing them.
2. Not noticing what’s in your “background thinking.” It may be in your background thinking but it’s not in the background thinking of everyone else. So, once you notice this, you can easily package this knowledge and share it.
Request for you: Please make it a point to share more in 2010. Only if smart people start sharing more can we increase the signal-to-noise ratio on the web.
No, I am not talking about the gift that you want to receive.
I am talking about the gift that you can give.
Yes, that too at almost no cost.
Think about it..
If you can write online, you have the capacity to give a gift.
If you can talk to someone on a phone, you have the capacity to give a gift.
If you can talk to someone, you have the capacity to give a gift.
The good part is – in giving that gift, you give a gift to yourself.
I am talking about the gift of sharing what you are learning.
You are learning something almost everyday. There are hundreds of millions out there who for no fault of theirs ( for example, the place of birth can influence the fate of millions ) don’t have that privilege of either learning or getting an opportunity to share what they learn.
The gift that you have, if you noticed it is the ability to give another gift – the gift of sharing your learning.
It costs (almost) nothing and in fact, should you choose to give that gift, you instantly gave a gift to yourself. You learn and you learn more by sharing what you learn.
This holiday season why not make a commitment to start giving (and getting) that gift?
Revisit your Ambition. This is a great time to do it. Revise it. Renew it. Ensure that it is inspiring. The litmus test for a good ambition: Check how you feel about yourself when you wake up every morning. That should give you a clue.
Breakaway from the common and popular unless you want to produce mediocre results. Common and popular by definition cannot succeed. You have to stand out from the crowd otherwise you will go wherever the crowd is going.
Care for the concerns of people that you care about. The people who you care about (apart from your family)should include your employer, your customers, partners and your extended network
“Demand more from yourself than anybody else ever will.” You can act when someone asks you to act (external trigger) or you can act simply because you want to excel (internal trigger.) In the long run, internal triggers always work better. (Inspiration for this from Michael Jordan)
Engage fully with what you are doing. It is not worth doing anything half-heartedly. Even if it is fun, engage in it fully. You only have 365 days in a year. With weekends and holidays gone, you have close to 250 days. That’s about 6000 hours. With sleep and TV and rest, you get close to half of that available to you. That’s about 3000 hours. If you are not engaged in these 3000 hours, you can be guaranteed that you will be stressed out in whatever hours outside of those 3000 hours.
Fail fast. Fail often. Fail brilliantly. If you fear failure, you will stop taking risks and when you stop taking risks you will do what is common and popular (in other words risk-free). It is difficult to “stand out” of the crowd and distinguish yourself when you do something that the crowd is doing.
Give first. No more explanation required for this one.
Humility is an “invisible” competitive advantage. With the world changing at breathtaking speed, there is no guarantee that what worked yesterday will work today and what works today will work tomorrow. There is no reason to have more pride than required.
Intensity wins. Big time. Think about the time you were playing a game and were totally engrossed in it. Those were the moments of high-intensity. Winning was important but at that particular moment, you were just playing with high-intensity. That is the way the game of life is played. With high intensity. Increase your intensity by a notch or two in 2010.
Join a tribe. Join a movement. Join a team. Join something that will make help you make a bigger difference in this world. You can only do so much on your own. With the right tribe, the possibilities are endless.Take the first step to make something happen in 2010.
Knowing what NOT to do is equally important as knowing what to do. Before the start of the year, think of a few things that are not worth continuing. Dis-engage from these activities gracefully so that you have more bandwidth to do things that do matter.
Love your work or change what you are working on. How much you love your work shows up in your work. Putting your heart into what you are doing is that “extra” that can make your work extraordinary.
Make meaning. Both for yourself and people who you touch. Everybody is in search for more meaning in their lives. Help them make more meaning and you will help yourself. [ Inspiration for this from Guy Kawasaki]
Nurture relationships for the long-term. There are only two kinds of relationships – one is long-term and the other one is very long term. Very long-term relationships won’t happen in the short-term (that will be an irony) or by accident. You need nurture those relationships.
Be on the lookout for opportunities to contribute. Opportunities are everywhere. They come to those people who are ready and willing to put in the effort to capitalize on them.
Passion on the right priorities with the right amount of patience will create profits. Practice this and you can’t fail.
Question your questions. If the questions you are asking until now have not given the results so far, it is time to question those questions. It’s time to ask new and powerful questions.
Results matter. More than anything else. However, good your reasons for not producing results, they still are reasons and they won’t help you get ahead in your life and business.
Capitalize on your strengths. AND, find good help to handle your weaknesses. You are at your best when you are operating on your strengths. Imagine, in the new year, you are spending 10% more of your time (in comparison to 2009) how much more could you achieve?
Thoughtfulness may not cost you much but people notice it. It shows that you care for them and they are important enough for you to walk that extra mile.
Understand first and then people would want to understand you. If you think someone is not able to understand you, think about the possibility that they might be thinking the same way about you (Inspiration from Stephen R. Covey)
Check your values. They are the foundation for whatever you say or do. The building is only as strong as the foundation and you are only as powerful as your values.
Be in a mood of Wonder to ensure that you are always learning. You can’t know everything. Not now. Not in a decade and not in a lifetime. Be in a mood of wonder as a student of life.
What is your X-Factor? If you don’t know it, get help to identify it. If you don’t have it, make a plan to develop it. Your X-factor has to be something that will set you apart from the crowd in an area that is “highly relevant” to your target audience.
Yearning for more knowledge today will yield good results tomorrow. Jeffrey Pfeffer said, “in order to know your level of incompetence on a topic, you need to be reasonably competent on that topic.” Be hungry and get to know how much more you need to know.
Zap negative thinking. Zap laziness. Zap procrastination. Zap skepticism. Zap anything that will reduce your capacity or the capacity of others around you. It is simply not worth carrying the extra baggage.
If you are interested in a new year resolutions generator (blast from the past), see below:
Attention is at a premium and the information (and non-information) overload is making it worse. Competition is global and things are getting commodotized at a rapid rate causing stress around the clock.
The rules have changed to get attention in this environment.
I think the way to get attention today is to “be” someone that is worthy of paying attention and to “produce and distribute” content that is worthy of paying attention.
Times are still tough for many people out there. After reading my post on thanking powerfully, someone recently asked me how they can thank someone (in this case an Author they liked) without spending a ton of money. I came up with a few ideas and shared with them. After the person left, I came up with a few more ideas. Here is the entire list (as of now)
[Note: If you can think of some other creative (low-cost) way of showing appreciation to a favorite author, please add to the comments.]
1. Buy a book or two as gifts for someone that might not have been exposed to their work
2. Write a review of the book you liked at Amazon or any other online outlet.
3. Comment on their blog
4. Tweet one of their posts to your followers
5. Send them an email but do not make them require to respond back to you.
6. Send a link to their work to one of the mailing lists that you belong to. Make sure that you are sending something that is relevant to the mailing list you belong to.
7. Subscribe to their blog feed and/or email newsletter and actually read it.
8. Support them by indicating yourself as a fan (eg: Facebook)
9. Follow them on Twitter. Retweet something from them that you think is relevant to your followers
10. Talk about their work to at least one person in your network.
11. Carry one of their books to a restaurant and place it on the table so that others can notice it.
12. Donate one of their books to a local library
13. Pass along your copy of the book to someone that might not have read it.
14. Leave a copy of their book at your office lobby
And, the ultimate appreciation:
15. Put at least one of their advice into practice and make something happen in your own life.
Last week when I was at CostCo, I saw that busy peeling off the pricing label on a book. As I was browsing, I saw that he successfully peeled off the pricing tag on the book he was holding and then immediately stuck the pricing tag back on the book.
No, he was not doing anything funny. If you see the books on display, you would feel like doing the same too. I have pasted below the images of a book cover of The Audacity to Win (a fantastic book by the way) with and without the pricing label.
With the pricing label
(making it almost impossible to read the sub-title)
Without the pricing label
(the sub-title is clearly visible)
It was not just this book but 90% of the books had pricing labels covering a key part of the title or the sub-title. As you can see from the cover, there is a whitespace to the left of the author’s name were the pricing label can be placed. But that would require someone to be thoughtful about what they are doing. And, being thoughtful is hard work!!!
So, I can see the cloud of 40, I just have to find the silver lining
Recent Comments