2010 May

Change Your Career While Keeping Your Job

May 31, 2010 by Christine 16 Comments

Today I’m delighted to introduce you to Marc Winitz, who’s a Vice President of Sales and Business Development for a US based information technology company. His thinking about work, which he captures in this fascinating article, turns some of the accepted wisdom about finding meaning at work on its head. Read and enjoy!

Although economic times have been uncertain over the past few years, there is still a lot of conversation going on around “doing what you love” or “pursuing your passion”. To be sure, I am not against the philosophy, per se, but I do find it a little misguided. We all go through peaks and valleys in life, and for a lot of people, that includes their career and work. It is fair to ask yourself “Do I love what I am doing?” or “Does what I do matter?” But I don’t think you have to have to correlate a specific passion for the work you do. There are a lot of ways to innovate and find meaning for yourself and I don’t believe that has to correspond to the way you make a living.

The Echo Chamber of “Passion”

It seems that an echo chamber has emerged and that you can’t read anything these days about a successful business or career without some reference to “pursuing your passion”. Entering that phrase as a Google search term provides over 1 million hits. There are legs to this and with good reason. We are going through historic change in the world in regards to global issues ranging from the interconnected financial system to the environment to our evolving views of race and religion. The world has gotten a lot smaller. And all this change makes people question their lives, and their livelihood. And that is very healthy in my opinion. But I think you can find innovation and meaning in what you do, without having to pursue a specific passion as your way of supporting yourself.

Career Ruts Are Normal

I work as a Vice President for US based information technology company helping large government and private sector agencies solve complex business process problems through the use of technology. I like what I do. It makes a difference in people’s lives. However, even that isn’t enough for me to be fully satisfied with my work environment. For most of us, myself included, it is easy to get in a rut regarding our day to day routine and I think that generally holds true no matter what type of work you do.

Career Fulfillment Can Come From Many Places

I’ve read many stories and know several people that felt they were stuck in their career and decided to make a radical change in their life. In some cases it has worked, but in others it hasn’t. Just by writing this I know there will be strong statements (I hope) in the comments section about a specific person making a radical change, quitting their job to pursue something they loved, and that it turned out to be the best thing they ever did for their career. I respect that. But it represents a small group of people from a success perspective. I am not saying that if you are in a bad work situation you should stay in it. Nor am I suggesting you shouldn’t try something completely different from a career perspective. However, if your work is tolerable, or good, or even great you can still have a fulfilling career – regardless of the ruts you hit or a lack of passion you feel for what you do. You just have to look for the opportunities to invest in yourself to keep your “passion” alive and channel them into your work life.

Extend Personal Interests

So the concept of “career” to me has become something much wider than my day job, or my passions, or anything else for that matter. I look at ways to improve myself and my skillset outside of my career by investing in myself. But I try to do it in way that provides me ways to integrate those interests back into my day job. About 5 months ago I started a personal development blog called Black Belt Guide. I have trained in Karate and also taught it for over 25 years. I always wanted to share the principles of martial arts but in a way that could be useful to anyone. I also enjoy writing. So the blog has provided a creative outlet for me which is something I was seeking.

Build Professional Skillsets Through Outside Activities

But I didn’t just start the blog for that reason alone. I wanted to learn about web 2.0 technology and the social web. Even though I work in technology neither of those areas are part of my day to day job: but they are going to be. So rather than trying to just “read about it” I used the blog as a way to learn simply by participating and working with technology like WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, etc…

Create Options for Yourself

In addition, I wanted to create a “brand” for myself. It was obvious that I could create such a brand in my day job, or that it would be memorable. But by tying the blog back to something that was both a little unusual and important to me, I have started to realize a return on that investment in a very personal way. This now gives me options. The involvement in blogging has served multiple needs personally and professionally. And I can leverage this experience, which I very much enjoy, directly into my work life through multiple areas.

Personal Investments Pay Professional Dividends

I was recently on a business trip and had a meeting with a potential customer. When I arrived my host said “Your blog is terrific, I feel like I already know you. I trained in martial arts as a kid.” I was a bit stunned, my blog is hardly popular (he later told me it is his policy to “google” all his vendors). The meeting went well as the “rapport” already existed even though I had never met this person face to face. We talked for 30 minutes about martial arts, blogging and personal development before we got to the business at hand. It’s not very common in a sales and business development situation where the buyer wants to talk about you as an authority figure.

Find Different Kinds of Work Outside of Work

I hope my approach offers some clues as to how you can innovate in yourself, grow professionally and find career meaning regardless of the work you do. Here are some thoughts to help you start view work and growth a little differently.

Don’t view your work as the sole definition of how your life is defined or how you are perceived.
Your career is more than just your day job. Find ways to expand outside your comfort zone to learn and grow.
Passion is important so find outlets for it. Just don’t misplace its importance for having a fulfilling career.
Look for opportunities to inject the things that interest you into your current work situation, even if they don’t apply right away or are obvious to you.

In addition to his challenging business schedule, Marc is a 4th degree black belt in Japanese karate, and blogs about personal development at www.blackbeltguide.com. You can follow Marc on Twitter @marcwinitz, or subscribe to his RSS Feed.

Filed Under: Guest posts, Inner work, Self Development Tagged With: authenticity, corporate jobs, loving work, meaning

The Opportunity In The Silence

May 28, 2010 by Christine 23 Comments

Photo credit: Steven Durbin Photography

If there’s one word I’ve heard clients use a lot recently, it’s the word reality.

It has come up as they’ve talked about what’s happening in their businesses right now. Because some of them are once more finding their pipelines to be a little short on flow. After a few months of order books starting to fill up again, they’re having another moment when the phones aren’t ringing.

Maybe it’s buyer uncertainty around how the new Cameron-Clegg coalition will pan out. Or market panic about the Eurozone crisis.

Whatever its cause, the return of relative silence brings back gut-wrenching, immobilising fear.

In coaching, clients want to put aside what they suddenly see as being the terribly indulgent work they’ve been doing on themselves.

“Right now I have to get back to reality,” they say.

Sometimes their tone is punishing. As if by supporting their personal development I’ve somehow lead them astray and am to blame for the stasis in their business development.

When I ask what getting back to reality looks like, they express different, pressing coaching needs.

“I’ve never really had to market myself before. Help me get my head round that.”

“I need to build my confidence in going into completely new networking situations.”

“Help me get over my fear of proactively calling people.”

These are the issues that are alive for them, and so we’ll go there. And yet I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t give voice to the panic that I intuit. Or question the clinging after control that I feel.

My clients are successful people in their own regard, irrespective of what hand life is currently dealing them. Whether they’re prepared to say so or not, they experience themselves as having much to lose. It’s not just money. It’s their reputation that’s at stake. Their power and influence. Their perceived competitive position versus peers and colleagues.

What has all the effort been for, if it can just all be swept away?

One guy told me of a dream he’d had. A nightmare, really. He’d been at the top of a mountain, and watched on, horrified, as a climber on an adjoining peak accidentally slipped on rubble and fell freely to certain death.

You don’t have to be an analyst to figure that one.

But such conversation takes coaching to a different place again. People want to move forward. At the same time they feel the weight of their own fears. Which need do they address?

Surely, I argue, the answer has to be both?

By all means, explore what you can do differently to open up your business-getting options. Look at your offering. Address your marketing weaknesses.

But don’t make the mistake of cutting off from yourself in the process. Don’t think that self-development is something you do after the crisis has passed.

Facing things in this way allows new questions to emerge:

What responsibility might you be inappropriately shouldering for the current situation?
What deep down failing do you fear is about to be unmasked?
Who are you without your professional reputation and business persona?
What gives your life meaning beyond this profession; this portfolio?

Life and nature bring times of uncertainty and silence. What if this lull was a normal, natural state of affairs? What qualities and resources in you, other than your cleverness and control, is it calling you to develop?

This is the opportunity in the silence: the chance to integrate; the chance to listen to your own soul.

Great, meaningful, deeply significant work happens when you really marinate in the meantime. It is not a distraction from the creative process, it is the creative process.

Pam Slim, Escape From Cubicle Nation

What silences have you faced recently? What opportunities have you allowed them to mean for you?

Filed Under: Inner work Tagged With: being OK, corporate jobs, economic environment, survival strategies

“Why I throw my staff out at 6pm”

May 24, 2010 by Christine 21 Comments

I met Marcus Beale, Director of Wimbledon based Marcus Beale Architects, the other week through a mutual friend. My experience of London’s professional service firms is that they foster 24/7 work cultures. So it was refreshing to meet a business leader whose people management philosophy actively supported his staff’s worklife balance. He volunteered to share some of his enlightened thinking with us here.

Architects are highly motivated, vocational professionals. Since it’s time and attention to detail that make buildings a success, there’s a strong tendency in our sector to work late and for this to become the norm.

There are problems with this. First, the classic problem of presenteeism, that those who stay late every evening form a little clique and others who may have family or other commitments feel, consciously or not, that they are letting the side down. Another is that those who operate a stretched day often work in a more elastic manner. Things can be left till later so they usually are. The third is more long-term.

Do I want, as an employer of architects, to have a team of monomaniacs who can talk and think nothing but architecture?

For all these reasons we have operated a policy of encouraging people to leave at 6 pm. If there’s a deadline to be met, fine, stay late if necessary, but it should never be the norm.

Does this affect productivity? Upwards.

Does it affect employee health and well-being? A conversation heard this morning in the office: “What did you do last night?” “Nothing.” ” I started kick boxing lessons…”

It’s a privilege to be able to ‘design’ one’s working practices to suit you – but I firmly believe if you can design other people’s buildings you should be able to design your own life. Over the years I have watched my own and others’ behaviour. I’ve kept an eye out for some more fundamental questions about work, for example the Ten Criteria for Good Work, published a few years ago by the Lutheran Church in Finland. (I’m not a Lutheran, but have copied the principles onto our website – changing one word ‘God’ to ‘universe’, to make them more inclusive – to try to enshrine them in our institutional culture).

Stress and panic are the root causes of most mistakes. They slow you down, make you less effective, less likely to listen and assess a situation properly.

So how to avoid this?

A technique that works for me is to write the script and then perform it. I say to myself and others, regularly, “we don’t do stress, we do serenity”. Eventually you believe your own propaganda, and it works. People pick up on each others’ moods, an attitude of calm focus is infectious. Another way of removing stress is to work only with people you like. It sounds snooty but it’s quite an effective business principle. The feelings are nearly always mutual and over the years you build up much better teams and relationships.

What do you make of Marcus’s leadership approach? Can you see ways his thinking could extend to you personally, or to your firm?

Marcus Beale is an architect working in conservation doing new things to old buildings. His firm, founded in the recession of 1991, now employs ten architects and works on projects in the residential, educational and commercial sectors. Look him up at www.marcus-beale.com and at www.stowandbeale.com.

Filed Under: Reinventing work, Work and life Tagged With: different work, positive deviance

Here’s How New Work Pioneers Navigate Their Journey

May 21, 2010 by Christine 11 Comments

There’s a very real community of people choosing to rewrite the rules of their professional and personal lives. For some that means leaving the corporation to design their own lifestyle. For others it’s about evolving a way of being that allows them to thrive in employed roles.

If you’ve been reading this series, you’ll know I call this community The New Work Pioneers.

And so far we’ve talked about what prompts them to take a different tack; how they think differently about success; the hallmark milestones of their journey; and why they really bother.

But what really, really sets successful New Work Pioneers apart from those who’d aspire to this path, but fall short?

Self direction

Successful New Work Pioneers see themselves as powerful agents in setting and steering the course of their own lives.

In psychology the jargon is that they have an internal locus of control. This means that on balance they attribute their successes to their own effort, and failures to more variable, often external factors. Which allows them to keep moving forward self-assuredly.

Positive outlook

Adrian Swinscoe wrote earlier this week about optimism. People who are successful in carving out different ways of working and living tend to adopt a positive lens in looking at the world.

They’re no Pollyannas. Nor do they feel the need to adopt any inauthentic persona of the always upbeat person.

They have a realistic view of the world. And it’s one that sees the good; the possibilities and opportunities in each situation.

Life goals

Goals give shape, purpose and direction to life. Successful New Work Pioneers set themselves life goals which they actively pursue. If they’re in a committed relationship, they’ll often set these goals jointly with their partners.

Interestingly, while their goals are often explicit about the material and practical things they want from life, the goals to which they give most attention are those they can imbue with meaning and purpose. For example, they may think of how their work ambitions foster the positive development of their target market; or of how their desire for children will enrich their experience of family.

The deep sense of positive emotional engagement they make with these goals gives them an energy that sustains them.

Flexibility

Even if goals create a map, the terrain once you reach it can look quite different. Successful New Work Pioneers understand this and are not too wedded to a fixed sense of themselves, or of the world. They take bumps in the road as experiences they can learn from.

They don’t allow themselves to be so controlling about things that they get stuck in their own minutiae.

Self knowledge

Smart New Work Pioneers have clocked the importance of understanding themselves. They tend to be committed to their own personal development, seeing it as a life-long pursuit.

Many of them will have an intimate awareness of their personal values and will see how putting them positively into practice not only makes them happy, but gets them great results.

And they’ll unfathom any limiting beliefs they’re holding onto that may threaten to derail them.

Engaging with others

Successful off-piste career folks take satisfaction in good connections with others. Whether it’s in the context of a special love-relationship; with children; with family and friends; or with colleagues, they value the sense of themselves they get from being intimately engaged. The energy they get from this boosts them and supports their onward journey. Particularly if those relationships are mutually respectful and supportive.

Meaning at work

The happiest New Work Pioneers are those who find flow experiences in work. Of course, it helps if they naturally love what they do. But for many that’s not where they’re at. At least not yet.

Still, successful ones will find meaning in whatever form of work they’re doing. Contributing to something that’s bigger than them. Giving something back. Making a difference.

With a felt-sense of purpose, work can feel inspiring, which in turn can fuel the New Work Pioneers endeavours.

Making the most of most things

Sometimes times are good. Sometimes they’re bad. Sometimes just so. Being a New Work Pioneer isn’t a recipe for an incident-free life. Still, the successful ones are those who tend to take life as it comes and make the most of all situations. This equanimity; the finding of satisfaction in what is, allows them just to be.

And just being is in essence what they are seeking to achieve.

So, does this resonate with you? What strategies do you adopt to keep yourself on a different path?

Finally, thanks to the community of readers that has been reading these posts each week over the last couple of months. I really appreciate your having stuck with the series. Now for the task of turning it all into an eBook!If you don’t want to miss out, subscribe for regular updates here!

Photo credit: Steven Durbin Photography

Filed Under: Reinventing work, Thriving @ work Tagged With: authenticity, doing what you love, experimenting, life change, positive psychology

Who Else Wants A Free Worklife Makeover?

May 19, 2010 by Christine 6 Comments

If you’re feeling now would be a good time to take a few hours off of the hamster wheel and review how work and life are stacking up, you’ve landed on just the right blog page today.

On the 18th of June in Central London I’m doing a pilot of The Worklife Makeover, ahead of it running a series of seminars in the autumn.

Its purpose is to get you thinking about what you really want from work and from life, and to give you some of the tools and inspiration to go after it.

In the course of the day I’ll be revealing the success secrets of the most fulfilled, most successful business people and working with you to help you incorporate them into your own life.

Not only will you be getting more and richer content than I could ever share with you on the blog, but also you’ll be getting the value of my coaching in a small group content over the course of the day.

The deal is you get the pleasure and value of working with me for a day. In return, I’d love your feedback on the content and the process to help further shape what will become a top end of the market event.

Interested?

Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life – What Monty Python Can Teach Us About Life And Business

May 17, 2010 by Christine 12 Comments

Today I’m delighted to welcome Adrian Swinscoe. A couple of weeks ago, he shared some thoughts about optimism in a comment to my Why New Work Pioneers REALLY Bother post. I invited him along to tell us more. Enjoy!

Many of us will have heard of Emotional Intelligence over the course of the last few years. It was popularized after the publication of Daniel Goleman‘s best seller Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ in 1996.

Daniel Goleman’s research into Emotional Intelligence (EQ), where EQ designates emotional intelligence and IQ represents academic, intellectual or technological knowledge, quantified the importance of developing EQ. He found that EQ was between 2 and 5 times a better predictor of success (see chart below).

It doesn’t matter which field you’re in whether it’s medicine, law, engineering, journalism, the arts, one of the trades or any other career as the most successful individuals in each area are not necessarily the ones who are the smartest people or those who are the most technically gifted. Instead, the top stars in each field are the ones with the highest EQ or best ‘people skills’.

More recent work on EQ and its relationship to success in leadership roles by Martyn Newman and described in his book Emotional Capitalists described 10 different traits of high-performers. Their highest scores were on:

Self-reliance – the ability to take responsibility and back one’s own decisions when things get tough;
Self-confidence – the ability to maintain self-respect and personal confidence;
Relationship skills – the ability to develop relationships with a wide variety of people;
Empathy – the ability to understand the view point of all parties and develop resonant connections with others;
Self-awareness – awareness of how feelings and emotions impact on personal opinions, attitudes and judgments;
Self-actualisation – the ability to effectively manage their work/life balance;
Assertiveness – how to express feelings, thoughts and beliefs openly in a straightforward way, while respecting the fact that others may hold a different opinion or expectation;
Flexibility – adaptable and open to new ideas in the face of change;
Self-control – the ability to stay calm in stressful situations and maintain productivity without losing control. And, finally;
Optimism – the ability to look on the brighter side of life and sense opportunities in all situations.

Now, some people find the final trait (Optimism) quite challenging as they would say that you are either an optimist or a pessimist or a realist or whatever and that’s they way you are. It’s an age-old debate but research has shown that optimistic people are happier, more effective and more successful than pessimists. And, Martin Seligman in his book Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life argues that optimism can be learned as a skill and that we can train ourselves to become more optimistic. Check out Dr Seligman and his definition of optimism here:

Why Learning to be More Optimistic is Important

Think about it this way: If something bad or negative happens, optimists tend to view it as temporary whereas pessimists tend to do the opposite. Obviously, its not as black and white as this and people will be more optimistic or pessimistic in different areas of their lives depending on their experiences. However, developing a sense of optimism in all areas of ones life will not guarantee but will contribute positively to better outcomes.

Why is this? Because, like Henry Ford once said:

“Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you’re right”

So, optimism or pessimism tend to be self-fulfilling prophecies. It’s as simple as that.

If you want to have less negative stuff happen to you and want to generate more positive outcomes then learn to be more optimistic and you will be taking a more active role in defining your future and happiness. Monty Python captured the essence of all of this in their song: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.

I hope that made you hum and smile

Finally, now that we’ve established that optimism is important to your future success and happiness. What things do you do to stay optimistic in the face of challenges?

Adrian Swinscoe is a consultant and coach from the UK who writes about customer-focused business growth at Ideas for Business Growth. He has a strong belief that optimism is an essential part of any culture, whether business or personal, and that if more people were more optimistic that the world would be a better place. Why not connect with him on Twitter @adrianswinscoe, LinkedIn or if you liked this article then why not subscribe to his RSS Feed?

Filed Under: Guest posts, Thriving @ work Tagged With: being OK, happy, optimism, positive psychology

Work life change: event or journey?

May 14, 2010 by Christine 11 Comments

Many coaches sell seminars and bootcamps where they promise transformational life change in a weekend.

I’ve often wondered what hopeful planet they live on, because my years of experience of helping people change their lives tell me that work life change is not a one off event.

It’s a process. And indeed it needs to be.

The good news, however, is that, although everyone’s journey to living and working on their own terms is unique, there are some typical milestones along the way.

The prompt

The whole thing kicks off when something within us or beyond us causes us to consider that how we’re living and working right now needs to be different. The desire for change can arise by itself, often from a sense of boredom, dissatisfaction, or lack of fulfilment in what we’ve been doing. An inner feeling that there needs to be more. Or that we could be more.

Or, it can come from outside of us, propelled by some force for good or for bad. The kind of things I was talking about in the post on how New Work Pioneers use crises as turning points for change.

Or a serendipitous happening causing fate to offer us a possibility for change of which we may only have dreamt. A conversation offering freelance work, when we’ve been toying with how to broker an exit from salaried employment.

The prompt needs you to listen, and not to discount it.

Accepting the call

Whatever brings them there, New Work Pioneers have a moment in time which they must grab hold of.

A period of hesitancy is pretty normal. The whole thing can have an other-worldliness about it. Fears of losing control, going crazy or bankrupt, becoming the proverbial bag lady, doing something that fails from which they risk looking stupid, or not being able to honour personal and financial commitments reign supreme. But the need and impetus to change and its associated excitement and curiosity win through.

But not always. Sometimes, it’s all too difficult and the call to adventure is ignored or buried. In which case the pioneering spirit gets flattened.

Don’t let it happen to you!

Accepting the call needs you to see the rich choice you have and to make a conscious commitment to moving forward.

Frustration

Assuming we’ve decided that we’re up for change, the next milestone we tend to confront is frustration.

As we change our way of life and work, we’re changing our way of being.

It’s unusual to have reached this stage and not to have learned significant new things about ourselves, and our self-awareness begins to shift and open.

Old ways of thinking and behaving feel outgrown. Still, we haven’t yet inhabited what’s right now.

I think of a top lawyer client whose single status had enabled her total dedication to an enormous portfolio and workload. But mid-thirties, a ticking biological clock awakened her desire for relationship and children. Allowing herself this, was the first step. Adopting the mindset, skills and behaviour of one who would have a different kind of success took time.

Frustration requires your patience. It needs you to honour the deep learning that you’re doing; to trust that profound life change is afoot.

Stuckness

Many people reach a point where there’s just so much change going on for them, and it’s so unfamiliar, that they feel out of their depth with it all.

You know you’re here when you find yourself asking, “what on earth have I done?” Or, “what have I let myself in for?”

It’s not unusual at this stage to simply feel lost.

One of my friends had been the proverbial “yes” person at work and, having become completely fed up with always being dumped on, decided that she wanted her life back. But, being more assertive with her boss and colleagues didn’t initially go down well. In fact, for a few months, she sat in a frosty environment at work, being berated for daring to say “no” to things.

She’d call me in tears about how bad this felt. Still, she couldn’t see how to change it. On the one hand, she could not go back to being a dogsbody. On the other, she didn’t have the complete personal belief to just laugh her bosses of as being ridiculous.

Stuckness needs your empathy and understanding. It needs you to constantly remind yourself of your vision and of all the positive reasons you decided to take a different path.

Experimenting

Stuckness is dissolved when you start trying new ways through things.

You get so annoyed with things being unclear that you explore different possibilities.

The lawyer moved to this stage when she joined an online dating agency and began putting drinks and dinner dates in her diary. These prompted her to consider new possibilities around how she would focus her work time, and what standards she would be comfortable to set for herself now.

My friend got here when she became so pissed off with her colleagues whinging that she shifted her mindset to seeing that what they thought of her wasn’t her problem. This freed her energy to focus more on proving to them that she could deliver even better results by honouring her own values.

Playfulness is an important factor to experimenting; testing things out without needing them to deliver any particular outcome.

Integration

Finally, the things you’ve been trying out and adopting as new become your norm. They begin to feel natural to you. Indeed, they are “you”.

You can look back and see that you’ve negotiated a big change in yourself. And that it has been for the good.

Integration requires acknowledgement, gratitude and celebration.

Interestingly, as much as that integration is the ending of one major round of change, its also the beginning of another. Next time around, the call will be different, as will the lessons you’ll learn and the integrations you’ll make. But with every round of change come new insights, and new shifts in your growth and development.

Which just adds to the magic of the whole thing!

But what’s your experience? I’d really like to hear. Do you recognise these big milestones? Where are you in your journey? What have you accomplished, and what’s yet to come?

Filed Under: Inner work, Reinventing work, Work and life Tagged With: being OK, experimenting, gratitude, life change, New Work Pioneers, processes for changing work, work life

Social Media. Another 24/7 Work Culture?

May 10, 2010 by Christine 23 Comments

This is a question that’s been on my mind for a couple of weeks now.

Especially since a few uncharacteristic mistakes in my client work brought into focus how much time I was spending online and how tired it was beginning to make me feel. Not good for one whose raison d’être is about living a whole life of which work is part, but not all. And whose coaching differential is strong energetic presence.

There’s much to love about blogging, Twitter, Facebook and all things social media. It’s such a “now” phenomenon. It opens you and your business up to people, information, products and services you simply would not otherwise access. And for the solopreneur, it’s a way of creating your virtual office of self-selected colleagues.

But if you imagine you’re swapping a 24/7 environment for one that’s less so, think again. It’s entirely possible that, without the kind of self-monitoring I did recently, you might recreate virtually what you’re leaving behind.

Here are 4 key characteristics of 24/7 corporate cultures. See whether any of them are playing out in your social media driven business world.

Focus on external performance measures

Most workaholic organisation cultures have performance management ethics that reward the achievement of “things”. Sales targets; fee revenues; customer satisfaction statistics: these are all valued beyond how they are actually achieved or what impact achieving them has on people.

The locus of control for such measures is often outside of you. You wait for others to confer their approval. Your sense of yourself is predicated on how well you meet their and your own arbitrary measures. You feel in control and powerful when the numbers are good. Bad when they’re down.

Using social media to fuel your business can suck you into this kind of thinking too. Your sense of yourself becomes based on blog traffic, how many subscribers or Twitter followers you have, how many posts you can knock-out.

Sure, measures have their place in focusing and building your business, but it’s about balance. Give yourself psychological swing space by reframing your success measures and remember that you are responsible for determining how well you’re doing.

Fuzzy boundaries between work and life

It’s great to make friends at work. However, 24/7 organisation cultures often confuse collegiality with more intimate relationships. Social contagion has the effect of having you hang around the office for longer than you might because you enjoy the chumminess.

An extreme example was when I worked for Gemini Consulting. They openly spoke of “The Gemini Family” and indeed in our consulting teams we both worked and lived together on locations across the world. We saw more of one another than our partners, children, or long-term friends. When a “family” disbanded at the end of one assignment, another would spawn during the set-up of another.

You can make real and enduring friends via social media. I am delighted to have a sense of belonging to a number of different online communities. But don’t make Twitter and Facebook “home”. Discipline yourself to take time away from your pc or Mac to do offline things, and to give due attention to those closest to you. That way you can keep a healthy harmony in your different relationships.

Excessive workloads

Another enduring aspect of full-on organisational cultures is that what they expect staff to deliver is not often achievable within the confines of a contained working day. Hence people find themselves working into evenings and weekends – through the night – just to keep up.

Accordingly, when we begin working for ourselves and using social media, the chances are that we’ll set our own workloads in a similarly burdensome way.

It’s a tough one because, when you’re starting up or changing direction, you often want to put in more hours in order to build your platform and get established. The thing is to do this knowingly, and also to decide for yourself when you will be quieter.

Hook for obsessives and perfectionists

The truth is, of course, that 24/7 organisation cultures wouldn’t exist if they weren’t staffed by the kind of people who perpetuate them.

Obsessives and perfectionists can be the most successful people in our society. Their vision, drive and commitment to excellence pushes them to achieve things that Joe Bloggs just wouldn’t attempt. But taken to extremes, such behaviour can be punishing, primarily of themselves.

In the social media work culture too, you can get so mesmerised by the endless possibilities that, day after day, you push yourself to do more and more. But if it’s not supported by appropriate rest and revitalisation, that passion isn’t limitless and can burn out.

As I was starting to get a taste of a few weeks ago.

I’d really love to hear what you make of this. In what ways can you get caught up in the enthusiasm of social media? How do you draw the line for yourself and enjoy the best of social media?

Filed Under: Reinventing work, Thriving @ work Tagged With: corporate jobs, entrepreneurship, looking after yourself, social media

How New Work Pioneers Turn Fear On Its Head

May 7, 2010 by Christine 17 Comments

Photo credit: Steven Durbin Photography

This is the fifth in an emerging manifesto writing series. Today we’re looking at one of the biggest challenges both to reframing success and to living the New Work Pioneer vision: fear.

Here are five ways I see my clients expressing it. And some corresponding wisdom on how New Work Pioneers are kissing it goodbye.

“I’ll go crazy”

Making changes to the way you work is big shit. That’s true whether you’re determined to have a life within your corporate job, or you’re taking your professional work in a self-employed direction. Actually, if you don’t feel even a little challenged, you’re not really changing.

With change comes a temporary shifting of the sands in terms of what you know and can control. This can be intensely fear-provoking and cause you to draw back or try to cling onto what’s familiar.

New Work Pioneers normalise their feelings by knowing it’s pretty predictable to encounter this intense uncertainty.

They remind themselves of the positive reasons they’ve set themselves on this journey and the life-giving things they’re striving for.

They tell themselves that they are in the driving seat of the changes they’re making, and know that they themselves set the pace on how quickly or slowly they take it in order to keep their journey exciting and not stressful.

“I’ll become the proverbial bag lady”

Lurking underneath this fear is the question:

“Who am I to dare to break away from the norm, and thrive?”

Deviance, good or bad, has consequences in the eyes of our society. We don’t want to be thrown on the street metaphorically or for real.

This fear monster is cut down to size when New Work Pioneers give themselves permission to be different, and to make what money they need and want. They don’t look for endorsement on this beyond themselves.

They bring awareness to financial affairs and manage them well, recognising that being out of control around money is a sure way to let this fear have a field day.

“My friends and family will not accept change in me”

Reality: not everyone in your life will be enthusiastic about you taking charge of your destiny. You are part of a system which has till now relied on you playing your role in endorsing its values and beliefs. As you change, you send shock waves through the whole system. A supportive system will salute your courage in helping it re-evaluate itself. A fearful system will try to bring you back in line.

New Work Pioneers recognise that they have choice about the extent to which they need and want their system’s endorsement. They weigh up their need to live and work on their terms with the price to them of upsetting the system.

With closest relationships, they seek to discuss and negotiate their needs in a way that preserves and strengthens the relationship. They recognise that change can often be threatening to their partners and are empathic about the needs of the other throughout their journey.

They recognise too that sometimes detractors are giving voice to their own doubts. They learn that critics are less wounding to them when they have squared themselves to their decisions.

“I won’t be able to honour my personal or financial commitments”

It’s common for even young professionals to amass a number of things to which they’ve become consciously or unconsciously attached. The spider’s web of things that hold us in a place.

Mortgage? Loans? School fees? An unspoken promise to your other half that you’d always be an accounting firm lawyer and retire on a superlative pension? A portfolio of clients that you feel you’ve handcuffed yourself to, that you couldn’t possibly let down by choosing a different path?

New Work Pioneers take head-on the fear of breaking promises, and the imagined consequences. They list out everything to which they feel a sense of obligatory attachment. They do some reality checking on what on their list can and can’t be changed. They give themselves choice around what stays and what goes.

They check how okay they feel about allowing life and the fulness of time to alter earlier decisions. If they find themselves holding onto any limiting belief on this, they choose rewrite it more positively for themselves.

“I’ll fail at doing something different and risk looking stupid”

Being successful in mastering new behaviours, and new ways of working and living take time. It takes real courage to go out on a limb and do things differently. Things that your heart are telling you are for real ahead of any real evidence. Out on a limb, it’s pretty normal to feel fear.

New Work Pioneers let go of the win/lose way of thinking. They allow themselves to experiment without needing to achieve. They let go of defensiveness and open themselves to the learning they get from the new situations into which they put themselves. In the process they access the creativity inside them that, paradoxically, makes success more guaranteed.

They give themselves permission that they can be themselves and be loved.

If there’s one big takeaway from all of this, it’s that New Work Pioneers see fear as a predictable part of the process. That allows them to normalise it for themselves and to keep moving.

So, manifesto writing team, does this speak to the roadblocks that get in the way for you? What would you add? What’s true of you here? What different experiences have you had? What remains challenging?

There are two remaining posts in this series. To automatically get the next update, feel free to subscribe.

Filed Under: Reinventing work Tagged With: experimenting, fear, work change

A Conversation With Nick Williams

May 5, 2010 by Christine 16 Comments

Not long after I quit my corporate job, a book sitting on a shelf in Waterstones Piccadilly, grabbed my attention. Its title, The Work We Were Born To Do; its author, Nick Williams. I was so captured by the content that I emailed Nick and thus began a connection that over the years has morphed from coach and guide to friend and colleague.

10 years later I got the chance last week to talk to him about his own journey from uninspired IT guy to inspired entrepreneur. We captured the conversation on video so you could eavesdrop!

You can follow Nick Williams on Twitter and download his free nine part Discover the Work You Were Born To Do and Become an Inspired Entrepreneur at www.inspired-entrepreneur.com.

What do you think, guys? Isn’t Nick a real inspiration?

Filed Under: Guest posts, Work and life Tagged With: doing what you love, experimenting, inspiration, meaning