The Start-Up of YOU: 21st Century Career Strategy

I attended this session because my role as a Marketing Technologist often feels “squishy”. There aren’t a lot of Marketing Technologists in the wild. And I hoped this would give me some tips on how to advance my role and the value I can provide. Not sure it met those needs, but I thought the speakers provided important advice.

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• @bencasnocha
• @quixotic
• #startYOU

Ben Casnocha & Reid Hoffman

[notice]The working world has changed[/notice]

• Career Escalator doesn’t work anymore
• Death of the traditional career path
• Company’s are no longer loyal to employees and vice versa

So What Do We Do About It?

• It’s a very similar to what entrepreneur’s experience in starting a new business
• Mindset = “Permanent Beta” – circumstances are always in flux, you are always a work in progress
• Example: Jeff Bezos starts each communication with “it’s day one”

Develop THREE Specific Skills

1. Plan to Adapt
2. Strengthen Your Network
3. Take Intelligent Risks

1. Plan to Adapt

Life is not like a set of dominos that you set up and knock down. You need to have “Flexible Persistance” the ability to move forward with purpose, but able to readily adapt.

Plan to Adapt in 140

• Engage in career planning but don’t set firm plans
• Plan A is what you’re doing right now, your current implementation of your competitive advantage
• Always think about Plan Bs: parameters of motion, possible pivots
• Always have a Plan Z: a certain fallback option where you can reset.

ABZ Planning

Plan A – Current execution strategy

Plan B – Set of opportunities and how you might move

Plan Z – (what allows you to take risks) What to do when things trend negative. Planning framework provides a way to strategically adjust to the situation.

2. Strengthen Your Network

Develop strong alliances and loose ties. Strong alliances are mutually beneficial partnerships. Loose ties are acquaintances that you develop. The benefit of loose ties is the add diversity to you world. Your friends tend to act and do as you do. New ideas and opportunities are less likely to come from your close network, but loose ties may work in different cities or industries and will inject a diversity that you cannot get from your close network.

Network Building in 140

• Entrepreneurs build networks to build companies. You need a virtual company around you in your career
• Be explicit about who your professional allies are. Help them and let yourself be helped
• Weaker ties tend to introduce diverse streams of intelligence, and alert you to different sorts of opportunities

3. Take Intelligent Risks

Lean into risk. Position yourself where luck can help you. Always have several options that may pan out. Manage risk by vaccinating yourself against it. Introduce a bit of risk into your career to be more flexible and adaptive. Taking small risks builds career resilience.

Take Intelligence Risk in 140

• Many think you get career stability by minimizing all risk. Ironically, in a changing world, tha’s one of the riskiest things you can do
• If you don’t find risk, risk finds you
• Volunteer for extra work, run experiences, change jobs, freelance
• By introducing regular volatility into your career, you make surprise survival able. You learn to “absorb shocks gracefully”

Photo Credit [sxsw]