Be Different or be dead

March 28, 2022

Why a job is way more important than your career

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Why a job is way more important than your career.

Young professionals leave school with the intent of launching their career based on their study specialty; economics majors look for entry level jobs where they can apply their knowledge of micro economics and demand theory and lawyers migrate to law firms.

This may seem like a reasonable approach, but the reality is that when you begin your career journey you never really know where you will end up.

A career is an unclear destination with an unpredictable journey and a healthy dose of luck.

I graduated with a BSC in mathematics and computer science. I took a management trainee job and ended up as a CMO and president of a company we took to A BILLION IN SALES without any need to use sophisticated computer programming and differential equations that I learned at school to solve business problems.

I arrived in the executive suite after many years of strategic meandering around and up the hierarchy of the organization doing many things, developing and honing the skills necessary to add as much value as I could to the company’s future direction.

And to be positioned as the only logical choice for an opportunity should it arise.

I began as a junior systems analyst where I was required to do time and motion studies to improve the productivity of various departments.

It was a job.

I needed it to pay back my school loans and it was with an organization that was poised to undergo massive market change. But it really didn’t make use of my academic background, and I had no idea if it would result in a meaningful career.

Besides, I was married and I needed to pay bills. I couldn’t get hung up on whether the job was the right thing in the long term.

It turned out that the job was not to be my destination; it was a beginning and a learning point along the way.

When you are just starting your working life, you can’t with any degree of precision determine what your career will be.

I see too many young professionals unable to decide on whether to take a particular job or not. They agonize over whether it fits with their long term career plan; they are paralyzed and can’t make a decision.

They search and they search for the opportunity they believe to be a perfect match with their career ambitions. As a result, they make no job choice and no forward movement towards any career.

The thing is, if you don’t take a job, you will never know if it fits or not.

Every job in every organization presents the opportunity to make it your own and to craft it into something that satisfies your interests which typically are aligned with what you aspire to be ‘when you grow up’.

Find your passion

Your top priority should not be to find a job that’s consistent with what you think your career should be, but rather to look for an organization that excites you in some way and allows you to express your passion.

This is the environmental factor. If the work environment stirs a passion inside you, it is likely to be rich with opportunities and potential. If it doesn’t, it’s unlikely to produce the new challenges that feed a successful career.

Choose an organization that has a culture of mobility

It is critical to target an organization that has a program of moving new employees around and exposing them to different roles and various learning opportunities.

As a function of being a new hire from university, I was put in a management trainee program where I was placed in 6 different positions over a 24-month period.

This experience provided me an incomparable perspective on which areas were interesting and those that I would try to avoid.

Experiencing a variety of roles enabled me to architect my career path. I targeted specific areas and roles to acquire within a certain time period along with an action plan to get there.

My plan wasn’t all about getting promoted; sometimes it made sense to take a lateral move to acquire the added experience necessary to qualify for a promotion at some future point.

Don’t fret over whether a job staring at you suits your long term career goals. Look for an organization with a culture that gets your juices flowing and one that prides itself in providing different job opportunities to employees.

Take the job and it just might lead to a brilliant future if you are willing to take the risk.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

May 31, 2022 ‘Audacious Unheard-of Ways’ is coming.

• Posted 3.28.22 at 05:34 am by Roy Osing
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February 21, 2022

How an unexpected bomb that blows up in your face can be no biggie

Source: Unsplash

How an unexpected bomb that blows up in your face can be no biggie.

▪️A pandemic shuts your business down.
▪️You’ve just been told you’re fired.
▪️An unfiltered remark your friend makes completely blindsides you.
▪️A small business tax increase announced by the government immediately increases your operating costs and reduces your profits.
▪️An aggressive move made by your closest competitor jeopardizes your market position.
▪️you’ve just lost the best player on your team.

Something happens that is completely unexpected, and could never have been predicted.

And it’s not a minor incremental event; it’s a BIG! discontinuity.

How often does this happen in business or your personal life?

It’s normal

It seems that ‘I didn’t see that coming!’ is becoming the new normal in all aspects of our world these days.

In spite of the plethora of sophisticated planning, forecasting and prediction tools available to us, as well as the pumped up awareness we try to exercise in our personal life, stuff we didn’t see coming hits us more often than occurrences we have successfully predicted.

The challenge is to be able to deal with it the best way possible to mitigate any potential downside for us personally.

Here are some ‘deal with it’ actions to take to get through the pain of the unexpected:

#1. Accept it

Understand that the unexpected is now a common element of life and accept it, because if you still believe that your original plan in anything will turn out the way you’ve intended, you’re in trouble. If you don’t have the right frame, you have no chance of turning a surprise into a successful outcome.

You can’t be leaning away from chaotic possibilities; you need to be leaning into it in order to turn a potentially disastrous event into a positive one.

#2. Be wary of predictive tools

Realize the limitations of forecasting tools and don’t put too much reliance on them. Treat the predictive tools as part of your ‘this is what might happen’ thinking; a possibility and no more.

If you give the result produced by the common predictive toolset serious credence, you are vulnerable to the surprise attack.

#3. Develop spider senses

Developing your spider senses to be acutely aware of conditions that might spawn discontinuity is essential if a win is to be extracted from a hit. You need to be prepared for a hit and constantly be uncomfortable in your skin.

If you’re not looking for a possible disruption, you will likely miss it when — not if — it occurs.

If you’re comfortable in these times, you’re not prepared.

#4. Get a rhythm

Try to be more nimble in the face of the unexpected. Can you dance? Can you change your cadence and rhythm to act differently when the unexpected happens?

Generally you don’t have a month to decide what action to take; get used to real time responses that make use of the very best information you have available to you.

Be on your toes, dash, stay on your toes and dash again — the only planning process that will work for a world where constant body blows is the expected.

#5. Have tolerance

Tolerate the blindside as a reality we all face at some point in our lives. There’s no point trying to fight it; it’s a legitimate fact of life over which we have little or no control.

If we can accept the likelihood that a massive shift will likely occur, our openness places us in a good position to create a positive outcome from it.
Intolerance to the blindside and believing that it is unlikely is an unreasonable position to take and it results in being subsumed by it.

#6. Create perspective

Develop a perspective about these happenings. Is the unexpected event a big deal or a no biggie?

You need to be able to assess the importance of the zinger in the total scheme of things in order to decide how much emotional energy you should be expending on responding to it. Pouring your guts into an event with little of no import in your life doesn’t make any sense; it’s draining and counterproductive.

I used the simple 1 — 10 scale to assess whether I should be reacting to a body slam; anything over a ‘7’ got my attention and I was all over treating it serious and responding accordingly. Anything in the ‘5’ to ‘6’ range got mediocre attention; less than ‘5’ got a nod of acknowledgment and nothing more.

#7. Have a backup plan

Always have a contingency plan just in case. If the unpredicted affects a plan you put into action, you should have thought through a contingency in the event that it is thrown off course.

No plan or strategy ever turns out the way we originally thought it would so be prepared with an option that you can throw into place on a moment’s notice.

As part of your strategic planning process, ask ‘what if’ of your critical assumptions. What if your estimated sales fall short by 50%? What if your business is suddenly closed — COVID certainly wasn’t expected, was it?

What if you lose your anchor client for your new product? Assess every cataclysmic event that could impact your plan and have a response ready and waiting to implement.

#8. Take a deep breath

Pause, take a deep breath and think before you act. OMG! knee-jerk responses are dangerous and typically lose the long term perspective; they play out in the here and now and can prejudice the future.

So think about the event that just played out; look for reasons why it occurred; consult the contingencies you’ve developed and then act on the one you believe is appropriate given all things considered.

#9. Stop being naïve

Lose the naivety; bad stuff happens. You’ll only be surprised if you have a pollyanna attitude to believe that continuity of anything is possible.

Being in a state of comfort has its roots founded in the past, where the rate and degree of change — across social norms, technology, politics and markets — was much more modest than it is today.

Today, with its deadly unpredictability must be respected and honored if you are to survive.

Morph your expectations into believing that anything is possible and that how we deal with the unexpected is the most significant determinant of progress.

Be prepared or be done. When the storm comes, it’s critical to be ready with a survival kit and storm shelter to protect you.

‘I didn’t see that coming’ should be part of every school curriculum under survival skills, what you need to know about getting by in a world of unpredictability and change.

And it’s more than developing the ability to cope; it’s about taking the forces you didn’t ask for and using them to your advantage.

Don’t be a victim. Be prepared for incoming.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

‘Audacious’ is my latest…

• Posted 2.21.22 at 04:18 am by Roy Osing
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December 27, 2021

6 important things we need to teach kids for success

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6 important things we need to teach kids for success.

How well are we preparing our kids to be successful?

Are we teaching them the abilities necessary to enable them to solve the unique challenges of today’s complicated world, or are we merely promulgating the facts, figures and methods of learning that have been practiced for hundreds of years?

I believe our kids need more than what they get from school; they need an extra shove toward these 6 skills and competencies that are more critical for success today than ever before.

#1. Look beyond the classroom

Kids are super focused on learning what their teachers have to offer; mastering the curriculum is their prime objective. But, while this is essential, it shouldn’t be all consuming.

Like sports and other recreational activities, there needs to be room for kids to engage more with the world around them; to explore the problems, opportunities and challenges that are integral to the context within which they live.
And to think about how what they are learning could apply to making things better.

At a very young age, kids need to be challenged to apply what they’ve learned. They need to understand that success is more than learning what’s in textbooks; it’s more about how knowledge is used to achieve something useful and amazing.

#2. Question what you see

It’s important to cultivate curiosity in young people; to encourage them to not automatically accept what they are told — even from teachers.
They need to ‘ask to understand’ and to be able to see the broader implications of the information being presented to them.

Successful people don’t blindly accept what is given to them. They look, listen, probe, inspect and examine what they see and then decide whether to accept or not.

‘Ya, but…’ should be encouraged in kids because it represents a thinking process that is stretching information to another dimension. It shows they are wanting to understand more than what they’ve heard; that the facts presented to them don’t go far enough to satisfy their curiosity.

#3. Think outside the lines

Our children need to be encouraged to be uncomfortable with compliance; to view rules not as limitations on what they can achieve, but as guidelines to enable them to seek rich solutions to difficult problems.

Schools make this difficult because they insist students conform to the rule-set being taught, with success measured by how well someone follows them. An ‘A’ student is better at following the rules, for example than an ‘C’ student.

Successful people constantly look for opportunities to break away from the way the crowd sees things because they realize that being different is the source of high performance.

#4. Help your friends

A successful career is not a solo effort; it is built on a platform of support from many people. Unless someone has the respect and trust of fellow professionals and peers, they are likely to travel a bumpy road as they try to advance in any organization.

At an early age kids need to be taught to be team players and be encouraged to help their friends. This enables them to learn the skills required to build support and respect the unique capabilities of other people.

#5. Keep learning

The school curriculum should be viewed as entry level learning; the lowest level of knowledge that should be mastered in any given grade.

Kids should be encouraged to learn more than what they are being asked at an early age in order to develop the continuous learning competency.

Long term career success requires an ability to adapt to the changing circumstances around us, and the ability to be constantly in the learning mode is the critical ingredient to allow this to happen.

#6. Be different

It’s essential.

Schools and parents are uncomfortable with kids who are not like their friends and others in their peer group.

When Roy stands out and attracts attention, teachers often notice through a negative lens — ‘that’s not what I taught you’ — and parents criticize because of their discomfort — ‘why can’t you do what you’re told like your classmates?’

This reticence to allow our kids to stand apart and separate themselves from the herd has long term consequences.

All the successful people I know are not herd members; they don’t spend their life trying to be like everyone else — they don’t believe that copying what others do is relevant and useful to adding value in the world.

Let’s give our kids an early start on what I consider to be the most critical element of success: the capability to exploit differences rather than the mentality of replicating what the crowd thinks.

How about a class topic once a month on ‘What one thing could I do that is different from what we have been taught?’ Have fun with the topic. Teach kids that it’s ok to step out and be special.

Reading — writing — arithmetic competency is the baseline for developing our kids, without which they will likely never reach their full potential.

Helping others — continuous learning — being different — questioning — thinking outside the lines, on the other hand, represents the capabilities they need to standout from others and be successful.

Cheers
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

‘Audacious’ is my latest…

• Posted 12.27.21 at 05:17 am by Roy Osing
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October 11, 2021

Why the best people to execute new ideas are ‘double-downers’

Source: Pexels

Why the best people to execute new ideas are ‘double-downers’.

Why successful people don’t take NO! for an answer.

What happens when someone tells you “No”?

“No” to your application for a job.
“No” to a proposal you’ve submitted to your boss.
“No” to a new product idea.
“No” to added functionality to the Chatbot feature on your website.
“No” to the vacation suggestion you’ve offered to your partner.

I’ve seen 3 typical responses to this classic dilemma: Retreat — Hover & Meander — Double Down.

#1. Retreat — do you walk away licking your wounds?

In my experience, the most common response is the person holding the genius simply backs off, believing that since their idea was rebuffed, it was a bad idea.

Or that to pursue the matter any further isn’t worth the emotional trouble they would likely endure by going another round of pitching and trying to convince the other person that their idea has merit and is the rightful owner of the podium.

I’ve never been a fan of this approach.

First of all, it implies to me that the owner of the bright idea really isn’t all that committed to it. It’s like they’ve lobbed their position up in the air to see if it would fly and since it didn’t, they are ok with the rejection outcome.

In addition, backing off is another way of saying that the owner has no passion for their ideas. Perhaps their mind—and not their heart—owns it, and if that’s the case it’s easy to rationalize why they should accept defeat.

The lack of spirit around their idea is foreshadowing of a future problem as well if it came to implementing it.
Execution happens when emotion and passion are in play, not when the intellect is active.

As the recipient of the proposal, my conclusion when the owner backs off after rejection, is their idea would never see the light of day anyway, so justice is served.

#2. Hover & Meander — are you willing to incrementally change your idea and meander around it until you negotiate a compromise with the other person?

This is the response most often advocated by academics and experts of conflict management: the search for common ground upon which a compromise can be built.

When have you ever witnessed a crowd do anything remarkable?

Unbelievably amazing ideas NEVER result from a negotiation process. They are begotten from someone’s soul and stand the test of time to thwart rejection and, I’d needed, force fed to non-acceptors and unbelievers.

The compromiser isn’t my favourite person for a number of reasons:

✔️ they’re ok with a watered-down—‘hold-your-nose’—solution but in my experience don’t really apply themselves to implementing it because it lacks the lustre of their original thought.
✔️ they’re totally driven by logic and lack the emotional element necessary to do anything with their insight even if others agreed with it.
✔️ their willingness to find common ground is tantamount to allowing the crowd to be the prime influence on their idea. They are ok with becoming a member of the herd of average thinkers and allowing them to have a say (with the belief that herd members would then be committed to supporting the implementation of your morphed idea—rarely the case).

When the herd owns the idea, nothing magic happens.

✔️ they are empirical evidence that the drive to be truly innovative and different in one’s thinking can be shut down by the crowd, and that’s an issue for me.
✔️ The compromiser is forced to ‘round the corners’ of their original idea in order to feed the herd and thus the remarkability of their seed is lost.
✔️ When the holder-of-originality says of a crowd-influenced change ‘I’m ok with the new version’, they lose a certain amount of their drive to find new, interesting and different ideas — compromise reduces the innovation process.

When the crowd is the influence, average happens.

#3. Double Down — do you take a step back, take a deep breath and have another go at trying to convince the other person of the worth of your idea?

This response to being told ‘NO!’ is for the person offering original thought to stay in the moment and keep trying to sell their idea until either they win or they finally are beaten into submission (really response #1 after prolonged debate).

It’s ironic to me that the pundits favour compromise and yet the amazing ideas most often come from a vision and polarized thinking.

Elson Musk, Sir Richard Branson and Steve Jobs are/were polarized thinkers whose genius never touched a crowd.

We need to be teaching people how to advance their ideas with a minimum of crowd intervention rather than teaching them how to water down their ideas by taking the input from the masses.

We need more ‘Double Downers’ in the world; here’s why:

✔️ pushing for groundbreaking progress should be the priority these days, not looking for compromise. Climate change solutions, for example, require polarized holistic thinking not biased thinking based on how the needed change will impact us personally.
✔️ we need stronger innovators—more double-downers—given the rapid changes we’re experiencing in the world and the unexpected body blows that we have to deal with along the way.

We need to teach people how to push forward and learn the new skills necessary to advance their new ideas.

Double-down learning must take precedence over compromise teaching.

✔️ implementing anything new is an arduous job and it requires a champion to lead it. The Double-downer, because they are emotionally all in with their idea makes the best implementer. As mentioned before, the passive compromiser is less willing to push implementation to the limit.
✔️ double-downers require resilience and strong character, a trait we need more of in our organizations and lives. So let’s do what we can to breed people with this competency rather than dilute it by asking them to compromise themselves and find the lowest common denominator.
✔️ like it or not, achieving anything worthwhile today requires a high pain threshold to navigate a compelling thought through the maze of critics that sit in judgement of it.
Double-downers have assumed ‘pain absorption’ as a skill they must develop to see their creativity through to successful completion.

Double-downers have a reticence to submit; we need more not fewer of them.

✔️ double-downers have developed the uncanny skill of making their idea so compelling that they more often make the sale than lose it.

This is fundamental to audacious leadership where the leader makes the call after gathering input (which they may or may not heed) and is able to convince everyone around them that their direction is absolutely the right one to take.

Double-downers may not always be viewed as the nice, socially acceptable, politically correct persona to advance a creative agenda, but they get the things done that need to be done.

We need them.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

‘Audacious’ is my latest…

• Posted 10.11.21 at 05:18 pm by Roy Osing
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