The Shift: Take the Reins of Your Career

The companies are fighting an uphill battle at getting employees in when they are most needed (Just-In-Time Hiring) and keeping them motivated and engaged:

A global Gallup survey found that at the average big firm only 33% of employees describe themselves as fully engaged in their work, 49% say they are not engaged and 18% say they are “actively disengaged”.

Yet, I am not totally convinced that it is solely the organization that should bear the burden of fostering engagement. The employees are just as responsible for making their jobs exciting and meaningful.

Last month The Economist published a special report My Big Fat Career where the key ideas are

• The workplace is changing; information on employers and employees is balancing off; and you need to learn how to play the information battles

• Invest in your own development

• Stick with the right people

No question about this: workers have to take responsibility for their own future. For many the mantra will be "continuous learning, continuous learning, continuous learning". However, educational institutions from nursery schools up to universities are doing a poor job at instilling the idea of life-long learning. Most educational systems are built on two theories:

• The Pickle Theory: a cucumber put in marinade has no other choice but to pickle, and
• The Squirrel Theory: you should get your mushrooms and nuts now (get the knowledge!), maybe you will need in later in winter (when the crisis comes).

 So how do we prepare ourselves? If nobody really cares about our long-term career success either because of ignorance, powerlessness or lack of interest, it is you personally against the dragons. Fortunately, there are many who would help - help is often given to those who seek and those who deserve.

There is one thinker, author, professor and inspirational speaker that I would like to mention in this regard. In her book “The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here”  Lynda Gratton of the London Business School talks about the changes that we need to make in ourselves to create value-add jobs that we will enjoy.

According to Ms Gratton, people will also have to invest more in their personal “social capital”, which will involve three elements:

1. First, build yourself a “posse”, a small group of up to 15 people they can turn to when the going gets rough. They should have some expertise in common, have built up trust in each other and be able to work effectively together.

2. Second, you need a “big-ideas crowd” who can keep you mentally fresh. This echoes the discussion of “managed serendipity” in last year’s business bestseller, “The Power of Pull”, in which John Hagel and John Seely Brown argued that the successful worker of the future will live in clusters of talented, open-minded people and spend a lot of time going to thought-provoking conferences.

3. Third, you need a “regenerative community” to maintain your emotional capital, meaning family and friends in the real world “with whom you laugh, share a meal, tell stories and relax”.

Listen to Lynda talking about her new book and get inspired. Stop whining a-la "they don't appreciate me" and start paving your own road to happiness.

Tough Day: Prudential Momentum assessment (Part 2)

As the Heathrow Express (nearly said Hogwarts Express…) is carrying me away from London, I would like to ponder on the key moments that I would like to take away from the last day, the day of my assessment for the Prudential Momentum Program. Yes, by the end of the day I was completely exhausted, but energized at the same time. It is a weird feeling of when physically your body is tired, but the level of excitement refuses to go – it happens when you work on exciting but challenging projects, undergo strenuous assessment or get married, I suppose.

The day of assessment brought me what was promised by Prudential and they worked hard on sticking to the time and ensuring that the schedule runs as planned. Two interviews (one business and one HR), a case preparation, individual and group exercises on that case and a peer feedback session at the end. As I mentioned yesterday, only 1% of the applications make it to the assessment center, so that was a motivational factor repeated several times as a kind of morale boost during the pep talks we had at the beginning of the day. The ratio candidatate:assessor of 1:1 also suggested that we were in for some serious stuff. Over coffee I had a chance to ask around about the backgrounds of the folks I would have to go through the day with – mostly British, mostly Finance and (a point in my favor) not MBAs.

The pace of the day does not leave you time for a leisurely comfort break and the lunch is tightly squeezed between assignments. This is also an exercise in managing your time properly, because the amount of information you have to process does not allow you make a thorough analysis of everything, so prioritization is important. Without disclosing the contents that much, here is an overview of the tasks that I went through:

• Business Interview: probably, the easiest part for me. We had a nice chat about my past work experiences with a guy who used to work for Shell, so it was easy to connect and draw on common experiences. In general, I find it very beneficial to find commonalities with the person who interviews you and try to establish a stronger personal bond. I know that it’s trying to skew the scales to my side using the similarity bias, and it does not work at all times, but hey – in love and war… 
• HR Interview: something new for me professionally – a semi-structured interview that is built to gather information about your personality through the experiences you had in the past. It’s narrative-based and there is a lot of latitude for the candidate to talk. I am always a bit wary of talking too much in such occasions. 
• Case Preparation: I was given a bunch of materials about a company and a specific business task. I am not sure if there is a variety of cases and one is selected to ensure that none of the candidates had explicit work experience in that particular industry, but at least that was the case with our group. One hour is enough to prepare for the individual and the group part of the exercise, but yet time is a scarce resource. One piece of advice – brush up your SWOT skills. Otherwise, it’s very similar to any case you would have at a business school, with financials and whole lot of other data cryptically scattered around. 
• Individual Presentation: you have to present back to a panel of assessors the results of the case preparation using any materials available. Even shorter time is allocated for their questions, but the questions are on the spot and some of those were quite unanticipated. 
• Group Exercise: the longest exercise of the day. The group (8 people in my instance) has to arrive at a unanimous decision around a business problem. Only three pieces of advice: collaboration, collaboration and collaboration. My personal challenge was, as usual, balancing not talking excessively but yet being heard and making a good impressing on the assessors. In the feedback session I got some positive comments on how I had done it. 
• Peer Feedback: to my utmost delight, this part was built in the official outline of the day – it is rather uncommon for events like that and it sends a strong message that the company is committed to personal growth of its employees, if it chooses to spend the assessors’ time on conducting those sessions during the assessment center. Mind that there will be official feedback provided at a later stage once the assessors’ opinions are aggregated and the hiring decision is made. This exercise is presented as a chance for the assessors to observe our abilities to give and receive feedback, but personally for me it was more important to hear from my partner how I came across throughout the day. 

It was also a great opportunity to meet the Prudential employees and ask them questions about the company, its culture, working there and their instant feedback on how they perceive you fitting in. Unfortunately, there was only one “momentee” but I did have a long chat with him about his experiences (at the expense of a larger chunk of my lunch though). Even though the time is limited, there are numerous occasions for networking and we all know that sometimes a rightly placed question can get you further than a full-hour interview.

I was promised the feedback and the decision within about 10 days. A bit long for my personal liking, but this is another indication that this whole process is taken seriously at Prudential. Indeed, this was a rewarding experience and irrespective of what the results will be, I am grateful I have gone through the process and already have learnt a lot.

It's a small but connected world - Prudential Momentum assessment (Part 1)

It's a small world we are living in - I think we have established that. Yet, every time I keep getting surprised when this proves itself over and over again.

Today was my big Prudential day: I went through the whole assessment center procedure as a part of the Prudential Momentum Program. We were congratulated early on that only 1% of all the applications make it to the assessment center, so everything I am going to be talking about below pertains to the 8 candidates and 8 assessors who took part in the event. I'll write about how it went a bit later and when I have more time, but just for now - how incredible is that:

• the Momentum manager is my ex-Shell colleague who used to be the HR offshoring project manager and was my contact in the Hague in the times when I was the HR Services Lead for Russia;
• one of the assessors held a short-term position in the Tax department in Shell Downstream;
• another assessor worked for Unilever - a company, which plant I am visiting later this week;
• I got a chance to talk in Afrikaans to another assessor because she comes from my beloved Pretoria;
• one of the 8 candidates graduated from the MBA program in IE just four months ago;
• another candidate is Russian and worked at Salym, a Shell JV I used to work with;
• yet another candidate comes from Romania and speaks fluent Russian.

The morale of the story is clear: the world is getting so interconnected that you need to take care of your reputation irrespective of where you are going and what you are doing, as you never know whom you are going to meet just around the corner in a place you least expect the encounter!

Life in Graphs

Who doesn't like graphs? Pie-charts, curves, 3-D, shaded areas... they are cool and they are so easy to hide behind, because people trust charts. Really: you can put together a 5-page report and they still won;t be convinced, but as soon as you pull up a graph, the audience is yours. We are such suckers for visual information nowadays. Well, the attention span has decreased in general to the size of a tea spoon, hence no song longer than 4 minutes or an e-mail longer than half a page. Why was I telling you this? Ah yes - back to graphs. I have got an e-mail from a friend (thank you, Bruce), which intended to heighten my spirits, and it did. After I laughed for a few minutes, I actually started realizing how seriously true those charts were, and now I am going to share a couple of them with you.

1. Home gym. When we buy something like this we give ourselves promises. Nearly New Year resolutions. Signed in blood. Breaded and dusted. What happens a few days later? It's like with children and puppies. Your kid will cry your brain out that he or she wants a little doggie, and will call you the best dad/mom in the world the moment you buy the craved pet. Two weeks later you will have to walk the poor creature yourself. Attention span is not to blame in this instance, but rather the desire for novelty, which is rapidly becoming the plague of the 21st century. It is the desire for novelty that makes us buy more and more, transforming us into a consumer society. Also, we want everyone to know that you have just bought the latest home gym, so consumption must be conspicuous, otherwise it's less fun. Thus, next time you go shopping, make sure those D&G letters are really big and are featured in a prominent place on the piece of clothing you so ardently wish to possess.

2. Lemons and Facebook. I have already posted a number of blogs on Social Media and 2.0 applications. Consider how dependent we are becoming on those seemingly innocent websites: LinkedIn (now you are almost expected to have a full page there with recommendations and professional societies mentioned in order to land a good job), Facebook (if you are not there, you are risking to miss all the cool events, friends' updates, and more often people consult Facebook for contact information of their connections) or Twitter (the best web marketing tool ever). Is it going to get worse? And by "worse" I mean "better". No, I guess I mean "worse".

3. Vibrating friends. We are surrounded by gadgets. There is not a single meeting/class/dinner/picnic/bull run that I have attended, where there would not be anything beeping, zooming, ringing, stroking or vibrating. It is haunting, really. Well, my ring tone is haunting too (Vertu - the best!), but in a good way. Have you noticed how many times people check their Blackberries, iPhones, youPhones and other pieces of technology to see if someone still remembers of their existence in this universe. Maybe global connection is in fact total disconnection and the only thing left that is real is the broadband?

Networks vs Friendships

It is harder to make friends when you need them.

I don't think it can be said any better. From the first day I joined IE I have been told over and over again that we must work on our networks. Now I am not sure about my middle name any more. It used to be Powerpoint; time to change it to Network? First it would be great to define for myself what networking is and why should everyone go out and engage with people we don't know and not necessarily like.

Have you ever thought why would Margaret Thatcher write 700 of "thank you" notes to all those who helped her get elected for the first Cabinet position? Well, she was in her early 30s at the time with lots of vigor and enthusiasm, but surely there were other things to do. Taking care of the twins, for instance. Still, it was more about the personal connection and acknowledgement of contributions made by other people. It was going an extra mile. It was distinguishing, and distinguished she was. Networks helped her get where she was in the first place, survive there during the first tough years and eventually get straight to the top.

Now, what if we don't aspire to me Margaret Thatchers? Small and comfortable lives are more we can hope for and ambitions of the big and apparently dirty world of politics are somewhat foreign to our world view. But who will give you advice on the best way to spend your holiday or inform you of the latest developments in the local grocery store? We tend to build networks around our interests, areas of affiliation or geographies. While it is not the best way to leverage your networks, it is a start and I have not seen anyone without at least some kind of a network. If such people exist, I would not recommend allowing them in public unsupervised.

How friendships are different? Are they different? Are they part of the networks? Guess the difference will be seem much clearer when it comes to asking favors. Then I like the metaphor of a bank account. Imagine that you have a bank account where you deposit your time and efforts. The return on investment and the interest rates with friends are high and sometimes unmeasurable, just because friends don't think in terms of a favor budget. With networks it is slightly different, just because from the very beginning you know that you establish a connection with a long-term plan to get something out of it. Those people will expect to get something out of you too. Thus, the major difference is as old as this world - it is the price of cheese in a mousetrap.

Social Networks and Marketing

Consider the following facts:

1995: the first social network is born - classmates.com
2004: Facebook appears with 1 mln users
2007: 50 mln users on Facebook
2008: 100 mln
2009: 350 mln
today: over 400 mln unique Facebook users

• Facebook.com is 6th most visited site in the world with 300 mln unique users each month
• 10% of total time spent on the Internet is in social networks
• 3.3 full years of videos is viewed on YouTube every day
• 40 mln messages is being exchanged on Twitter every day
• March 2010: Facebook beat Google in the number of unique visitors

What is the secret of popularity of social networks? Maybe some geographical segmentation will provide us with some insights. Spain is # 7 in the world when it comes to using social networks (by unique users and traffic) and #1 in Europe. Spain numbers:

• Facebook: 8 mln users
• Tuenti: 25% more traffic than on Google
• Twitter: 3rd country in the world by traffic

Does it mean that people in Spain prefer cyberactivity to going out and have a great time partying and chatting to friends? No way! This is one of the most sociable countries I have even been to. So what is this compensation in communication about? People don't spend time on the web just for the heck of it. There must be something bigger, more cruel, more addictive than merely reading up the updates on each other's profiles.

The emotional link people form with social networks is enormous. It sucks you in like a huge funnel and it is difficult to get out. You go about checking different electronic media in search of updates. You don't check you e-mail just because you feel like typing in your user ID and password. Well, maybe some people derive some sort of deviant pleasure from the process, but most of us do it to see if there is anything new the world has to convey to them. Aha! So that's what we are looking for - information. Same old trick. That's why newspapers are printed and TV programs are made. The world is still hungry for information but the distribution channels have changed. We are moving from the search mode (Google age) to the social mode (Facebook age). From statics to dynamics. In other words, 

instead of past orientation (origin) we reorient ourselves towards future orientation (destination). In terms of positive psychology, we co-create the reality ourselves in an emergent way by being part of these vast social groups. It makes us feel important. It links us stronger to the world. It makes us feel connected. Perception defines reality.

That all would have been fine, had it not been for evil marketers. They were among the first ones to spot the migration patters of information exchange behaviors and moved to social networks together with the rest of civilized world. Think about the types of contextual ads you see on your Twitter or Facebook pages. The sociodemographic information that you have shared with that particular network (age, location, languages you speak, interests, etc) is being traded behind your back to get your attention as a customer. Alternatively, how many funny ads (pictures, videos and audio files) get shared with you either via a social network or e-mail? Remember Will It Blend from my previous post? It's funny, it's just too good not to pass on. That is exactly what the companies want from you.

Another example. One of your friends bought a product. Let's say a Philips grooming system. When people are happy (and proud) of their new acquisitions, they want everyone to know about it. Thus, they would twit or change status or post an update that they are the proud owners of the new fantastic multi-functional Philips grooming system. Whom would you trust more - a commercial, a salesman or your friend (even if it is a virtual friend, but you sort of believe that it is a real person)? The answer is obvious and that is why social networks are a lucrative playground for marketers. 

There are some "cool" brands like Google or Apple, but most of brands are plain boring, and that's where the major battles take place - promoting "boring" brands via social network. Let's see what we have in the Hall of Fame:

• Dell - the brand that has most followers on Twitter (more than 1.5 mln)
• Obama - 7 mln friends on Facebook and 3 mln on Twitter
• Reto Special K (Kellog's) - ROI doubled after their Facebook campaign
• IKEA - Facebook Showroom - this is really cool, let's watch it 

Now, it's time for Hall of Shame or how social networks can significantly damage your business:

• Dell Hell - negative popularity the company got as a result of ignoring a post by an influential blogger
• Taco Bell - the story about rats in this popular eating establishment in New York has sliced off a good chunk of customers. This video on YouTube was viewed by more than 1.2 mln people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su0U37w2tws
• ExxonMobil on Twitter - the brand "hijacked" by an impersonator on Twitter
• Nestle Killer - social network campaign against Nestle for using palm oil in their products
• The Streisand Phenomenon - my favorite singer deserves a phenomenon on her own, but this one was of somewhat a negative nature

Conclusions. Social networks are already deeply ingrained into our daily lives. Playing "I'm above it" part will leave you on the curb. Spending hours on Facebook (unless you work for them) is from the area of sociopathy. Finding the balance and leveraging on the opportunities provided will help you to move through this Homo Informaticus stage. There are perils on the way. There are privacy concerns. There are ethics concerns. Even before you go to an interview, a recruiter will google your name. And of course the greatest peril: what do you do when you get a message: "Your mother-in-law" wants to be friends with you on Facebook"?

This post was inspired by David Gracia's lecture: "Oportunidades de Marketing en Redes Sociales"

Social Networks

What is it today with all these Web 2.0 novelties? The world is going crazy. Think a couple of years back, when there was no Facebook, or Twitter, or Tuenti, or LinkedIn. What did we do? Right - we went out and met our friends, or called them up on the phone. And those were real friends. I am looking at my friends count on Facebook, which is already over 400 and I am thinking - are they real friends or some type of cyber-perversion of reality and they don't exist in real life?

You are somehow forced into that vertigo of social networks and the institutions you belong to force you, either implicitly (you are missing out of events or you might find everyone talking about something you have no idea about because you are not privy to that particular Facebook group) or explicitly, like this announcement for all IE students/professors/affiliates to join whatever social networks available:
http://alumninews.blogs.ie.edu/2010/05/ie-alumni-social-media-2.html.

LinkedIn has integrated the TypePad application, which reposts your blogs onto the home LinkedIn page, so that you can see your connections' new blogs posts when you sign in. Information is being spread so rapidly that it feels like it a virus. I start thinking whether the value of the information itself then gets eroded. What's the point of possessing a piece of information if it is shared with the whole world and therefore no longer can be used as your competitive advantage. I am going off on a tangent here and maybe it is worthwhile to talk about differences between information as "stuff" and information as "ideas" and their respective weight. Still, coming back to the topic of this post, why does information gets spread so rapidly across the network?

Let's make an experiment - watch the following video and tell me (honestly!): would you want to forward it onto your friends?