Standing Out in a Sea of Sameness

The Start-Up of You by Reid Hoffman & Ben Casnocha

The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself and Transform Your Career by Reid Hoffman & Ben Casnocha.

So much change: education, jobs and careers along with related transition between them. Authors Reid and Ben (R&B) suggest that to navigate in the new world of work, we tap into our inner entrepreneur and adopt the start-up mindset along with the its necessary skills. Basically, it's our job as individuals to take responsibility for our work and career and sail our own ship. 

B & R devote the first chapter to setting up the change and where we are today. They liken the demise of Detroit to where our careers could be now or are going to. And then they describe the Silicone Valley way:

Take intelligent and bold risks to accomplish something great. Build a network of alliances to help you with intelligence, resources and collective action. Pivot to breakout opporunity.

The Silicone Valley way is the essence of the entreprenuerial way. The lads suggest applying it to our career. And the rest of the book is about just that.

Develop a Competitve Advantage

In order to survive and thrive, we need to be able to stand out from every Tom, Dick and Sally. The way to do that is found at the nexus of our, assets, aspirations / values and market realities. 

Assets - We have two types. Hard and soft.

1. Hard - Our money and physical possesions
2. Soft - Our knowledge, connections, skills, brand, strengths, etc

Our asset mix is not set in stone. It's up to us to develop them.

Aspirations / Values 

1. Aspirations - Our deepest wishes, ideas and goals.
2. Values - What is important in our life.

Our Pole Star - Like navigating by the North Star, our Pole Star is a combination of our aspirations and values and helps to keep us on track. 

The authors talk about how our identity emerges as opposed to us digging inside to uncover some hidden and yet-to-be identified meaning. I love this part. Thinking about how way leads onto way, our aspirations are actually changed by our actions and experiences, according to the lads. 

The Market Realities

This is being real. Are people willing to pay money and or attention for your products and services? We can have unlimited passion and we can be really, really good at something, but if the market isn't willing to pay we're going to have a problem.

P 40 - Reid digs informational interviews.

P 42 - Matt Cohler and the importance of being a wingman.

P 42 - LinkedIn's founding belief - Individuals should own and manage their identities.

Plan to Adapt

If you were to ask me about important books in my life, I say What Color is Your Parachute? ranks high on my list. R&B illustrate how the primary purpose of this and other career advice books doesn't work today as we sail in a sea of chaos. The primary message of Parachute and other similar books is to listen to your heart and follow your passion. Create a mission and then develop a long term plan for its implementation. A fine plan for the 1960 or 70's. Not today.

Today, survival and thrival depend on our ability to plan, move forward, read the environment, tinker / adjust, move forward, repeat. In other words, adapt.

ABZ Planning - R&B's methodology to adapting.

1. Plan A - What you're doing now. You learn and iterate regularly.
2. Plan B - What you pivot to change course.
3. Plan Z - Your fallback position. If everything you're doing now falls apart, Plan Z is what you fallback to.

Learn - If business start-ups do not learn, they die. Simple as that. Same for you and your potential career. 

Do - Arguably the heart and soul message of The Start-Up of You. The lads say, "...actions not plans, generate lessons that help you test your hypotheses against reality."  

This is where Parachute takes the other fork in the river. As much as I love Dick Bolles and his teachings, I'm following R&B down their river channel*. Basically we can put great effort into planning our route, even build in contingencies. But once the ship gets into a part of the river that you had not anticipated, or realized that you were too far down the wrong channel, you're at a disadvantage. 

If instead, you just Do, just sail down your channel, and learn / make adjustments as you go, you're in a far better position to reap the benefits of your chosen path (not to mention how much you learned along the way).

P 64 - Maintain an Identity Separate from Specific Employers - Precious, precious advice!

p 76 - Create your own personal career policy. Explore, discover, learn, develop and cultivate an interest outside of your day job. R&B look at this as what could evolve into your Plan B. I view this as something you do when Exploring.

It Takes a Network

R&B:

What you are doing - what you should be doing - is establishing a diverse team of allies and advisors with whom you grow over time.

And if we need another way to view networking - cause of its association with sliminess, we've only to look at P 91: Build Genuine Relationships. The lads suggest we see the world from the other person's persepective and to think how we might be able to help and collaborate with them - as opposed to sizing up the other person and what we can get from them.

Our network consists of professional allies, weak ties and acquaintances. 

Professional Ties - This is someone we go to for regular advice; share and collaborate on opportunities together and as an ally, someone we promote to others.

Weak Ties & Acquaintances - People who we don't spend that much time with but we do connect with them on occasion. 

The fascinating subject of weak ties was covered by sociologist Mark Granovetter in a 1973 paper titled The Strength of Weak Ties. Malcolm Gladwell cited Granovetter's research in his book The Tipping Point.

Here's the thing about weak ties. If you have weak ties with people in your field, they are not particularly valuable. Why? Because you're likely to have access to the same knowledge, resources and connections that they have. Weak ties' value increases when they transcend your industry. 

How many people can you stay effectively connected with? On P 108, R&B cite Robin Dunbar and the magic number of 150.

P 111 - The lads talk about six degrees of separation and both Stanley Milgram and Duncan Watts's related work. They say that connecting with people who are within three degrees of you is most effective. Based on Reid's affiliation with LinkedIn, I'd say they are speaking from experienece here.

R&B:

The value and strength of your network are not represented in the number of contacts in your address book. What matters are your alliances, the strength and diversity of your trust connections, the freshness of the information flowing through your network, the breadth of your weak ties and the ease with which you can reach your second or third-degree connections.

In order to strengthen our network, we must do things for others. This is about sharing knowledge, wisdom and ideas in addition to connecting people who could be of value to each other. For further insight into this I recommend the most excellent book Give and Take by Adam Grant.

The Start-Up of You

The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself and Transform Your Career by Reid Hoffman & Ben Casnocha. I need to review this book but I don't have to wait till then to tell you; this is a must read! I missed this book's launch by one year due in part to my narrow view of LinkedIn. Although I've been a member of the LinkedIn community since nearly its inception, I viewed it more of a place to go and get a job than that of a relationship building community. The Start-up of You shines a beacon of light on relationship building and the near limitless value of LinkedIn.

The value of The Start-up of You to Standing Out in a Sea of Sameness can best be summed up by its relativity to this blog's categories. It pertains to every single one here.

The Start-up of You Resource Page

 

 

What is the Standing Out in a Sea of Sameness Facebook Page About? (Retired version)

In the days before we became a connected planet, we learned from our parents and our elders. We listened to their stories; we learned how to hunt, fish, grow crops, cook and make pottery. We added our experience and made our own stories which we then taught to our children. Along the way we learned how to solve problems, make stuff, make stuff better and make stuff that pleased us. We also learned that when dealing with others if we did this, or we behaved this way, then we got that. So if we wanted others to listen to us, if we wanted them to buy our stuff or if we wanted them to tell others about us, we behaved and did things a certain way.

Standing out in a Sea of Sameness is where Explorers come to learn about storytelling, to learn how to solve problems, make new stuff and make stuff better and more pleasing by developing a mindset and following a process. It's about how to stand out from their peers.

 Standing out in a Sea of Sameness's methodology is based on:

• Storytelling
• Brand Light
• Design Thinking

Storytelling

You are the orchestra's director. It's your job to make your own kind of music. Music comes from stories and it's your job to seek out storytellers who will add to your music. When you talk with a business owner, a professor or someone in your future field, you have access to their story.  If their story resonates with you, it becomes a chair in your orchestra. The music begins to blossom as the chairs in your orchestra diversify. As you add your own life experiences, your own stories, your music evolves into a symphony of its own.

Brand Light

My concept of branding as it relates to the individual, originates in Tom Peters' 1997 Fast Company article titled The Brand Called You: http://goo.gl/bDlG 

Your brand is that gut feeling that people have about you. While you can't totally control how others feel about you, you can behave in such a way that people think favorably of you. How? Be a caring human being.

Personal branding (popular term) gurus teach by relating commercial branding terms like brand assessment, strategy, attributes, audit, positioning and target to the individual. They encourage the person to figure out who they are and who they want to be, create a public persona and then communicate it to a desired audience in a consistent manner. Most of what I've read on personal branding is excellent and if adhered to, will help the individual to establish their brand. For the Explorer who is busting their tail on course work, has a job and is involved in student organizations, it's a bit much. Afterall, you want to do all of that and still have a life, have fun.

My suggestions for building a desirable brand are much more simplistic, yet not so democratic. For instance, I suggest adopting three personal values. You get to choose two. I choose integrity (for you). Building a brand while you are still in school is based on:

• What you stand for
• Values
• Communications
• Image

Design Thinking

If you want people to listen to you and to take you seriously, then you need to build your story with intent. You need to move through your educational journey consciously creating experiences, meeting people, solving problems, devising ways to improve your life and learning from it all while preparing for the road ahead. The best way to do this is to embrace a mindset and process of your own.

Traditional* design thinking is about developing solutions based on a user's needs. Potential users you might encounter in school are your professors, classmates, internship companies, employers, school admin, social media friends etc. Perhaps the most important user is yourself. And your greatest need is to get the most out of your educational experience while preparing for the road ahead and standing out from your peers.

When it comes to design thinking, the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, has created one of the most legible road maps. Use this guide to help build your own design thinking framework. Use it to tailor a process that works for you and use it now, do not wait until you graduate. Go here for Standford's d.school bootcamp bootleg: http://goo.gl/pMa5O

I look for elements of Storytelling, Design Thinking and Branding in the stories that I post-link out to on Standing Out in a Sea of Sameness' Wall. Use their ideas to spark your imagination, fuel your fire and begin to blaze your own trail.

I often refer to a segment of people as Old Adults. Here's my thinking, and it isn't anything other than: if you're not a young adult, you're an old adult. I think of it as a way to identify potential storytellers. 

*Actually there isn't anything traditional about design thinking. It's becoming a big, gnarly and unruly mass of grayness. There are as many meanings for the term as the number of times that Lindsay Lohan has been arrested. We'll continue to follow Stanford University's d.school philosophy on design thinking.

Stop by the Standing Out in a Sea of Sameness Facebook page today. Thanks!

What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20

What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 by Tina Seelig

Over a decade ago, the Stanford University School of Engineering, one of the most highly acclaimed and prestigious university programs in America, recognized that students needed an advantage in the business place. So they created the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP). It is the entrepreneurship center of the Engineering program. It strives to develop and instill the entrepreneurship skills needed to use innovation in order to solve real world problems. STVP's words more or less. I think it helps students get real with what it takes to thrive beyond the books.

In addition to teaching a class on creativity and innovation, Tina Seelig has been the executive director of  STVP for over ten years. An amalgamation of life as a teacher, entrepreneur, author, scientist and kid-on-her-own trying to make it, placed Tina in the cross-hairs of writing What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, which was based on a series of talks she began giving in 2006.

Professor Seelig states the book's goal is to provide a new lens to view obstacles encountered everyday while charting a course to the future. She goes on to use a bevy of anecdotes to support each chapter's lessons.*

Here's the thing that absolutely screams at me about this book, Stanford University and folks like Tina and those who endorsed this book, understand that in the fields of at the very least; health, technology, engineering and the environment, the typical four-year degree isn't getting it done. Students need an edge. And that's what Tina begins to address in What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20.

Here's the second thing that screams at me, students should not wait until they're in college to begin using these ideas. For instance, let's take a quick look at Tina's definition of entrepreneurship:

An entrepreneur is someone who is always on the lookout for problems that can be turned into opportunities and finds creative ways to leverage limited resources to reach their goals.

Couldn't this mindset be used by students and their parents to help identify tentative educational and career pathways...while still in middle school?

The third thing that I noticed, be it more subtle, is this book screams of design thinking without ever mentioning the ever popular buzz word - I really thought that was cool!

My last observation about Tina's work here didn't necessarily scream at me as much as it caused me to wince and double over in pain. Tina recounts a family friend whom she very much admired, totally dissing her when, as a fourteen year old, she went to him for advice. One of the most precious moments in life is when a youngster approaches an adult for advice. While I would like to see more kids take the initiative like Tina did, we as adults, need to seize and take advantage of these priceless teaching moments when they occur.

What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 should be required reading for every high schooler in the country. And also for every parent who thinks their kids might need an edge in both post-secondary education and their careers. 

*for a deeper look into Tina's lessons, check out Ewan McIntosh's most excellent review.