Writing on careers - by Horwitz, Woolever, Hoffman, Cashnocha & Yeh

There's been a few interesting pieces of writing I've come across over the past month that dealt with the subject of careers & work, each piece doing so in a very distinct way.

On writing as a career, there was the fascinating New York Times opinion piece "I Was a Digital Best Seller!" by Tony Horwitz a month ago. In it, the author wrote of his experience in online publishing and how the exciting new digital world of the writer not all he dreamed of.

Also a few weeks ago was "From Botanical Gardens Intern to Anthony Bourdain’s Assistant" for The Billfold. Written by Laurie Woolever, it's a remarkable first-person walk through Woolever's career and all its twists, turns, ups and downs.

The third piece to note here isn't traditional writing, but rather a slideshow about the new book The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age from LinkedIn Founder and CEO Reid Hoffman and his co-authors Ben Cashnocha and Chris Yeh. One idea from the book that's covered in the slides is how employers and employees should focus on a mutually beneficial relationship based on what each gets from working together and the knowledge that the working relationship won't continue if no longer mutually beneficial to both parties. This approach of "we're both benefiting for now" is in opposition to the idea of employees feeling a company owes them jobs or companies viewing an employee as disloyal if they leave for another job.

Again, each of these pieces very different than the other two, but there's fascinating stuff in all three.

One thing that reading these makes me think of is in relation to my own career I feel good having this blog and three books compiled from it as a body of work. I'd rather have my career progress and work opportunities come from what I've done rather than what I say I can do and the blog is as much if not more of a representation of what I've done than my education or actual work experience.

"The Startup of You" by Reid Hoffman & Ben Casnocha

Following on the heels of recent good books with career guidance I've seen, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman co-wrote with Ben Casnocha The Startup of You. It's a solid read with quite a bit around people being solely responsible for their career... regardless of whether they're entrepreneurs or an employee.



There's a lot that could be gleamed from the book with the principle ideas I took away from each chapter noted below...

Chapter 1: All humans are entrepreneurs
To the idea behind the chapter title, point is made in the book that the business strategies of successful startup companies often mirror strategies employed by successful people in a career.

Chapter 2: Develop a competitive advantage
Hoffman and Casnocha write about how one's career strategy should be a combination of (A) their assets, (B) aspirations and (C) market realities. Additionally, they cover the importance of someone developing a competitive career advantage (and being able to describe it)... with it oftentimes best to have that advantage or focus area as narrow as possible (an idea I've seen written about previously).

Chapter 3 - Plan to adapt
An idea put forth in the book is people should start to do the things they find interesting and see where it goes, but do so within a framework. To this point, Hoffman & Casnocha describe "ABZ planning"... with A as what someone is doing now, B what they pivot to, and Z their fallback career option. Its also noted that this Z planning can mean the worst case scenario to a career move often isn't that terrible (another idea I've previously noted others writing on).

Chapter 4 - It takes a network
Casnocha and of course Hoffman believe in the idea of LinkedIn as a facilitation tool towards a larger principle of network building and usage... with a focus on genuine networks built around helping rather than simply a focus on what can be gained from a relationship. They note that this network strengthening can come from simply putting oneself out there through regular sharing on social networks. In terms of benefit that might eventually result from this network building and helping others, the authors note how its often not first, but second or third level connections (as shown on LinkedIn) that get people jobs.

Chapter 5 - Pursue breakout opportunities
Two ideas out of this chapter are to look for networks of interesting people and to budget time for personal improvement... or network/relationship development.

Chapter 6 - Take intelligent risks
Interesting concept from this chapter was around developing a strategy of small risk taking to help prevent big risks from occurring or feeling so large... i.e. small fires prevent the large burn.

Chapter 7 - Who you know is what you know
Last chapter before the Conclusion contains the idea that it's the management of information that really counts (with LinkedIn Signal as a tool to use). Additionally noted is the value of being a go to person in a particular area... which brings to mind the aforementioned idea of going narrow in focus / competitive advantage development.

Overall it was an excellent read and the website Startup of You has an additional resources section which includes an executive summary of the book as well as PDF of LinkedIn usage tips.

Fast Company Magazine - 100 Most Creative People in Business

In it's June 2010 issue Fast Company published it's annual list of the "100 Most Creative People in Business".



I expected to find it of interest after there being tons of good content (and people covered) in the 2009 iteration (posted about and linked to here) and found that this issue didn't disappoint. One interesting thing about the content is FC made the editorial decision to not feature anyone that has been previously profiled in the magazine (much less a prior "100 MCPiB" type person).

For reasons known only to me (nah, actually for reasons that I'll note here), below are the people and stories of those people that stood out:

#17 - Reid Hoffman - Founder and Chairman of LinkedIn. Profile features quotes from him that "people need to run their careers like real businesses" and in speaking of entrepreneurs... "I want to know that they care about people more broadly than themselves."

#21 - Josh Sapan - CEO of Rainbow Media... the umbrella company over AMC (which brought viewers "Breaking Bad" and "Mad Men") and IFC. Interesting piece for it's mention of Sapan's outside interests... including being a published poet. I gotta be impressed with a corporate exec with such a creative bent.

#26 - "Shmuel "Mooly" Eden - VP/GM at Intel. Cool from the perspective of Eden's focus on consumer use of future technology.

#53 - Soraya Darabi - Product Lead for Drop.io. She got the cover of this FC issue and at 23 was responsible for social media marketing at The New York Times and now at 26 helps lead the efforts of Drop.io in the field of cloud data storage and sharing. Would be fascinating to know both how she landed the gig at the NYT and what she did to be successful there.

#60 - Fred Wilson - Venture Capitalist. Have heard of Wilson previously through his widely read blog A VC. Very cool this concept of transparency about what you're doing in business.

#68 - Caterina Fake - Past founder of Flickr and now Hunch. I find very interesting the idea behind Hunch... basically a recommendation engine that pulls from the likes and dislikes of over 1.5 million users to help guide said recommendations.

#69 - Charlene Li - Founder of Altimeter Group and social media guru type... and author of the book "Groundswell: Winning In a World Transformed By Social Technologies". Yep, she definitely had me at "social media" and "author"...

#73 - Scott Belsky - Founder and CEO of Behance... a platform designed to bring together creatives and people looking for said creative talent. FC piece includes mention of the Behance "Action Method" project management product/system/way to help get stuff done.

Also from this issue, but not the 100 Most Creative list (though it seems he at least a candidate) was this short piece on Aviv Hadar... the 25 year old Portland resident behind the web design studio Think Brilliant.

All in all, lots of really interesting stuff from Fast Company this past month.