Harmonics

Career Progression was all so predictable in the past; when getting a good college education was followed by entering an organisation at graduate level and climbing the corporate ladder. Loyalty and hard work was rewarded with job security and building a pension over time would ensure a secure retirement. How times have changed!

We are witnessing huge change in organisations. Uncertainty has become the norm. CEO’s have never had access to as much information but find it increasingly hard to decipher a clear road map with any degree of confidence. It has never been more challenging to be a leader or an employee because the old rules for business and career success simply don’t work anymore. It’s like we have a 10,000 piece jigsaw strewn all over the floor without the cover to show us the big picture of our idealised future.

Businesses are under increased pressure from employees to provide meaningful career development and career progression. Delayering of levels means less promotion, while new activities require new skills often only supplied by new hires. The loyal employee is being marginalised by this new world of work and they need support. I also hear lots of Future of Work talks with titles like “The Rise of the Robots” warning our jobs are going to be outsourced. The talks are headline grabbing but they offer very little practical career advice for employees on how to bridge the gap to this new workplace.

 Will a robot take your job?

There is even a link on the BBC technology website to assess how susceptible your job is to being automated in the future. It is estimated about 35% of current jobs in the UK are at high risk of automation, according to a study by researchers at Oxford University and Deloitte. Surprising results show that roles such as accountants, finance, telesales roles show a 95% risk of being automated. Check out your own job title here.

One thing we can predict with certainty is that few roles will escape impact, including many in professional and managerial roles. This will have a knock on effect on career paths and the capabilities required to succeed. With so much change, there can be no fixed talent pipeline or definite career pathway. The traditional wisdom offered by senior mentors in organisations is less relevant than before because what they did simply won’t work in the new world of work. This is all new to senior business leaders too and they simply don’t have the answers.

If you are a young technology-savvy employee, you have potentially more information than your boss and more power than ever before. This is a time in your career to take more risks, explore new concepts and offer fresh thinking because you are not biased by the traditional “way we do things around here”. If your ideas get rejected at first, just keep coming back with a better business case each time. This is how you build career resilience.

So what is required to succeed? And what do I mean by the 4 Ace’s?

1. Awareness of Self

We need to become more self-aware. We need to do more work on ourselves and I don’t mean more botox!.  In an era where we will compete with outsourcing of activities to robots, we increasingly need to know our strengths and our limitations. It is not simply a battle between four different generations in the workplace, it is becoming more “human” in our dealings with ourselves and others. We have all met highly strung go-getters who treat others harshly and themselves even worse. They have forgotten what it is like to show empathy to others and to accept gratitude.

Action tip – Take the time to complete some self-awareness exercises to truly understand what makes you come alive and then start to seek projects that play to your motivational skills. The Harmonics  Career Portal, for organisations wanting to offer employees  a self-directed career management solution, has a suite of self-assessment exercises.

2. Awareness of our Environment

 We need to be keenly aware of the changing environment around us. This includes technology, globalisation and demographic changes. The era of average is over; once upon a time people used to work like robots on the factory floor in the industrialised age. We are now at the beginning of the fourth industrial revolution, but this time it is a technology revolution. We have the advantage over robots in being able to think and sense the change around us but only if we become more aware. Once we increase our awareness of the environmental changes we can adapt and reskill.

Action tip – It is your responsibility as an employee to find out more about the future world of work. Download www.flipboard.com on your mobile phone and follow channels like robots, machine learning, artificial intelligence, future of work to become more aware of the changing environment around you.

3. Adaptability

 We have deeply ingrained habits of being and doing but we must become more adaptable to all this change. Charles Duhigg in his excellent book The Power of Habit – “Why we do what we do and how to change” explains that for a habit to be changed we must believe change is possible. He describes the 3 step “cue – routine – reward” habit loop. Our cue could be getting stuck reacting to all of our emails each morning, our routine is turning on Microsoft office first thing and our reward is a full inbox of emails signalling people want me and I am important!

Neuroscience has shown us we get a dopamine reward when we look at our texts and emails, it is a signal we are wanted! We need to move from reacting to “we are wanted” to deciding “what we want” to change in a positive way that works for us. Luckily our brains have what is called neuroplasticity (the ability of the brain to adapt and change) as a result of environmental changes around us.

Action tip – Adaptability is a reactive response to some change that has happened in the environment around us. Think of a time when you changed and why you changed? For me, it was a time when I was unemployed, in debt and needed to start Harmonics to survive and support my wife and family. I had a survival “why” but I also had a growth “why”. I wanted to grow a successful nationwide career consultancy firm that would help change lives. We only adapt and change when we have a strong enough “why”. This Simon Sinek video will help you uncover your “why”.

4. Anticipation

This is one of life’s great skills, the ability to anticipate the future and its consequences. We often follow the path of least resistance and ignore the warning signals in our environment. Great sports players have this tremendous skill to anticipate the next play in the game. Key to making a steal in basketball is the defenders anticipation of where the ball is headed before it gets there. They must anticipate this early enough beating the attacker to the ball and avoiding committing a foul. Superior anticipation skills are an important component of the elite Athletic Brain. In school we were educated to answer the questions the teacher gave us in the exam. The real world does not have set questions and timed answers, we must anticipate what is coming next and trust our instincts more.

Action tip – Anticipation is a proactive approach to change. We are seeking it out before it impacts us in a negative way. We simply need to practice the skill of anticipation and see ourselves as elite corporate athletes who set our own high standards. This article on the athlete brain offers tips on how elite athletes learn to anticipate, you can modify these tips for your career.

In summary, if we become more aware of ourselves and our environment and make a conscious decision to adapt and anticipate change, then we can take control of change and not fall victim to it. I will leave you with this quote to guide you on your way…

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not into fighting the old but on creating the new” – Socrates

John Fitzgerald is the Founder of the Harmonics Group. Harmonics specialises in helping organisations plan for change, manage change and support their people through change.

Follow Harmonics on LINKEDIN and keep up to date with trends in the World of Work.

 

Could the best time for women’s careers be in their 50’s?

Fiona, an NHS psychologist of 30 years professional experience and mother of three, was surprised to apply for her first management role at the age of 50 – and get it.  She had worked part-time while her children were growing up, so she was gleeful at the prospect of being able to wield influence at last.

Mary, a freelance book editor and self-confessed introvert, applied successfully for a job as a lecturer for a new creative-writing course at her local university.  Having worked silently at home for so many years, it was in her fifties that she discovered the joy of interacting with a class of eager students.

As an Executive and Career coach with Harmonics, I work with women trying to navigate their career paths in organisational structures and systems that themselves are adapting to change. Could it be that in their 50s the best choices emerge for women?”

Different career paths

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox describes how the decades treat men and women’s careers differently. The traditional career path is characterised as linear and unbroken.  Between 20 and 50, the trajectory is upward and then has a sharp drop off.  But for traditional – read male she suggests.  It does not represent the experiences of many women that I know.

Female career stages can be summarised as follows:

20’s	All ambition, experience and fun
30’s	Culture shock – for many, conflict between competing family needs and big job opportunity tests. Some choose to leave the company they’ve been with, or move into the sidings for a period
40’s	Possibility for re-acceleration but in some sectors and certain roles, it’s hard to catch-up for lost/slowed down years away from the fast-track. However, women who have forged their own businesses do well!
50’s	Suddenly more time to think; kids have flown, financial pressure beginning to lift – a new beginning?

 

“Highly educated and highly skilled women are re-emerging the other side of the family crunch” writes Wittenberg-Cox. “Are late bloomers”, she then asks, “a potent new force in global business?”

A fourth stage

In  The 100 year Life , Gratton and Scott’s research forces us to push out the horizon of our older years.  It is extraordinary to realise that, as of 2016, “children born in the West have a 50% chance of living to age 105”.  So as 50 is now the start point for the second half, should women (who tend to live longer than men), follow the tradition for winding down then? Should they consider changing up a gear instead?

50’s women offer more

After 30 years in a variety of senior roles, Maria decided it was time to leave. Financially secure, she could now stop, but in her heart of hearts she knew she was not yet ready to be at home full-time.  Initially she thought of consultancy, but that did not provide the rhythm of organisational life that she needed to choreograph her day.  Undeterred, she sent out smoke signals to her network, and was flattered to find that her skills and experience were in demand on a project basis.  She realised that at this stage of her working life she values priorities differently.  “Project work is great,” she says now, “because it has a clear beginning, middle and end. I love that”

In addition to her core skills and experience, here’s what else she describes herself as bringing to all new work:

A crucial customer ‘Voice’: In financial services where she is now, her insights as a customer are sought after. So she can help to shape products and services that are increasingly aimed at her own ‘greying pound’.

Self-knowledge: “I’m there by choice.  I’m not afraid to speak up and I’m beyond being interested in politics and posturing.  Let’s say I know how to steady the ship when that is necessary.”

Flexibility: “Probably the greatest asset that I offer is that my time is my own. I’m free to travel, work different hours, and I can flex around the needs of others. This is an ace-card for all organisations trying to accommodate less-flexible younger talent.”

Want to find that new gear?

To expand your options, start by assessing your own assets by looking more broadly than you might first think.  Gratton and Scott suggest examining three asset areas:

1. Productive assets: Knowledge, skills, professional, social capital, reputation
2. Vitality assets: Health, relationships, regenerative friendships, balance
3. Transformational assets: Self-knowledge, diverse networks, openness to experience

Consider talking to one of Harmonic’s career planning specialists.  “You are always searching for the sweet-spot”, says Harmonics Founder John Fitzgerald. “This is where what you know, what you are best at, and what you are passionate about, overlap.”

And if you are not yet 50, is this relevant?

Well, yes, it is. That’s because you have an even longer multi-staged career to plan ahead for.

1. Longer careers require even more adaptability and continued targeted investment. So carefully consider the three asset areas above. Rate yourself to see where you are putting your attention now.  Where else might you need to focus to ensure you build a rewarding multi-staged career?

2. If you are in a relationship, discuss career planning with your partner as a team goal – instead of two competing sprints. Wittenberg-Cox asks “Who is to say that one of you shouldn’t run the 30-50 sprint, the other the marathon?”

Finally, if you know someone who is feeling pensive about turning 50 – a wife, colleague, sister, mother, or friend, please share this information. It might well turn out to be their best career decade yet.

Do you want to break Free?

It’s that time of year when unrealised ambitions come to the fore in people’s minds. It reminds me of that great Queen song “I want to break free!” Freedom is something we all wanted in our teenage years; to carve our own path in life. But, for the majority of us, we adapted, followed our parents, teachers or friends career advice and followed the most secure route.

I meet so many people in my career transition coaching sessions who tell me they would love to have a go and start their own enterprise at some stage in their life, but something always holds them back.

So what really holds us back from breaking free and having a go at a start-up? Here are the most common reasons I hear in coaching sessions. But as someone who struggled with many of these issues until I started Harmonics when I was 40, I have also added remedies that may help you overcome them:

Here are my top ten reasons why people fear a start-up and how to overcome them

1. Working alone – We usually work in collegiate work environments where we have work friends, someone to chat about the weekend, the game, personal issues, the new hair colour, the boss, the economy. We are social creatures for millions of years and have always thrived in little communities – so the idea of a lonely start up can feel too isolating for many. Remedy – Co-working spaces are now freely available in almost every town and city where you can share low cost office facilities and ideas with like-minded business start-ups.

2. Why would anyone listen to me? – While we may have a new business idea, we tend to be strongly influenced by ‘group think’. We doubt if what we have to say is truly different or worth listening to. It requires a level of self-worth and single-mindedness to say what you believe and to stand out from the crowd. Remedy – Once upon a time only the influential in society, like doctors, solicitors and clerics, had a voice. Now, due to the growth of social media, information has become democratised and everyone has the opportunity to influence. Join a LinkedIn group of your choosing, start your own blog and create a dent in the universe and you will create followers who want to listen to what you have to say.

3. I need a certain standard of living – You have worked long and hard to get to this level of income and fear putting your family under pressure should you fail and run out of money. Remedy – You do need a trusted personal financial advisor to know exactly what you and your spouse/partners appetite is to financial risk. There are no guarantees with a start-up, so for anyone starting up a new business it is important to have a financial plan to give you peace of mind on how much you really do need – you could be surprised.

4. Leaving the uncomfortable comfort zone – There is something about the comfort zone that will always say “it is just not worth the effort”. Even though it may be quite uncomfortable where you work and what you do, when we talk about moving away from it, we become scared and often freeze. Remedy – If you are unhappy in what you do now, it is extremely unlikely to improve anytime soon. Make a decision to move toward goals that motivate you. Yes, it will take you out of your comfort zone and it may take longer than you expected, but it will move you in the right direction rather than plateauing in a role that is not your future.

5. I don’t know about financial accounts for running a business – When we work for a company our salary is paid into our account each month, so having to look after our own finances in business is all new. Remedy – We have spoken about having a personal financial advisor but you also need the support of a good accountant. The great ones will have supported many other people just like you so choose wisely and make sure you get the right fit.

6. I’m over 50 and too old for a start-up – Over 50’s sometimes fear that they are too old to start a new business venture and worry that they are not tech-savvy enough for the future world of work. Remedy – It is interesting to see that a study funded by the Kauffman Foundation surveyed 500 successful high growth founders. Against all stereotypes, it was found that twice as many successful entrepreneurs are more than 50 as under 25. So life experience is more valuable than you might at first think. 

7. What if it doesn’t succeed – There is always the fear of it not working out and everyone knowing. At work it’s easier to cover up a mistake as it’s not out there for everyone to see. We’re negatively biased and our ancestors survived attack with one priority – Safety First! When faced with a difficult choice, we will often choose the safer option. Remedy – Once you have made the decision to start your new venture, there can be no turning back. You have to commit to be successful in life, business or sport. With commitment comes the power of focus and intensity required to get you closer to your goals. Commitment is easier when you have a “why” that comes from within. People who don’t succeed in business usually have a plan B should things not work out so they don’t fully commit. In business, it’s got to be all or nothing, you have to take the leap of faith and back yourself no matter what.

8. It will take too long to get it off the ground – It’s true, it can take a long time to get a start-up off the ground and this can deter people from committing to a new venture. Remedy – Start-ups require patience and perseverance. You need to be in it for the long haul. It is a known fact that many new start-up enterprises give up too early. This is why diets don’t work long term, the novelty wears off and it is just easier to go back to what we know. The bigger win is succeeding and becoming your own boss, if this is what you really wanted in the first place, because nothing else will ever fully satisfy you.

9. My spouse or partner won’t let me – This is a very common barrier we come across especially when people over 50’s get access to a healthy severance package that they want to direct into a new start-up idea. Remedy – While it important to have the support of your family, it is often the case that you have to back your own gut instinct. You are an expert on you; surround yourself with at least five people who have experience in starting up a new business. The people you choose to surround yourself with will be critical, especially during a challenging time, as they will act as your personal boardroom. You may need to form a new network because you are now in a new business and not an employee anymore.

10. Someone tells you it is a mad idea and it won’t work –This is where you have this new business idea and you begin to believe it could work. Then you share the idea with your partner, or friend and they tell you a thousand ways why it will never work. Remedy – Firstly, I only take advice from those who have started a business before because they advise having been down that road. Secondly, adopt the Walt Disney approach. He used a three dimensional view to assess his new business idea that become a global empire; the dreamer (creating a vision), the realist (how it would work) and the critic (what could go wrong). Don’t ever allow anyone to pour cold water on your idea unless it has been fully explored in a balanced way. Allow facts to replace opinions.

If any of the above 10 reasons have held you back from setting up your own enterprise, I hope the ensuing advice has given you the confidence to continue on your journey. But pay attention!

Start-ups fail every day

There has been plenty of research on why start-ups fail. A study by CBI Research on 101 start-ups identified the top 20 reasons start-ups fail. The number one reason cited by 42% of those surveyed was that there was no market need for the product or service! The big lesson here is that thorough market research is essential. Spend time making sure your product or service offering is unique and is right for the right market. The old adage of fail to plan, plan to fail.

ISAX

There were never as many supports for those seeking to explore a start-up. The ISAX ingenuity-accelerator-programme is a great example of an innovative new programme now available to would-be entrepreneurs who have an idea, are aged over 50 and would like professional support and advice and a network of like-minded people on a similar start up journey.

We have only one chance at life

The reality is we will all be living and working longer. The second half of our lives, from 50 on, can be the most rewarding time in our lives but only if we are brave enough to re-evaluate what we have to offer, face our fears, have a right good go at life and not have any regrets. We only have one life so why not realise our dreams before it really does become too late.

Enjoy the roller coaster ride

I have been involved in three business start-ups and I was given great advice when starting Harmonics by a business mentor. He said “enjoy the roller coaster ride”. It has been just that; the highs have been remarkable, memorable and unforgettable experiences I never experienced before in my life. The downs have served to teach me to never get carried away with myself. They also taught me to adapt our products or services to meet the continually changing market needs. But one thing I did learn was that I had a lot more capability and potential than I ever thought possible because I did have a go!