Tedded - Business Book Review

During the past week or two, I wrote “how to choose you career” in different aspects.
- You have to choose it with your passion in “How Should We Choose Our Career?”
- You have to choose it with your strength in “Matching Personalities with Your Career?”
- You have to choose it because of money in “Choosing a Job Because of Money”

Now, you might think “What exactly are you trying to say?” So, I present you this simple diagram

Career Choice

This simple diagram is pretty much self-explanatory. When choosing a career, we rely on one of these factors; passion, stength, or money. You either say

“I like the job.” or

“I am good at it.” or

“The job pays huge.”

If you are lucky, you will have both. The perfect case would be all three. I, for instance, chose the career that suits my strengths. The pay is absurdly little now and in the future. And I do not particularly like the job (but I like most people and environment here though). How did you choose?

By the way, there are some other minor factors such as people, environment, distance from home, working hours, and so forth. However, these factors might be in consideration but they are not decisive factors and most of the times, they are tightly related to the three mentioned earlier.

For example,

- Nice people or good environment probably make you like the job more (which falls into “passion” category).

- Flexible working hours will benefit the strengths of people who are laid back and/or dislike routine job.

- Reputation of the company is closely related to how you will have higher pay in the future.

…

Is it possible to find a job or career that falls into the centre of the diagram enjoying passion, strength, and money?

I strongly believe that we can have it! And my suggestion on the way to find it is to follow the order: passion-strength-money.

1. Passion: I don’t know how other people think but passion should always be the first factor considering any job in the world. If you find the job you like it passionately, or love, you will not have to “work” for the rest of your life. You will “live” it. As I wrote in the past article that the easiest way to find your passion is to think of what makes you “talk about it all day and never shut up”. If you still can’t find any, spend the whole day talking to your family member or close friend. Talk until you’re tired! There are sometimes when I talked to my close friends and we were literally having different conversations. He would talk about golf (some do talk about stock market, some talk about cars, etc.) and I just nodded and replied something like; “Really, I never know that.” And when it was my turn to talk, I talked about books and their brains turned off immediately!

2. Strength: After you list all your possible career paths or jobs from your passion. Take time to make your strength inventory and select the jobs that match your strength most. There are times when you might think that you like the job terribly much but you are not good at it. What comes into your brain would probably be “Well, PR manager is my childhood dream; I will never cross it out! I know I’m the worst public speaker ever but I think the job might not really need that skill, does it? Nah, I think I can just be a quiet PR manager!” Be honest, know yourself. There are times that we like the job so much that you do not realise that being a loser or a bozo in it is the fastest way to crush your passion.

3. Money: The third and the last step is to consider money. I discourage you to put money above passion and strength. Yes, money is important but there is no money in the world that can buy you joy and self-fulfillment. Nevertheless, always consider money. If you don’t, there might be some times in the future that you regret. Changing the course of your career (or company) is not always easy. My advice is to take your time, don’t rush into every opportunity. Study it through and evaluate different options.

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Is this the only way? No, and there are many people that chose strength or money first and became successful (some are insanely successful). However, the logic behind this order is that it is the most difficult to change your passion. Strengths can be developed although it takes time. And money comes and goes, it is the most volatile factor.

Money is in your pocket

Strength is in your body

Passion is in your soul

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What do you think? How should we choose our career? Out of the three, which factor are you enjoying? Which one are you suffering? How can you improve it?

Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page started their careers with their passion.

Many more successful businessman started their careers with their strength.

However, the largest proportion of people (at least, from whom I know of) started careers because of money.

Is choosing a career (or a job or a company) because of money a good thing?

Jack Welch started a career because of money. From his book “Winning” (sorry, I don’t have that many books!):

“When I took my first job, I had several offers, but the one from GE was $1,500 a year more than any other.”

Money matters, a lot.

If you consider “money” as a factor to decide which career path you should take. It is easy to say that the higher offer, the better. However, it is always not that easy. Instead of looking at the pay as a snapshot of the first day you start a job. It is crucial that you need to look through time. There are many times that you face “trade-offs”. It can be both money from “salary”, “wage”, “pay” you get from the company you work for or the money you make as an entrepreneur.

Money Trade-offs

The Y Axis is the “money” you get at a period of time. The X Asis is “timeline”; it can be 12 months or 10 years depending on how you project your future. My assumption on this graph is around 5 years. The lines show your money progress during your career.

Please note that the area under the three lines are roughly equal. The total amount of money received at the end of the timeline (say 5 years) are equal. It is obvious to say that if there is a line above all those three with the high slope, you should choose that one!

Option 1: The Hare: The Hare option starts strong. The pay is bigger than other options at the start. Compared to other options, you will enjoy you early career but you might struggle because of the minimal pay rise over the time.

Option 2: The Turtle: The Turtle option starts slow. It might offer a lower pay at the beginning. However, the growth rate of the money from this option is much higher than the Hare option.

Option 3: The Frog: The Frog option has very little or no growth rate over time and the amount of money at the start is irrelevant. However, this option will offer you a pay “leap” at a specific period of time.

So, what does your current career resemble? The Turtle, The Hare, or The Frog?

What is your choice?

What are the advantages or disadvantages of each option.

If you choose The Hare, the option 1, you will get higher pay at the beginning and you will enjoy life at the start. The place (career or company) might be serious but not very competitive. The place is likely to be stable. The Hare option symbolise three things that 1. the career or the company are not for money 2. the industry is not competitive or 3. the culture is bit socialism. The environment should be more secure that The Turtle or The Frog.

If you choose The Turtle, the option 2, you will find life engaging and vibrating. You will feel that you fight hard to justify your pay rise. It is true that over the time, you’ll be richer than the Hare but this career might burn you out. More often than not, the higher growth of your pay will come with the higher risk of your career. The career paths (or companies) with this option will probably have higher turnover rate.

If you choose The Frog, the option 3, you will find that life is unexpected and full of surprises. However, you might have to wait for far too long for a good surprise. The work of this options is often project-based or it is dependent on few big deals. You have to work hard to get to that “leap”. The leap will be rewarding. The problem is whether you can endure the period of time before the leap or not.

…

Jobs, careers, or companies are unlikely to be 100% turtle, or hare, or frog. Moreover, the pattern of the pay does not always reflects the culture, the environment, or the people there. However, it is essential that you take a look at the money now (or no money!) and look at the future as well. We should be able to detect the pattern of the money we will get in the future.

Job change is sometimes inevitable and I believe that as long as your passion and strength are there, you can always change job, for the better. Isn’t it better to start high (Hare) and wait for a job change to higher growth job (Turtle) and the job change will often give you a leap, big or small.

All in all, keep your options open and look further to different jobs. Detect your income pattern and plan for your future.

“There is nothing worse than a guy who has made some money along the way opining that money shouldn’t matter to people who are picking a job. So I won’t do that. In fact, I’ll tell you that of course money matters - it matters a lot” Jack Welch

A couple of days ago, I wrote about “passion.” You need to find your passion for your career. Without passion, your job will be just a job. With passion, it will be your life; something that you can live with.

However, although you find your passion, finding a job is not a simple task because;

1. You might find more than one passion

2. Your passion might lead to more than one available career

As I mentioned in the previous post that “passion” is a root. It might lead to a tree but a tree has branches and finding the right branch requires further investigation.

Now, it is time to investigate and probe into ourselves. The widespread method of probing into your self is a “personality test.” However, there are many personality tests available. The purpose of using them is to find your strengths and the next step is to match your strengths with the right career path.

I believe that during your life; you should come across one or more times with the personality test. What matters is that you use the result to guide your path or it is just another enjoyable test that you read the result and say “Hey, that’s right” or “What?, that’s not me” and get on with your life.

The two most popular tests are;

1. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

2. DISC assessment

The MBTI test is available online for free. You can just Google it and take the one that you like. You can take more that one sources of the test and compare the results.

DISC assessment is a widespread method of categorising people with the four factors, Dominant, Interpersonal, Steady, and Conscientious. A book “The Personality Code” by Travis Bradberry is my choice of DISC test; you can log on to their website here. Based on DISC assessment, the Personality Code test will come up with one of the fourteen personality types. Briefly, the book will describe your type and will tell you how to manage each type and what are the type vs anti-type.

I strongly recommend another book on testing, Strenghtsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath. The official site is here. This book suggests that you focus on your strengths and manage weaknesses, not the other way around. The author gives a simple formula “Talent x Investment = Strength”.

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I have done many tests and you will not be amazed on how many career choices you will find. The process of finding the most suitable ones are;

1. List your strengths: Different personalities have different sets of strengths and weaknesses. Focus on your strengths. From the personality tests, you might have to synthesise the results to figure out your strengths. If you try Strengthfinder 2.0 (or 1.0), the test will list out the strengths for you. There is another approach I got from the book: “The Answer” by John Assaraf and Murray Smith. The authors categorised unique strengths into types of “intelligence”:

- Verbal-Lingistic Intelligence

- Logical-Mathematical Intelligence

- Musical-Rhytmic Intelligence

- Visual-Spatial Intelligence

- Body-Kinetic Intelligence

- Interpersonal Intelligence

- Intrapersonal Intelligence

- Naturalistic Intelligence

What we have to do is list the “achievements” we had in our lives that we value most and feel that they are successes. Then, we think of abilities and strengths that we used to pursue those achievements and there! We take them into our strength inventory.

2. Rank your strengths: You then need to rank your strengths according to different factors. Firstly, from different tests, if a specific strength always come up, it is likely that the specific strength is one of your dominant strengths. Moreover, you can evaluate them on your own if some strengths do not describe you at all. Come up with around five (four to six) strengths you believe you posess.

3. List the career paths: Next, it is the process that you have to take the inventory of different careers. Some tests will tell you suitable career paths; list them. An article by usnews.com (you can find many sources like this) matches the career paths with six types of people

- Realistic, hands-on people

- Investigative people

- Artistic people

- Social people

- Enterprising people

- Conventional people

4. Match you strengths with each career path: This part is difficult because you might not know whether your strengths will be suitable for a specific career path or not. Use your gut and ask for help. You will find that some career paths match only one of your strengths; some will match one or two more. Some career paths will match most or all of your strengths. List those career paths that match your strengths most and you’ll have the final list (less than five would be the best number).

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The steps sound simple and easy and (too) straightforward. However, the purpose of the steps is within you. They will make you think more of yourselves and understand yourselves more. The steps will make your mind and thought circle around your strengths; not the weaknesses, not the current crises.

The successful matching of your strengths and career path will make you find the job that will cherish and enrich your talent.

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What do you think of the method? Do you think that your current job makes your strengths flourish? Or does it make you fight your weaknesses day in day out? Do you think that personality test is a good tool to make a career choice?

In a couple of previous posts, I wrote briefly about how Sir Richard Branson made choices doing his career (life) here; and I wrote about how we should “focus” on the essentials gravitating all aspects of our roles together here.

If we know that making a choice is vital to our present and our future. If we know that we need to keep our roles in harmony, we have families, friends, and communities. So, how should we choose our career?

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It happened yesterday when I talked to my girlfriend and she asked me what career should she take after her master’s degree.

I said: “None, stay home”

She angrily said: “What?! I should be good at something!”

I said: “Nothing, you don’t want to work hard and you want to be equally rewarded. That’s not going to happen.”

She said: “But I can do many things, decently”

I said: “But you won’t give a hundred percent. And that, you will be just average.”

We had a small argument there.

…

In the evening, I talked to her on the phone and I told her to stop talking because my head was going to burst.

I did that a couple of times in the past and she was furious that I stopped her from talking about…

A trip itinerary.

16 months in advance!

…

There! I thought and told her “That’s it, that’s what YOU should do. Become a tour organiser or a trip manager.”

I conclude it here that you need to take a career that..

make you talk about it all the time and never shut up.

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There’s only one word that you need to look for. And it’s not “ability”, “competency”, “experience”, “interest”, “opportunity”, “advancement”, “salary”, “reputation”, “reward”, “environment”, “culture”, “lifestyle”, etc, etc.

You might already guess it and you probably guessed it right. It’s passion.

You might probably think “If only I know what my passion is”

or “my passion will not make money”

…

Firstly, everyone has passion, big or small, expressed or unexpressed; we all have one. Passion drives your soul. Passion gives meaning to your life. Don’t mistake passion with fashion. Fashion or fad or interest make you excited for a period of time and it’s gone.

Secondly, don’t confuse passion with hobby. Hobby or your favourite recreation are just activities. Passion is the root of your activities. Some hobbies might make money, some won’t. Passion is not a thing you do; passion is what makes you do things.

Moreover, passion does make money. If it does not make money; it’s the fault of things such as an ability to fulfills your passion or just a bad business model.

Of all the components of successful business, passion is the most difficult and yet, the easiest component you can achieve. You cannot just say, “Let’s develop passion for the next two quarters”. Unlike other intangible assets you possess like “creativity”, “intelligence”, “initiation”, “communication”, etc; you cannot intentionally develop passion. Yet, passion came out of nowhere. Moreover, passion has no limit. Sometimes, we have trouble to push beyond our current “creativity” level or our “communication” skill. Passion, on the other hand, can rise higher and higher without barrier. And good news, the more the better.

I’ll take an excerpt from the book I read recently: “The Future of Management” by Gary Hamel and Bill Breen where they talked about Management Innovation. They stated the “capabilities” that contribute to value creation in an organisation which are; Passion, Creativity, Initiative, Intellect, Diligence, and Obedience.

From 100%

Obedience: 0%; Rule-following employees are worth zip in terms of competitive advantages they generate

Diligence: 5%; Diligent employees don’t take short-cuts but they are not likely to contribute much to the value creation

Intellect: 15%: Most companies work hard to find intelligent employees but they are now commodities in this flat world

Initiative: 20%: Employees who don’t wait to be asked and don’t need to be told.

Creativity: 25%: Inquisitive and irrepressible employees; they are important for value-creation. They are people who always said “Wouldn’t it be cool if…”

Passion: 35%: “One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested” E. M. Forster, English novelist

Nevertheless, there are far too many people trying to make themselves more intellectual by getting degrees after degrees. Those same people often neglect passion. Many people studied hard for a degree in finance to be an investment banker. Do they really CARE about other people’s investment? Many people studied hard for a degree in marketing. Do they really CARE about the soap, shampoo, digital camera, or cars they are trying to market?

If not, then, they are in deep… trouble. Because the furthest they can contribute is merely 65% by the theory of Gary Hamel and Bill Breen. Actually, they have just achieved (maybe partially) 10% of the capabilities (intellect) from their degrees.

To quote the words of Charles Handy I got from Tom Peters’ slides from his blog:

“Passion was what drove these people, passion for their product, passion for their cause. If you care enough, you will find out what you need to know. Or you will experiment and not worry if the experiment goes wrong. Passion as the secret to learning is an odd secret to propose, but I believe that it works at all levels and at all ages. Sadly, passion is not a word often heard in the elephant organizations, nor in schools, where it can seem disruptive.”

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One suggestion: “If you are living you life out of your passion, you are heading the wrong way. If you work without passion, get out, fast.”

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My belief is that we don’t need to keep our passion alive. Because it’s already living. It’s breathing and it’s burning. It’s our job to find it and live it.

Live your life with, by, from, and for your passion.

I have visited Tom Peter’s Blog (He’s one of my favourite writers) and I download a PowerPoint file from his latest post “The Talent 57″. The file is 4.6mb and I thought that I will see a lot of detailed pictures and photos.

I was wrong.

The file contains 544 slides

yes, five hundred and forty four slides.

I will get back to most of his contents later but I read a quote by Sir Richard Branson in his slide

“To me business is not about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It’s about being true to yourself, your ideas, and focusing on the essentials.”

Sir Richard Branson knew his self at the age of fifteen when he started the first venture (growing Christmas tree) and failed! He knew from the start that he chose to be an entrepreneur. He chose his path. He chose to be what we wanted to become.

The keyword is “Choice”

(photo: www.time.com)

For me, personally, at the age of fifteen, I was playing video games like crazy, reading comics, and getting grades in school.

That was what I chose. What did you choose?

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One thing about Sir Richard Branson that stands out is that the more I read about him, the more I study about him, I could not separate his business and his personal life.

For some, personal life dominates business life and their businesses go nowhere.

For some, business life overwhelms personal life and their families shatter.

Sir Richard Branson pushes the two together, to the extreme.

(photo: outside.away.com)

From the quote above;

“It’s about being true to yourself, your ideas, and focusing on the essentials.”

Isn’t it what you need in your life?

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The question is “Isn’t it too late to start living your life and your career together?”

We are not Sir Richard Branson and we could not turn back time. My time with the video games could not be changed but it starts from now.

We might not own a company like Virgin but isn’t it great enough if we could live both our career (business) life and personal life together to the fullest?