Category: Creativity

Fast Company has an article entitled LinkedIn’s Top Three Secrets To Getting Hired In 2016 by Eddie Vivas, Head of Product at LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions. What I found interesting about it is that it does show where things are headed in terms of The Future of Work but at the same time shows how most companies (even those at the forefront like LinkedIn) are still missing what’s under their very noses, thus hampering the very change they are looking for.

The top two hottest skills in 2016—cloud computing and data mining—didn’t even exist a few short years ago. The world is simply changing too quickly for even young professionals to rely on the hard-won skills from their college years. You may choose a well-researched major or what looks to be a stable career path, but there’s no guarantee those skills will be in demand in 10 years’ time—sorry!

In such a world, it’s difficult to predict which industries and jobs will face decline and which will be the next wave. How many companies employed a chief data scientist or an economist in 2011? Now some companies (LinkedIn included) have both.

For employees, that means everyone should be thinking about developing new skills right now in order to keep up, or how they could adapt their existing skills to a new specialty. Job seekers who will come out on top will be those who stay curious and are lifelong learners. For companies, it’ll mean arming existing workforces with new knowledge, getting creative with job requirements, and keeping an eye out for skills that could transfer well into newly imagined roles.

Eddie Vivas

Leaping Into The Future

For anyone who has read JobShift by William Bridges, they’ll know that what’s described above is a clear marker and waypoint to a future without jobs (something which Mr. Bridges foresaw back in 1995). To grasp this leap of logic though, one needs to first understand that a future without jobs isn’t everyone being unemployed but rather a future with bountiful, “unpackaged” work. In effect, just as organizations are beginning to break down the borders and silos within themselves, so too will the borders of work itself—a “job” as a rigidly defined package of work—be broken down as well.

The second leap of logic that one needs to understand to embrace and understand this emerging future is that it’s about going beyond adapting your existing skills to a new speciality and instead understanding how your skills can be adapted to multiple specialities at once. In effect, what’s being described above in the article is nothing more than a stepping stone to something bigger. In other words, to deal with the ever increasing change before us, organizations will need individuals that aren’t just capable of adapting their skills to something new every few years but are capable of adapting their skills in the moment, as the need arises. By doing so, this allows both the individual and organization to not only cope with change but to creatively embrace its complexities as well.

These types of individuals and organizations are so creatively adaptable, they are often referred to as being fluid. They’ve achieved this state because they have let go of the outdated structural limitations of a job and evolved to a more expansive social structure of passion and purpose which allows them to easily flow between seemingly diverse work. In effect, instead of a future of scarcity focused on the problem of finding their next job, individuals are focused on a future of abundance with unlimited work opportunities before them, thus finally truly releasing their creative potential in the process.

The third and final leap of logic is understanding how work will shift away from being centered around jobs and instead centered around passion and purpose. This mirrors the noted shift, mentioned in the article above, from you having to push out to an organization to find work as a job and instead the pull of your passion and purpose (integrated together as your life’s work) gravitating and aligning the organization to you. This is achieved when individuals begin to see what unifies their skills at a deeper core level which in turn emerges as their passion and understand their own deeper values as their purpose.

Conventional Lenses Limit Our Vision

As I noted above though, many organizations, even those at the forefront of this change like LinkedIn, are actually impeding this change rather than embracing it. The reason for this can be revealed by looking further at the article, in particular the following quote below.

That suggests many companies are holding out for “A” players with all the right skills at the same time that more and more professionals are looking to change employers. But they don’t seem to be finding each other—which means we may need smarter ways to get connected.

Eddie Vivas

In effect, it’s not that they aren’t finding each other but rather they aren’t seeing each other. That’s because they are still looking at each other through a job lens which limits them to what they are seeing. Thus the company doesn’t see the potential of the individual and the individual doesn’t see the potential of themselves for the work because both are trying to achieve an alignment through job titles rather than aligning through transferable skills (which reveal and define the individual’s unifying passion). Thus no matter how often they look, there’s always this disconnect because of the method or lens of comparison.

New Lenses, New Vision

When both individuals and organizations start looking through a lens of passion and purpose though, suddenly there is an abundance of potential people for the work, even to the point that the organization starts seeing potential people within their own organization, thus avoiding the need to look externally. To put this metaphorically, many individuals and organizations are often blind to what is under their very noses. By shifting or reframing their perspective, suddenly they awaken to a whole new world of possibilities that were previously hidden and invisible to them before. In effect, nothing’s changed. We’re still the same people. But we’re looking at ourselves and our potential in a much greater, inclusive, and empowering way.

Last but not least, with this new vision, did you notice the universal pattern between finding people and finding your passion? Just as we are now finding more and more connections and relationships between people below the surface, so too are we seeing these connections and relationships within ourselves. In effect, look beyond and below the direct visible links, both within and without, and start understanding how these weaker invisible links are allowing not only organizations to become much more dynamic and complex but individuals as well.

So while I wouldn’t downplay the value of a first-degree connection as a valuable “in,” it’s important to pay close attention to that second layer if you’re in the market for a new opportunity…

Eddie Vivas

Video footage by Sticks & Drones

Close to a decade ago, I read Working Identity by Herminia Ibarra which talks about how transitions through a career change are unconventional in that you often don’t know exactly what your new identity will be at the outset of your journey but instead you must experiment and explore to find the right fit. Making this transition of change though can be extremely difficult upon us and those around us, as noted below, because changing our identity, as a complex system or entity, is about changing our relationships.

We cannot regenerate ourselves in isolation. We develop in and through our relationships with others—the master teaches the apprentice a new craft; the mentor guides a protégé through the passage to an inner circle; the council of peers monitors the standards of a professional group, confirming status within the community. Yet, when it comes to reinventing ourselves, the people who know us best are also the ones most likely to hinder rather than help. They may wish to be supportive but they tend to reinforce—or even desperately try to preserve—the old identities we are seeking to shed.

Changing careers is not merely a matter of changing the work we do. It is much about changing the relationships that matter in our professional lives. Shifting connections refers to the practice of finding people who can help us see and grow into our new selves, people we admire, would like to emulate, and with whom we want to spend time. All reinventions require social support. But as this chapter reveals, it is hard to get the support we really need from career counsellors, outplacement, or headhunters, or even from old friends, family members, or trusted colleagues. New or distant acquaintances—people and groups on the periphery of our existing networks—help us push off in new directions while providing the secure base in which change can take hold.

Herminia Ibarra
Working Identity

What I recognized afterwards though—upon reflecting upon the book, my life, and the patterns of change around me—was that I wasn’t going through a midlife crisis to change my career but rather I was experiencing this Big Shift that everyone will eventually go through which is a change of paradigms, mental models, and world views (aka social innovation). You see it’s much easier to shift a career because you’re often moving from one known context to another known context (i.e. job to job, albeit in different disciplines) within the conventional world that everyone knows. Making the Big Shift is radically more complex and difficult, as you are effectively moving from a known context to a completely unknown context that 99% of the population cannot relate to or understand. So not only will your friends and family think you’re crazy but most of the world will think your crazy as well.

You’re Not Crazy

This is why mentors or guides are so essential to your journey because they help you to realize that what you’re experiencing is completely normal and you’re not going crazy. In my case though, while I’ve found tons of diverse articles and books on the subject, I’ve yet been unable to find anyone I can interact with who can relate to what I’m going through and who can see and understand this big picture of societal change on the scope that I do. Thus right now, my only mentors are those within the articles and books I’m reading which makes it difficult for me to make this transition because I’m continually being pulled back into the Old World—it’s outdated beliefs and behaviours—by those close to me, rather than stepping freely into this New World.

But People Will Think You’re Crazy

This is also why I feel like I’m continually being ripped apart between two worlds, as I’m struggling to step forward but continually feeling pulled back. Because of this, I’ve lost a couple of really close friends over the past few years because they no longer can relate to me. I even find the same thing happening with my family, as I begin to distance myself from them. Basically any friends and family I interact with now about my journey and these bigger changes affecting society, I know they are either thinking I’m crazy or I’m possibly on to something but their lack of understanding of this “unknown” makes them feel uncomfortable because they can’t relate to it at this moment.

A perfect example of this is the typical convention of asking someone what their job is or how their job is going. Neither of these apply to me because this New World is about going beyond a “job” and discovering your life’s work (i.e. your passion & purpose in life). Thus any “job” that I’m doing is just to pay the bills and my real work is that which I do in my days off and evenings. In effect, I’m having to work in two worlds to bridge myself from one to the other. But to fully make the transition though, I eventually need to let go of the Old World’s conventions and beliefs so that I can fully become the potential of that which I wish to be in this New World, my true self.

Petro Poutanen has a fascinating academic paper entitled Complexity and Collaboration in Creative Group Work which strives to show how creativity in groups differs from creativity in individuals. In reading his paper so far though, I’m seeing nothing but comparisons to my own research on creativity within individuals though. In effect, the process and results are very similar.

How can this be so though when a group has multiple people to interact with each other, whereas an individual is just alone? The key is understanding creativity within the individual as though the individual is a complex system as well, a multitude. Thus creativity with an individual is not only a dialogue and conversation with oneself but an integration of the conflicting parts of oneself. One begins to trust oneself over time and even believe in oneself, solidifying ones purpose and vision in life.

It is the following quote that really grabbed my attention though because it perfectly describes the creative process an individual goes through in understanding oneself in a much greater context beyond conventional means. To do so, the individual has to not just look at their life from a technical perspective, seeing the jobs they’ve done, but also from a social perspective, seeing how these jobs relate, revealing a connection to something deeper within oneself that goes beyond a job to something universal within their life.

First of all, both empirical articles (III and IV) highlight the importance of dialogue, which means that a discussion between participants is most productive when it has the characteristics of reflexivity and criticality; when there is no need to refrain from criticality, as is commonly thought, probably due to widespread ideation guidelines, such as brainstorming. The point here is that ideas are in conflict, not people, and from the conflicts of ideas emerge new ones. Therefore, communication that fosters the criticality and reflexivity of both their own and other’s ideas was found to be important.

Secondly, it was observed that the knowledge people shared had a dual role: on the one hand, it was the information and expertise that people could bring to the situation that allowed them to contribute to the common pool of knowledge through their experiences and background knowledge. On the other hand, it was the ability to build knowledge, i.e. to integrate and build novel constructions of what has been said that was of importance. This finding suggests two important but different group roles and ways of communicating: informants or content-experts who communicate their ideas as clearly as possible and, secondly, creativity experts, who have possibly no content- related information but who are skilful in connecting different pieces of information together to form new ideas and suggest novel frames of references for the reinterpretation of existing knowledge. For the latter group the ability to unambiguously communicate one’s idea is perhaps not as important as the ability to ask questions and make critical remarks and use nonverbal techniques. Of course, there is no reason why the same person cannot occupy both roles in a group.

Petro Poutanen

The last sentence in the second quote (bolded for emphasis) is the critical one that made me have a leap of understanding in what I was reading. So to become a truly creative individual, not only does the individual have to look at oneself as both a (technical) content expert and a (social) creativity expert but the individual has to begin to start seeing themselves as a multitude, understanding that the conflicts within oneself are actually creative tension that one has an opportunity to act upon and understand better to integrate oneself holistically as a complex system.

BTW another more common name people are calling these creative individuals by is polymaths. In effect, individuals who are cross-disciplinary in nature. But it is more than just being multidisciplinary, it is evolving and becoming interdisciplinary and eventually transdisciplinary. When one reaches these higher states of integration with ones disciplines, one finally begins to understand the greater narrative and relationship that is connecting these disciplines together. More common names for these integrative forces are what people call passion and purpose.

Video: Stars Wars The Last Jedi Clip (Rey in cave)