The eWorld Radar

Are you worth it?

Do you know what you are worth? That is do you know what the market is willing to pay to secure your services?

And do you know what steps you might take to increase your worth?

Rather than consume brain power fretting about job security and scheming how to side step the boot, why not focus on enhancing your economic worth.

As long as your worth commands a return that meets your financial expectations and your worth is based on objective analysis, then you should have no trouble remaining employed.

If an honest appraisal of your worth suggests you are currently overpaid then be prepared to be 'right-paid' or to invest in your own development.

Deadwood has nowhere to float in the digital economy.

Ade McCormack

Seek developmental insecurity

Those of us in the IT industry who feel that after years of learning new languages, methods and management models we can slip into cruise mode and live off the knowledge and wisdom we have acquired are in for a shock.

That would work well if the industry we started in was the industry we retired from. As well as the major shift taking place in the IT industry (it’s becoming a consolidated utility market). There is the major shift taking place in the wider market from industrial to digital economy.

A new focus on personal brand management, collaborative skills and the ability to glean insight from data rubble are quite a different set of skills to those we have fine-tuned over the years.

Lifelong learning is required. But retaining a sensation of insecurity will ensure that we proactively seek to develop our skills as if we were just embarking on a new career. Because the reality is that we are.

Innovation and disruption

Are you considered innovative and disruptive? Certain industries have traditionally discouraged such traits. However there are at least two reasons to develop them:

• By constantly looking to disrupt your business model, you will raise the bar on what customers expect from you and your competitors.
• When you and /or your organisation are knocked off axis by competitor disruption, you will be better placed to counter-disrupt.

A lack of innovation and disruption on your part is no different to a Samurai warrior in feudal Japan, who does not feel the need to enhance their skills in between battles.

Hermetically sealed?

Does your role protect you from the cold winds of commercial reality? Is your primary skill being able to operate below the redundancy radar thus keeping yourself in employment?

It is perfectly natural to do this. Many organisations pay people on a time basis so the natural response is to do as little as possible for the maximum amount of time. And if you work for a large and /or inefficient organisation you may enjoy a career based around maximising the return on your labour.

But increasingly more firm are facing the cold commercial realities and are thus having to ‘right size’ their workforce in a ruthless manner. Increasingly there is no place to hide and soon those not focused on productivity will find themselves sitting outside the tent feeling the full force of the tundra winds.

The point is that even though the industrial era working environment encourages work-avoidance, it makes sense to take this paid opportunity (your current role) to deepen your skills regardless of the financial return. Think of it as employment insurance or more simply a more productive and meaningful way to spend a large chunk of your life.

Beyond Job specifications

Did you find your current role through the traditional application process?

This order taking approach to acquiring employment is indicative that your employer has options in terms of swapping you out. That is the very nature of general job specifications. If you are smart, once in you will have redefined the role so that it is uniquely defined by your personal capabilities.

If you haven’t done this, then brace yourself to be replaced by a younger and cheaper model.

The emerging theme is that talent will move beyond passive trawling for job vacancies and take a more proactive approach to creating employment opportunities. Target employers may not have been planning on taking you on, but when faced with your potential value they find a way to get you on the team.

Time to be productive

Mankind from a consumer perspective has generally benefited from the Industrial era; more choice and lower prices.

But from a work perspective the benefits have been less obvious. Prior to the Industrial revolution (approximately a quarter of a million years) we were paid on what we produced, eg. caught rabbit, reared cow, built cart.

Then all of a sudden the model changed. A movement from the workshop / farm to the factory saw a transition in the way we were paid. Now we were selling our time rather than our productivity. So the skill of the typical worker became ‘how do I do as little as possible for a given unit of labour time?’.

This in turn created the management industry focused on how to counter this mindset.

The time-oriented approach still permeates both the traditional factory (conveyor belt) and modern factory (desk). Admittedly some roles are paid bonuses based on productivity, most notably sales, and so have a sense of ‘eat what you kill’.

Over time more and more of us are going to see a more direct correlation between our economic survival and our output. You are encouraged to embrace this model even if your employer doesn’t. Think of it as your insurance policy for the digital era.

Ade McCormack

Are you amplifying the IT Value Chain?

There is a chain that runs from technology and people suppliers through the Procurement and HR functions respectively. It continues into the IT department and via the users to your organisation’s market.

Thus there are a number of actors involved in this IT value chain. They include:

• External recruiters.
• Business development staff of the IT service companies.
• HR staff.
• Procurement staff.
• Technologists.
• Users.

I would also add the IT function leadership and the senior executives associated with the organisation.

But value amplification means more than just sending the HR function a number of resumes that have the same buzzwords as those on the job specification. It means more than beating up suppliers to get the best price. It means more that having users who barely use the IT tools they are provided with because they have no real interest in ‘sweating’ them.

When this happens or worse, amplification turns into dampening. The CIO might be an easy target to blame when the investment in IT seems to deliver headaches more than anything else. And the CIO may be partially responsible but I would argue that anyone involved in the value chain has to take responsibility for this situation.

In many cases it is a lack of trust between adjoining parties in the chain. And this lack of trust in part is because many people along the chain lack both an ability to cultivate trust and a sufficiently mature understanding of IT to really add value.

With this in mind I have developed the eWorld Academy.

Take the test - Click here to see if you or your people need some game raising support.

Ade McCormack

The Inverse Peter Principle

You may be aware of the Peter Principle (more accurately a hypothesis) which suggests that people will continue to be promoted until they reach a position where they are in effect incompetent and thus do not rise further up the organisational hierarchy.

In the digital economy, this is unlikely to hold true because there will be no hierarchy. There will be experts and there will be those that align this expertise with what the market needs. The latter being an emerging 21^st century expertise domain.

This poses a problem if you are not an expert. In other words this is a problem for most of us.

Leaders who are used to setting the vision will be replaced by leaders who can infer the vision based on environmental factors including their access to expertise.

Managers who are paid to goad, charm and bully the workers into doing what is best for the company will no longer have a role where the workers are more motivated and passionate about what they do than any administrator.

Workers who operate in the traditional factory mode of doing the same stuff day in day out and whose thinking extends no further than lunch options will simply not be required. Unless they occupy niches in which there are no economies of scale on which to base the necessary investment in automation.

Thus career job number one is to reinvent ourselves as a genuine expert through acquiring the necessary skills and experiences. And to then alert the world to the new you. This may give rise to the digital economy Inverse Peter Principle, ie a race to genuine competence.

Ade McCormack

CIO Screw up Log

Some might say that this is the unofficial name for the help desk ticketing system. And to some extent they are right.

But screw up is an unkind phrase for a failure. But failure is a key element in self development. As mentioned in an earlier post, failure is crucial, mistakes are unacceptable.

I encourage CIOs to keep a log of anything that takes place during the day that doesn’t conclude in a positive manner. These might include:

• The mis-launch of a new IT service.
• The strained meeting with the CFO.
• The heated exchange with the key supplier.
• The new innovation budget allocated to the CMO, which includes a substantial allocation for technology spend (that is not under the CIO’s control).

All of these came about because of something the CIO didn’t do correctly. So rather than go on to make the same mistakes day after day, they need to be logged. Assigning severity scores to the log entries will provide the information needed to prioritise the CIO’s personal development.

If the CIO is unwilling to do this, then HR might take on this responsibility. The log can then be used as either a development tool or exhibit A in the firing process.

Ade McCormack

Performance – Perceived Emotional Cost

Most sales people know that the value they deliver is proportional to the perceived benefits. In most cases a bigger price has a value dampening effect. But most importantly, the greater the perceived emotional cost the less associated value the customer will perceive.

To be a successful worker in the industrial economy, you need to be compliant / low maintenance from a management perspective.

However in the digital economy, creativity trumps compliancy.

So it is expected that workers will be a management nightmare. This in turn means that the perceived benefits associated with you must shoot through the roof to offset this.

Mastery of your skills will of course help, but brand management is more important.

Ade McCormack