“One of the recurring themes… is the creation of a sustainable way of living.”
– Lynda Gratton
HR Square, a leading HR-magazine in Belgium, organised a great seminar with Lynda Gratton – one of the top 20 business thinkers in the world.
I was there and had a great time meeting new people and discussing ideas. In this post, I want to share with you the 3 main messages I wrote down.
The shift: re-think work
Lynda advocates that our world is changing rapidly and the way we work will never be the same. You need to re-thing work and make 3 shifts.
1. First of all, make sure you master one or more skills
As the talent pool goes global – people in poor countries have more access to knowledge via the internet and some of them become as good of better at certain skills than you – you need to stand out if you want to differentiate. She talks about portable skills – skills that stick to you, and not the organisation, when you move from one company to another.
In my view, it’s the strategy concept ‘competitive advantage’ from Michael Porter but applied to the individual. It’s answering the question: “How will I stand out and increase therefor my value?” We all know it won’t be cost -:), so you need to look for other differentiators.
2. Second, make sure you connect
New connection platforms appear (skype), others dissapear (family structure). Think about what it means for you and how you can integrate this into you live.
If you want to know how important connecting with people is for you, check out the site from Martin Seligman. For his book Authentic Happiness, he developed a messurement instrument. You can access it for free on his site.
3. Third, evolve from consumer to producer
In the West, we were taught that we have to earn as much money as possible and buy as much stuff as possible. We are raised to become consumers. But most of us found out by now that this does not create happiness. So instead of asking the question: “What can I take?”, ask yourself this: “What can I give/produce?”
I wrote about the concept of Shared Value some days ago. ‘From consumer to producer’ follows the same line of thought, but looks at the topic from an individual perspective.
