• Globalisation and tech mean that the current job market is changing
• Theres no career gifted with tenure anymore
• The environment is more like a startup one....

• Information poor, time-compressed, resource-constrained
• No guarantees, no safety nets, you have to take on risk
• Competition is changing, the market is changing
• Information is limited, resources tight, competition fierce, the world is changing
• The amount of time you spend in any one job is shrinking

• Train and invest in yourself
• You need to be adapting all the time
• Take stock of assets, aspirations and market realities ... develop competitive advantage
• Flexible and iterative plans
• Build on network of relationships (in industry, transcend jobs and teams)
• Seek and create new opportunities, take focused risk
• Tap their network to navigate tough challenges
• They are valuble throughout your career, urgent, do them now

• Reid noticed the tactics deployed by successful startups and people are similar
• The competition that brought Detroit to its knees, is also faced by successful people
• Adopt the strategies of silicon valley to thrive:
• Take intelligent bold risks to accomplish something great
• Build a network of alliances to help you with intelligence, resources and collective action
• Pivot to a breakout opportunity

• The Netflix mindset is permanent-beta
• Netflix : 3yrs is an eternity in Silicon Valley, we can't plan that far, so we stay nimble
• Amazon is never finished, its always day 1. Finished should be an 'f-word' we are all works in progress
• For many people, 20 years of experience is the same year repeated 20 times.
• Stay learning to Max.Value (new experiences, enriching challenges and opportunities.
• Staying in Beta is a life long commitment to personal growth

• Our customers buy from us, and not x, because...
• You are selling your brain power, skills and energy... in the face of massive competition
• A company hires me over other professionals because...
• what are you offering thats rare and valuable???
• You need to be the best at something, there are multiple gold medals, you can't win them all
• Whats your competitive advantage going to be?
• Helps you decide what to invest in
• Find your direction and advantage by auditing:
• 'Your assets', 'your aspirations and values' and 'market realities'
• Supply and Demand of what you offer vs the competition
• Make use of assets, pursue worthy aspirations while navigating market realities

• What you have now
• Soft assets = can't be traded for money (connections, knowledge, trust, skills, reputations, brand, strengths)
• Hard assets = can be traded for money (cash, stocks, possessions)
• Your asset mix is not fixed, you can strengthen in (trade cash and time for skills, develop skills, the flip side of experience is often energy and hustle)

• Wishes, ideas, goals, and vision of the future (regardless of assets or state of the world)
• Core values, whats important to you (knowledge, autonomy, power, money, integrity)
• When you're doing work you care about, you'll be able to work harder
• There is no 'true self', aspirations are shaped by you and your actions
• You don't find your identity, it emerges

• You need to meet the needs of a paying market
• The market is not abstract, its the people making the decisions that affect you
• Good entrepreneurs are grounded in whats possible and achievable right now
• Entrepreneurs spend lots of energy trying to figure out what customers will pay for
• Focus on needs of customers and stakeholders

• Example: Develop a skill (asset), that you're passionate about (aspirations) that you can get paid for (market reality)
• Strengthen and diversify your asset mix
• All advantages are local: Pick a hill that has less competition

In the next day: Add your competitive advantage to LinkedIn

In the next week: Find 3 people with similar aspirations, benchmark against them. Follow other companies, write down your assets in context of the market reality

A = What you're doing now ( + - minor iterations )

B = What you pivot to when you need to change your goal or your route to get there.

Z = Your lifeboat. Stay in the game. What happens if it all goes wrong.

• Make plans based on your competitive advantage (assets, aspirations, market reality)
• E.g: I think I'm good at x, want to do y and the market needs z
• Assumptions are things that need to be true for your plan to work. State these clearly.
• Prioritise learning: Which plan offers the most learning potential
• Learn by doing: Try the role or the industry to see if you like it
• Make reversible, small bets: Minimise the cost of failure. Don't bet the farm. Iterate. Start with a trial period, keep your day job.
• Think 2 steps ahead: Think and plan 2 steps ahead. If not sure, go for optionality (consulting)
• Maintain an identity separate from specific employers: You're vulnerable to an identity crisis if you have to pivot. Start a personal blog. Public reputation and portfolio.

• You'll never know for sure. Both an art and science. Intuition, luck and feedback
• If you find the grass is greener somewhere else, go there.
• You could have an inflection point. a 10x force disrupts you, where your actions determine your trajectory. You'll likely need to change your skills or environment
• You can't predict these, so always be building up your skills, have a plan B in mind. Be ready.

• Start the plan B on the side
• Learn a skill during evenings and weekends
• Start building relationships with people who work in an adjacent industry
• Apply for a part-time internship
• Start a side consulting practice
• Take a vocation vacation

• The plan z should allow you to be assertive and brave with Plan A and B
• Failure is tolerable
• Regroup and think of an entirely new plan A

• In the next day:
• Make a list of uncertainties, doubts and questions about your career
• List of the assumptions or hypothesis you're developing around these uncertainties
• Write down Plan A, Plan B potentials and your Plan Z
• In the next week:
• Have a coffee with somebody who's pivoted into a niche you're considering.
• Make a plan to develop more transferable skills
• Writing, management, technical and computer skills, people smarts.
• Invest in more skills, make a commitment to learn each week
• In the next month:
• Begin on an experimental side project
• Orient it around a skill or experience thats different but related
• Establish an identity independent of your employer
• Network Intelligence:
• Reach out to five people who work in adjacent niches and ask them to coffee.
• Compare your plan with theirs
• Keep up relationships overtime so you can access information, and pivot into other niches

• Even with a permanent-beta mindset you need a network
• Always be investing in your network
• To accelerate your career, you need the help and support of others.
• Establish a diverse team of allies and advisors whom you can grow over time
• People are the source of key resources, opportunities, information and the like.
• In promotion, strong relationship with people matters more than competence
• People you spend time with shape who you are
• Hang out with the people you already want to be
• Behind most great people, are their relationship building skills
• Teams perform at the level of the worst individual team member
• Your success depends on your capabilities, and that of your network to magnify them

• Build genuine relationships:
• Building a network doesn't have to be cringey
• Don't be a 'transactional' networker
• Be a relationship builder, try to help the other people first.
• Many good deeds get reciprocated, but don't keep track
• Your existing relationships are a social network, try to meet people through who you already know
• Have a long term perspective, assess their ability to...
• build your assets, reach your aspirations, position you well relative to competition, hear about key information... can help you with your career plan?

• See the world from their perspective
• How you can help and collaborate with them. Do this first!

• It should be fun, don't view it as a chore
• Get excited about working with others

• Engage new people via people you already know
• 70% meet spouse through somebody they know, 30% through self introduction
• Take stock of the connections you already have
• Professional allies (10 max)
• Complimentary strengths and interests
• Play in the same space, sometimes end up competing against each other
• Deepen your shared understanding of the world
• Volleys of communications and cooperation build trust
• Weaker ties and connections (200 max)
• Most job referrals are through weak ties (seen occasionally or rarely)
• Because you don't know them that well, its likely that they know about jobs you don't! (the clique effect)
• What is valuable is the breadth and reach of your network
• Weak ties in a slightly different field, with different knowledge
• Diversity and breadth is important when transitioning
• Your network is bigger and more powerful than you think
• 6 degrees of separation, its a small world because its so interconnected
• Reach out through introductions from friends
• The best professional network is cohesive and diverse

• Jump start the give and take
• Kevin Rose made Jack Dorsey a promotional video for square for free... which got him into the Series A
• You need to know the person, their strengths and weaknesses, what keeps them up at night.
• Offer them a gift: introductions, advice, information (articles etc)
• What are you good at that they aren't?
• Let yourself be helped!
• Be a bridge: to other people or experiences
• In touch and top of mind:
• You're not nagging
• Try to add value
• Worried about being too personal, couch your staying in touch as a mass action
• I'm trying to reconnect with old colleagues, how are you?
• One lunch is worth dozens of emails
• Social media:
• Post professional updates, twitter updates
• Be the one to reconnect (its been too long)
• Set up an interesting people fund
• Set aside money to go and meet interesting people
• Navigate status dynamics when dealing with important people
• Pay attention to status
• Everyone is equal, but not really
• Meeting needs to be more convenient for the higher status person
• Be on time for more important people
• Don't assume you can 'improve' a peers work
• When to let go
• People change, you change. Relationships don't work forever
• Don't keep friendships that should be retired

Today:

• Who are you spending time with? Are you happy with their influence on you?

This week:

• Introduce 2 people who don't know each other
• Think about a challenge you're dealing with, ask an existing connection for an introduction to someone who could help.
• Jump start with a few small gifts

This month:

• Try to help a weak tie
• Create an interesting people fund

• Success begins with opportunities
• It’s up to you and your network to find & develop opportunities
• Channel your mindset and skills into finding great business opportunities
• Opportunities to expand your competitive advantage, or accelerate your Plan A or Plan B
• Careers aren’t linear, they have breakout moments
• But you can develop habits of behavior and habits of thinking that increase the likelihood that you 􏰂nd yourself in the right place at the right time.

• Brim with curiosity
• Even if you don’t have an immediate need. Always be looking
• The more you try the better you’ll get

• Most successful careers go through adaptations
• Court good randomness and spot opportunities that present themselves
• Winning the lottery is luck, serendipity involves being alert to potential opportunity
• Be doing, exploring, meeting, looking,
• The best way to make sure lucky things happen is to make sure a lot of things happen

• Connect to human networks and groups
• Do the hustle
• Be resourceful: if you don’t have a bed to sleep on, make your own
• Be resilient: When the naysayers are loud, turn up the music

• In the next day:
• Budget time for randomness.
• Ask the most curious person you know our to lunch, get infected by their sense of awe.
• In the next week:
• Go to an industry event.
• Say yes day
• Opportunities are attached to people. Identify those who know about the opportunities
• In the next month:
• Start a group or association
• Subscribe to wired, or MIT technology review

Network intelligence:

• How to collaborate on finding, generating and exploiting great opportunities

• Risk is dynamic, you are changing, the market is changing
• Negativity bias (loss aversion)
• Worst case scenario mapping
• Reversibility
• You'll never be fully certain
• Consider age and stage
• Pursue opportunities where others misperceive the risk
‣
Fortunate / Foolish diagram

1. Jobs that pay less where you can learn more
2. Part time / contract roles that look less stable
3. Hiring somebody without experience
4. Opportunity where risks are highly publicised
• Short term risk can increase longterm stability
• Small fires prevent the big burn. Stable until they're not
• You can become more resilient to changes if you change often

In the next day:

• Reflect on the risk in your life
• Real worst case scenario

In the next week:

• Take on risks that are acceptable to you

In the next month:

• Make a plan to increase short term volatility
• Revisit your plan z, is it still viable?

How you gather, manage and use information will determine whether you win or lose ()

You need to be able to access the information you need, when you need it

Tap into other peoples brains for network intelligence

People offer private observations that would never appear in a public place (unannounced jobs)

People can filter information you get from other places (what books to read etc)

Many people think better thoughts in dialog with others

Develop network literacy: Who to go to for everything

• Pose questions to your entire network
• Target direct questions to individuals
• Domain experts, people who know you well, really smart people
• Ask good questions:
• Converse don't interrogate
• Adjust the lens
• Frame and prime
• Follow up and probe
• Serendipity starts to happen when you're in motion and doing stuff, and engaging people

• Collect readings from multiple sensors
• analyse each piece of information that comes in
• synthesise the various streams of data

Today:

• Adjust your linkedin newsfeed to show you the right things
• Follow the people you should be following on twitter

This week:

• Map out who you trust on what topics
• Make a list of the 2-3 top issues you're thinking about
• Post one article each week to a mailing list , twitter or LinkedIn

This month:

• Schedule 3 lunch dates
• Become a go to person for others in your network

Below is more information on the books referenced in the earlier chapters, as well as a few additional recommendations on related themes. On our website, we link to each of these books, as well as to numerous other articles, blogs, Twitter feeds, and more.

Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself By Daniel H. Pink In 2002, Pink made popular the phrase “free agent” to describe the self-employment phenomenon in the United States. At the time, Pink estimated that one-quarter to onethird of American workers worked as independent contractors. He explores their attitudes toward autonomy, informal networks, self-constructed safety nets, and more. The mentality of the self-employed people Pink proɹles is relevant to anyone who wants to think more like an entrepreneur.

The Brand You 50: Or, Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an “Employee” into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion! By Tom Peters This is the book version of Tom Peters’s famous 1997 article in Fast Company titled “The Brand Called You.” Peters pioneered the idea of “You, Inc.” He says you should think about what makes you stand out and then aggressively promote those distinctive skills, accomplishments, and passions—which together make up your personal brand—just like a company would promote its products and services.

Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career By Herminia Ibarra This is a great book on career reinvention and transition. A professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD, Ibarra tells the stories of men and women who pivoted into new industries. She observes how diɽcult it is to shed your old identity and create a new one. She stresses the importance of experimentation. And she hammers home the idea that there is no “one true self” that can be discovered.

Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Business By Andrew S. Grove Intel cofounder Andy Grove introduces the concept of Strategic Inɻection Points: crucial moments in the life of a company where the actions taken will determine whether the company survives massive environmental change and emerges stronger than ever, or whether it declines dramatically. Grove makes the case for staying in front of change. The most recent edition of the book contains an extra chapter on career inɻection points, which is quite useful.

One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success By Marci Alboher Marci says you can successfully weave together seemingly diʃerent career interests into one uniɹed whole—all at once. You don’t have work in one industry for a long time and then make a frightening leap to another. Marci interviews lawyers/chefs, journalists/doctors, and others in a “slash career.” The book presents a whole new way to think about combining passions.

Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd By Youngme Moon Moon argues that to have a true competitive advantage in today’s business world means that a company must be fundamentally diʃerent from the outset. It can’t bolt on diʃerentiators after the fact. Recommended reading to explore the concept of competitive advantage in more detail.

Your Career Game: How Game Theory Can Help You Achieve Your Professional Goals By Nathan Bennett and Stephen A. Miles This is practical career advice in a style that’s unusually substantive and dense. Bennett and Miles interview top executives about their careers and derive principles of success. They stress “career agility” and write thoughtfully on creating diʃerentiation as a professional.

The Invention of Air: A Story About Science, Faith, Revolution and the Birth of America By Steven Johnson A story about the life and times of Joseph Priestley, who was the ɹrst person to discover oxygen and the ɹrst person to realize that plants were also creating it. Johnson shows that the “discovery” of oxygen was not the result of a single eureka moment but rather the culmination of many experiences and inɻuences over an extended period of time. The discussion of Priestley’s networks and relationships is particularly relevant to career networks and relationships. Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation By Steven Johnson Johnson explains the environmental causes of innovation, including the role of open networks, collaboration, serendipity, adjacent niches, and many other concepts relevant to fostering breakout career opportunities. An excellent analysis.

The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Action By John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison The authors say the twenty-ɹrst-century model of knowledge acquisition is about “pulling” information in from dynamic “knowledge ɻows.” By placing the social network at the center of information gathering and opportunity ɻow, the book complements well our discussion of serendipity and network intelligence.

Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries By Peter Sims

Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure By Tim Harford Peter and Tim each argue for an experimental approach to business, politics, and life. Rather than betting big on a large endeavor that takes a long time to pay oʃ, companies—and individuals—should take many small risks and see which ones turn out okay. Eric Schmidt of Google calls this philosophy “the most at-bats per unit of time.”

The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom By Jonathan Haidt Haidt, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, presents fascinating insights from the latest research on happiness. In one chapter, he writes about how humans are more focused on avoiding risk than seizing the upside, which is relevant to our discussion of risks and opportunities.

Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making By Gary Klein An original and counterintuitive set of ideas on how to make better decisions. Unlike many books on decision-making, Klein assumes you have incomplete information and high levels of uncertainty—in other words, he assumes you live in the real world, not an academic lab.

Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives By Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler Drawing on extensive (if not completely proven) research, social scientists Christakis and Fowler argue that connections up to three degrees away from us have a profound eʃect on our mind and body. Christakis and Fowler say that we are very much the company we keep—out to the third degree.

Working Together: Why Great Partnerships Succeed By Michael D. Eisner with Aaron Cohen Eisner, former CEO of Disney, writes about ten notable partnerships. Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken are featured in the book, as are Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, Warren Buʃett and Charlie Munger, Bill Gates and Melinda Gates, and others. These inspiring stories show the power of alliance.

Pull: Networking and Success Since Benjamin Franklin By Pamela Walker Laird Laird demolishes the idea of the “self-made man” and adds historical depth to the idea of IWe. A good account of how famous ɹgures like Ben Franklin operated within a web of social support.

Superconnect: The Power of Networks and the Strength of Weak Links By Richard Koch and Greg Lockwood An in-depth exploration of “weak ties,” including a review of the academic studies that coined the term, and what professionals need to know about how weak ties function in a social network.

The Future Arrived Yesterday: The Rise of the Protean Corporation and What It Means for You By Michael Malone What does a company of the future look like? Michael says it’s a “protean corporation,” one that can constantly adapt to new challenges by restructuring itself instantly. Organizations like Wikipedia and Google ɹt this mold. This book is an intriguing portrait of tomorrow’s workplace.