makes you think ?

Mike Pegg as always has some great thoughts on continuously creating and developing work that is satisfying.

Stage one is your ‘seed corn’. You plant lots of seeds and explore many possibilities. Some seeds grow and people show interest. You also put extra effort into the projects you find stimulating.

Stage two is ‘satisfying work’. You become obsessed with the fulfilling activities and begin searching for funding.

Stage three is your ‘salary earner’. Translating the satisfying work into money-earning activities, you feel on top of the world. After awhile you may want to move on, however, especially if you experience the final step.

Stage four is your ‘spent force’. The cash is still coming in, but performing the activities no longer generates energy. That does not matter – providing you have been continuing the development cycle and nurturing your next crop of seed corn.

Yes according to an article in the online version of the Spectator.  He is planning to follow the portfolio career path of his predecessor, Mr Blair. The Spectator claims that his asking rate is $100,000 a gig. Plus first class travel and accommodation. We always discuss the pluses of following a portfolio career but in all honesty we cannot claim that everyone doing so will be quite as successful as Mr Blair and possibly now Mr Brown.

We have been very impressed with the work that Antonia Chitty has been doing in encouraging Mums to set up their own businesses. We know that 60% of all new businesses start in the home. We know that many of these are set up by women.

167, 353 self-employed mothers work from home.

Mums who run their own businesses contribute £4.4bn to the UK–an average turnover of more than £26,000.

Antonia has an inspiring website. She also has an ebook which you can download from her site – ‘The Mumpreneur Guide Start Your Own Business Book’.

We would hypothesise that many women who do this are on their way to a portfolio career. Juggling around the different components in their lives is as close to portfolio working as you can get. Our guess is that although some will gravitate to single track careers as their children grow up, the majority will find it more fulfilling to pursue portfolio careers or lifestyle careers. Indeed many of them will already be on the lifestyle career track. ( If you need reminding just what all these are then do download the free extract from our book which goes into detail about the different career patterns).

I had the very challenging experience recently of having our own question thrown straight at me. It was an interview conducted by vitae who have interviewed many people over the past year or so to give undergraduates and new graduates some case studies to help stimulute them to thinking more about what they want from a career. Their audience are primarily researchers, many of whom will be attracted to or find themselves embracing a portfolio career. My job was to convince them that a research and academic background can also serve as a launch pad for entrepreneurial activity. Not an easy task especially if you talk as much as I do! What you see is a heavily edited version of what was an hour long interview.  Clearly the objective here is very different from what we discuss in our book about getting your story right for networking and marketing situations. But it did serve to help me identify patterns in my career which I had not actually articulated before. It was a result of this that I came up with my byline:

helping people to become architects of their own future

As a learning point – I was in my mid 60’s before I came up with that!  With what I now know I would always recommend people to identify a byline which encapsulates what you do. And you know – you are allowed to change that as you develop!

This could be a valuable exercise for you to try. Get someone to interview about your career so far. Get them to ask you to:

• describe your career to date
• see if you can discover themes that run throughout
• distinguish between what you did that made you come alive – and of course the opposite
• analyse whether or not there is any logic in your choice of jobs or whether it is largely intuitive
• summarise how happy you are with the choices that you have made so far
• explore what you would like to develop in the future

We would suggest that you attempt to film this interview as viewing this and hearing yourself will also tell you a great deal. If you do this we would love to hear how you got on.

I was fascinated recently to be invited to talk at a conference for the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). Apparently many of their members had expressed an interest in the topic of portfolio careers. There was especial interest from the 50+’s. I think that it has taken the accountancy profession many years to recover from the incredibly funny Monty Python sketch about boring accountants one of whom wanted to break out and be a lion tamer. Yet the recent report from City & Guilds on happiness in jobs has accountancy coming in at No 6:

The full happiness rankings of jobs for the latest survey are as follows:

Position Profession

1 Beauticians

2 = Hairdressers

2 = Armed Forces

4 Catering/chefs

5 Retail staff

6 = Teachers

6 = Marketing/PR

6 = Accountants

9 = Secretaries/Receptionists

9 = Plumbers

9 = Engineers

9 = Architects

13 = Journalists

13 = Mechanics/Automotive

13 = Human Resources

16 Call centre

17 = IT specialists

17 = Nurses

17 = Banker/Finance

17 = Builders/construction

We have 2 case studies involving people who are accountants (both in our Stories section above) and we are now beginning to find people from every profession who are seriously considering a portfolio career. I think the concept might just be catching on!

It is interesting but perhaps predictable that more and more graduates are exploring the notion of portfolio careers. Certainly some are taking more than one job because of financial necessity but there is increasing evidence to suggest that the concept is attractive to the Gen Y group. Barrie has written an article on this issue for the journal of  the Higher Education Careers Service Unit.

In addition, more than half (55 per cent) of the 3,000 employees asked wished they could do something completely different in life. This will of course be no surprise to those of us who have given up on finding the one job that will utilise all of our skills and engage all of our passions.

Given the chance to alter one thing, 25 per cent of adults would choose a new job above anything else.  Desire for a new house came second with 19 per cent of the vote, while 16 per cent of respondents wanted to take a step further and move to another country. The inclination to emigrate grows stronger with age, the research said, with 14 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds selecting this as their primary goal, rising to 21 per cent for the 55-plus age group.

Just a small amount (12 per cent) of adults described themselves as “perfectly happy”, with slightly more women reporting overall satisfaction than men, according to research conducted by distance learning provider Home Learning College.

Having a portfolio career of course simply means that if one of your jobs is making you unhappy you swap it for another one. At different times of your life you may want a different “blend” of jobs or projects. Its what works for you right now that’s important.

I just came across this fascinating TED talk by  Harvard professor Larry Lessig, one of the foremost authorities on copyright issues, with a vision for reconciling creative freedom with marketplace competition. So what has this got to do with portfolio careers? Many portfolio workers, including us, who currently have 5 websites between us, constantly have to think about whether we are allowed to use images that we find from Google image searches or whether to research relatively copyright free sites like Flikkr or pay for images from providers like Stockphoto. Dare we use YouTube videos to illustrate our points or if we can use them how about other videos that we pick up from the web? What about adding music to some of our presentations? It’s a nighmare and as Larry points out one that is getting more rather than less complex.

The other reason for looking at this is to see the sheer professionalism of his presentation. Oh yes! There are also some very funny extracts – especially the duet between George Bush and Tony Blair – and a piece on Jesus Christ that some would simply find blasphemous. All of which serves to make his points.

Today we have another guest posting. This time from Alexis Bonari who describes hereself as ” a freelance writer and blog junkie”. She is currently a resident education blogger and performs research surrounding http://www.collegescholarships.org. In her spare time, she enjoys “square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop”.  Alexis was stimulated by what we had to say about motivated skills and contacted us with her views on the importance of having a diverse skills set. This is what she has to say:

“As today’s employment choices continue to decrease due to the condition of the economy and lack of jobs, it’s more important than ever to have a diverse skill set as opposed to just one or two specific areas of expertise. Having a diverse skill set helps a person adapt to the constantly changing market and as many companies continue to scale down, full time employees are being replaced by part time and flexible staff, making the “portfolio worker” more desirable than ever.

Leadership

Although companies don’t want too many cooks in the kitchen, it’s paramount to have leadership skills when job hunting. This gives the employer someone to fall back and a sense of security in case they are needed elsewhere or just want a break. Hiring a dependable second or third in command takes precedence over the average Joe when hiring any day.

The Self Directed Employee

There is nothing more frustrating than someone who needs constant direction which wastes not only their superiors time, but the companies time as well. Today’s cream of the crop employees are self directed, easily taught, flexible and don’t need a lot of hand holding. These are key qualities that your resume should reflect. But be cautious when working up your resume, just because you’ve had a dozen jobs, doesn’t make you more desirable than someone who’s has only had one or two. There’s a fine line between a job jumper and a baby boomer who has held the same position for thirty years.

Being Well-Rounded

Qualifications can be met through other areas as well. The military, teaching classes as a group leader in your church or community or being involved in charity work. Extracurricular activities are important and show that you can balance work and home life, which is a great asset to an employer.”

In addition to her sound advice on having diverse skills aren’t you just dying to know what ’square foot gardening’ is?