An Article about You 10 Years from Now?
(1) Who did I influence? (2) Who influenced me? (3) What choices did I make?
Rita McGrath talked with me in my podcast recently, and made me realize we are so focused on thinking about the next steps: What should I do now, tomorrow? How can I advance in my chosen path whatever it is? We get caught up with the day-to-day grind we have no time to think about our personal futures in a meaningful way. This made me think about myself.
Rita McGrath: "Write an article about yourself 10 years from now"
Rita says there's another direction for thinking. A way to start is to ask ourselves "What would I want people to read about me in an article 10 years from now?" and therefore "What can I be doing now to move in that direction while still staying involved in my present?
When I talked with Rita in my podcast, I discovered that thinking of my own future in terms of an article helped me focus. For me, a good article flows to capture and keep my attention. It hits key points and moves to reach its point.
What would I want mine to say? I still have not decided but I'm giving it some serious thought!
1 - Starting with "Who did I influence? My realization was slow!
One thing I'd like to read in the article about me is "In 2021 Jane wrote "The Gig Mindset Advantage Inside Organizations" book and it was a best seller."
The problem is that it was NOT a best seller. This disappointed me for quite a while! I had articles published in top business publications and lots of invitations to speak but no NYT best seller list of the year! :-(
However, I eventually realized the real influence was that it had helped a lot of people see themselves differently. I got several hundred comments in person and by email over the first months along the lines of "Your book made me feel a lot better" ... "Thank you for writing your book, Gig Mindset! It's finally, after many years, given me a voice/identity to how I work within a business!".... "For the first time I can articulate better the role I do within organizations".
So, thinking about that now, I see that I DID influence some people in a very positive way.
So now here's what I'd like to see in the article about me 10 years from now:
"Jane's book helped a lot of people see themselves in a new light and encouraged them to take risks on new paths."
2 - Who influenced me? So many!
This is a hard one to answer because the list is long. But it's easy for the same reason! Here I have limited myself to just a few (chronological order, full titles in the footnote).
Thank you to Albert Bandura, Charles Handy, Gareth Morgan,Jon Husband, David Weinberger, Arie de Geus, Miguel Pina e Cunha and Frank J. Barrett and others.
3 - The choices I made: two fundamental ones
I decided to stay on the front lines myself and not hire junior consultants to work with me. This limited the size of projects I could undertake but ensured my own growth being firsthand and not administratively engaged on projects.
I also decided to use creative networking as my mechanism for running workshops and communities of practice. A client once told me "We are working with you because, unlike other consultants, you never tell us what to do."
Rita's Permissionless Magic!
Rita has a similar more developed approach when as she foresees the "permissionless organization". She says this is one where "we provide enough structure and coherence that the organization operates well as a whole, but give people the freedom to really let their humanity flourish and let their ingenuity flourish. Humans are ingenious creatures, and I think that’s the skill that we are facing today. So organizations ... as entities that are capable of responding to changing circumstances, I think that’s the magic."
(Full interview:
If I'd known Rita when I was still consulting, I would have borrowed the term "permissionless magic" and told my clients that was what we were practicing together!
I would like to know if any of you, reading this article, have experiences to share about influencing people, being influenced, and making choices that moved you towards the future you want. Please share here, or drop me a note through LI messages or on ImaginizeWorld.
Footnote
1977. Albert Bandura, “Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change,”
1989. Charles Handy, The Age of Unreason
1996. Art Kleiner, The Age of Heretics: Heroes, Outlaws, and the Forerunners of Corporate Change
1997. Gareth Morgan, Imaginization: New Mindsets for Seeing, Organizing, and Managing
1999. Jon Husband who defined the term “wirearchy”
1999. Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger, The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual
1997. Arie de Geus, The Living Company: Habits for Survival in a Turbulent Business Environment
2003. “Organizational Improvisation: What, When, How and Why,” an article written by Miguel Pina e Cunha, João Vieira da Cunha, and Ken Kamoche
2012. Yes to the Mess: Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz, by Frank J. Barrett