Preparing for the Unknown
You’ve read the articles, heard the speakers, and seen the viral videos: a massive shift is happening in what our profession does, the Internet has changed everything, and the jobs of tomorrow don’t even exist today. On the one hand, it’s all very exciting. But on the other, it feels like we’re staring into the great dark unknown, leaving us helpless to know even where to begin creating this future. We can’t just hunker down and do what we’ve always done, because one day we’ll look up and see the entire marketspace has changed around us. And we can’t just keep spinning our wheels chasing the latest fads with no sense of direction, hoping one of them will turn out to be the wave that carries us to future. So what’s a professional in today’s day and age supposed to do? I can’t claim to have the answer to what the future holds (I’m still working on my time machine blueprints), but the following three principles seem like good guides for preparing for what’s ahead in our profession:
—The power of “why”. The more things move around you, the more necessary it is to find your center of balance. Asking “why” do we do what we do?, and what makes it valuable to our customers?, is a great way to find that center of balance. The truth is, there’s rarely (if ever) an “ah-ha” moment where everything becomes crystal clear. Finding a “why” is more of a process of having a hunch, stepping out to follow it, remaining open to revisions, and observing what happens. It’s critically important to think about “why”, but only when you act on evolving versions of it, are you going to get anywhere.
—Work all your muscle groups. If you were running an obstacle course, and didn’t know what physical challenges were ahead, getting your body in good overall shape would be your best bet. So to for knowledge workers—if we develop our knowledge skills, we’ll be well-positioned for whatever comes down the pike, because they’ll be transferable. Things like being able to ideate, relate, communicate, evaluate, prototype, create, focus, integrate, model, hypothesize, test, and imagine. Seeking out ways to work these muscle groups, and consciously developing work habits in these areas, makes us all the stronger.
—Do something else. The “new” rarely comes from the inside, but usually from the “outside”. So get out there and do something other than accounting. Focus on your band, go indoor rock climbing, develop your photography skills, learn about different types of coffee, pickup geocaching, try new recipes. Each of these things gives us fresh insights, ways of thinking and doing, and exposes us to insights in other arenas. The world of accounting is just a small piece of the puzzle, and we can better see it’s place in the world only after having better seen the world itself.
So what do you think? What other things could we do to prepare for the unknown?
Steve Jobs talks about one of the keys to Apple: it’s an incredibly collaborative company. Key insights for me:
1. No committees; assign responsibility to one person for each key area.
2. Teamwork is trusting that folks will come through with their parts without watching them all the time.
3. The mix: figure out the best way to subdivide things, build teams around that, work on the same thing, touch base regularly, and bring it all together into a great product.
4. Be run by ideas, not hierarchy, and enable the best ideas win.
Roll With The Flow, by DORIANELECTRA
A little fun with economics, covering such topics as value, measurement, opportunity cost, and control - enjoy!
(via tehmeg)
by Jonah Lehrer via the WSJ Some key quotes for me:
“As Einstein once declared, ‘Creativity is the residue of time wasted.’”
“This ability to calculate progress is an important part of the creative process. When we don’t feel that we’re getting closer to the answer—we’ve hit the wall, so to speak—we probably need an insight. If there is no feeling of knowing, the most productive thing we can do is forget about work for a while. But when those feelings of knowing are telling us that we’re getting close, we need to keep on struggling.”
“It’s this ability to attack problems as a beginner, to let go of all preconceptions and fear of failure, that’s the key to creativity.”And there’s many more, just by clicking the title link above.
Technology can only take you so far… :)
(via hilker, campfiresmell)
"The real task of leadership is to confront people with their freedom."
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At the post linked above, Simon Sinek offers some thoughts on what makes for an authentic brand, which helped me cap off some of my ramblings from a few months back. His closer:
In the case of the clergyman and the ruffian, a quick conversation with both will immediately reveal the fraud - the one who is simply dressing the part verus being who we expected them to be. An authentic brand is the same. A few interactions with the company quickly reveals if their marketing and branding is simply saying what they think will appeal to us instead of telling us what they really think. The difference is authenticity.Just check out the link for more.
A unique music video featuring Kina Grannis singing “In Your Arms”.
After you watch, I highly recommend watching the “making of” video. In it, we learn that the video was the brainchild of director Greg Jardin, whose concept was to shoot stop-motion style with Kina in-frame (not special effected in) using Jelly Bellies for the background…what turned out to be 288,000 Jelly Bellies that is. Originally he was thinking it’d take one month of shooting, then three…it ended up taking one year, and that doesn’t even count the year of concept development.
Sometimes when we come up with creative ideas, they can take a lot more energy and time than we originally expect. It really only ends up being dedication that gets us through. For this reason, I’d say it’s important not to tackle too many creative projects at one time to avoid burnout. It reminds me of blog post from Simon Sinek called “Sacrifice Should be Worth the Sacrifice”. One of his main points is:
Sacrifice is putting up with something we don’t want for the short term because it serves the greater good… If the sacrifice has no end or becomes the norm, it’s no longer a sacrifice; it’s a life out of balance. That’s accepting something we don’t want as normal.With a video like the above (now at 4 million views), you can know it was worth all the effort. :)
(via kinagrannis)
A great reflection penned by Barrett Young on bringing dreams to life. A key quote for me:
“Desire drives out fear and shakes off laziness. It doesn’t make it easy. It makes it worth it. Don’t just dream it. Want it.”
Simply click the link title above for more…
"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
Samuel Beckett (via Peter Wolf)
This is very helpful for us all to remember, especially on those inevitable cloudy days. The nobility is in the struggle.
Very few people understand social media as well as Gary Vaynerchuk — he has literally spent thousands of hours in the trenches. In this 1-hour talk given at the recent Inc. 500 conference, he provides some deeply insightful commentary on what it is, what it isn’t, and where it’s headed. But be forewarned, he uses a lot of expletives for punctuation, so it’s not for the light of ear.
For more of his insights, you may want to look at his latest book, The Thank You Economy
(via gary)
I believe business should be about more than just profits. Not that there’s anything wrong with profits, mind you. But if profit is your only motivation, it becomes a pretty empty enterprise. As entrepreneurs, we should seek to strike balance between the economic, and the non-economic parts of our businesses, and never let one get too in the way of the other. Our goal is to contribute to the well-being of persons, both material and non-material: counterbalancing, but not mutually exclusive, priorities.
Jessie J’s song “Price Tag” (click play above) can help us remember that sometimes. :)
(via hennyhomeslice)
Numbers don’t tell stories
In the accounting world, we’re fond of saying, ’numbers tell stories’; give me a set of financials, and I can tell you what’s going on in a company.
In reality, I think the opposite is true: Numbers don’t tell stories—stories tell numbers. And not all of the story can be told in digits.
One of the real dangers of traditional accounting, is that it can make you think you know what’s going on, when you really don’t. Those numbers are only part of a much bigger picture, which begins way before any money changes hands, and which is much broader than any double-sided entry. Not to mention that financial statements are yesterday’s news, which have less and less relevance as the evolution of markets quicken.
Accounting financial statements are limited by the rules of “recognition” and “measurability”: Of all the types of activities constantly going on in any enterprise, only a select few actually make their way into the general ledger. But this hardly means those other events are irrelevant to the value creation process-in fact, they’re usually the most critical pieces. Which leads us to our second big point: Don’t fall into the trap of believing everything can be measured-it can’t. And its corollary: Don’t fall into the trap of paying attention to only what’s measurable-you’ll miss the most important pieces of the picture.
Dream with me: are you ready for a new paradigm? What does it look like? Let’s start telling more of the story.
Sometimes we all need a push. :)
(via hilker, via whereisthecool)
"People are not assets…they are individuals entitled to a sense of mission and purpose in their lives, who congregate in firms to make a difference in the lives of others. The universal need of every worker is to perform meaningful work, in a community with others of like mind, to make a difference in the world. The real aspiration of an organization is to make people better, not just make them better off."
