From Innovations, a website published by Ziff-Davis Enterprise from mid-2006 to mid-2009. Reprinted by permission.
One of the most valuable newsletters I receive is called Knowledge@Wharton, an information-packed digest of the latest insights from the faculty and associates of the University of Pennsylvania’s famed business school. An interview this week caught my eye because it deals with tactics for adapting to today’s very challenging business environment.
Gregory Shea and Robert Gunther have written a new book called Your Job Survival Guide: A Manual for Thriving in Change in which they draw a wonderful analogy to today’s chaotic business world and whitewater kayaking. The authors describe the current business environment as one of a permanent whitewater, in which mass confusion reigns and few safe havens appear to exist.
Whitewater is scary to the uninitiated, but to seasoned kayakers, it’s the height of exhilaration. Whitewater is fun because, while frightening, it doesn’t have to be dangerous if you know what to do.
Experienced kayakers know not to dive in to a whitewater and ride it to the end. Instead, they navigate the rapids in stages. Between bursts of activity, they pull off to the side in little pools called eddies, catch their breath and prepare for the next stage in the journey. The trip is basically a process of navigating between eddies.
What a wonderful analogy! The technology world is unquestionably chaotic right now, even without the financial meltdown. Constant change frustrates predictability. The idea of building a career by mastering a single discipline and applying it for decades is as dead as the manual typewriter. Programmers know this. Anyone who has navigated the industry’s migration from Perl to Python to Ruby on Rails, for example, knows that expertise in one discipline doesn’t guarantee long-term career success. However, a core expertise in scripting is valuable in all scenarios.
The key is to understand your core skills and to learn to apply them in areas where there is market demand. Seek the eddies while constantly scanning the horizon for the next set of challenges.
A Personal Story
I’ll tell a personal anecdote that’s relevant. I was trained as a journalist because that field was a natural outlet for my skills as a writer and storyteller. Early in my career, I discovered that the technology field offered the best opportunity to apply those skills. That served me well for nearly 20 years, but in the late 1990s, the market began to change. Print publishing was dying in the technology market, so I jumped to an Internet startup and spent the next six years learning the unique demands of that medium.
Upon striking out on my own in 2005, I quickly discovered that yet another new opportunity was emerging in the field of social media. Millions of people, and many thousands of businesses, were going online to become, in effect, publishers. It was quickly evident to me that the disciplines I had learned in 20 years of technology journalism were very relevant in this new world. People had the capacity to publish, but most of them lacked the skill to communicate in compelling ways. The skills I had learned in 25 years of publishing were still relevant, even though the medium and the audience had completely changed. Today, I’m applying those skills in a manner that I couldn’t have imagined a decade ago.
The process has been scary at times, but it’s also been rewarding never boring. That brings me back to the analogy of whitewater rafting.
Learn to Roll
In the interview with Wharton, the two authors talk of the Eskimo roll, which is a maneuver that kayakers learn to adjust to tumultuous conditions. Instead of fighting rough water, veterans can strategically capsize their craft to protect themselves against obstacles. For most boaters, capsizing is a disaster. But for kayakers it’s an essential coping skill, as long as they can fight the natural human tendency to panic.
Many of us are feeling a little capsized right now, and the panic reflex is kicking in. Keep in mind that we are all wrestling with the same uncertainties and trying to figure out survival strategies. No one has the answers. Focus on keeping your core skills sharp and apply them creatively to whatever opportunities this tumultuous market presents. You will come out OK. Although it might not hurt to be ready to do a few Eskimo rolls along the way.