July 3, 2010
“the only way to keep your job nowadays is to constantly re-invent it”
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This rather sad article in the New York Times about long-term, middle class unemployment got me thinking…
Got me thinking about the cartoon above, in fact.
Any long-time blogger knows this: The only way to keep people reading your blog is by “Constant Re-Invention”. Keep on finding new things to talk about. Keep on DOING and CREATING new things worth talking about.
i.e. Creativity. Yes. That. Exactly.
And what has always been true for bloggers is now true for anyone hoping to live above the basic subsistence level.
The only way to keep your job nowadays is to constantly re-invent it.
Again, Creativity.
And that’s your responsibility, not your boss’. If your boss won’t let you do that, then quit. Right now. Do something else. It’s your move. Nobody else’s. Sorry.
It isn’t rocket science. But sadly, it’s something far too few of us ever think really hard about.
[UPDATE– Sam makes a really good point in the comments: “I’m finding the same exact principle applies to entrepreneurship… unless we’re constantly pushing our creative edge, and generating the next opportunity for engagement, and the next, and the next – we’re behind (and we only launched our web presence two months ago). We’ve gotta start inculcating and embedding that value in our culture, from the very beginning of life.”]
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Tags: Cartoons, Creativity, New York Times, Unemployment
Right on, Hugh. I’m finding the same exact principle applies to entrepreneurship… unless we’re constantly pushing our creative edge, and generating the next opportunity for engagement, and the next, and the next – we’re behind (and we only launched our web presence two months ago
. We’ve gotta start inculcating and embedding that value in our culture, from the very beginning of life.
Love the cartoon. Love the message.
Thanks
Noah
This is very true. It is also a challenge for bosses. they need to have two minds — one which helps their team stay focused on today’s tasks and another that stays open minded to how their people will innovate and how that might fit into what the business does.
It’s take a lot of courage to manage that — or perhaps a form of focussed/chill ?
Exchanging ideas with people working in totally different fields is a great way to source inspiration and keep the creative processes ticking over.
I’ve spent the last couple of days sharing ideas with a video producer and an events organiser. What could a writer/blogger take from those fields and vice-versa? You’d be surprised
Creativity keeps you ahead of the pack.
When does the creativity start? Because I’m seeing nothing but lameness and mechanical errors.
ice
Yes. Get creative. Have a health and welfare system. Catch up with the rest of the developed world. Overthrow some sterile old puritan cliches. Or at least move to Canada.
Very true point.
You have to be multiple steps in front of where your business is, finding new ways to add value personally and within the teams you participate. Ideally, you’re also working another plan on how the capabilities and skills you’re developing can deliver outside to other businesses, just in case.
Isn’t that the absolute truth! Well said Hugh
Well, let’s see, being creative. Maybe the long-term unemployed I know who have worked several decades in Human Resources could create a younger person, because it’s as clear as anything can be that those over 50 are pretty much dead meat. And maybe those who worked in manufacturing jobs that have now been sent to China could create a way of living on a handful of rice every day in hopes that those jobs might come back to the USA.
Meanwhile, people like Carly Fiorina can run for the U.S. Senate in California, using job creation as one of her campaign objectives. This is the woman who, when she headed Hewlett Packard, sent some twenty or thirty thousand jobs to India. Later, when she was fired by the HP board, she left the company with a twenty-million-dollar golden parachute.
Really, what’s going on is what has always gone on. Whenever those at the top of the food chain can do it, they find ways to pay starvation wages. They do it because (1) they can and (2) at some level they think it is perfectly OK for them to live off the misery of others.
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To reinvent or lifelinog learnig for a diversification of abilities. Show that your work is needed (reinvent it) and that you working skills are unexchangeable.
nice
thats very very true in todays competitive world maintaining a job is the most difficult thing so you have to be creative and depends upon ones mind once again great article
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