Make Yourself more Marketable

Harvard business Review – On Point

Constant change in markets, strategy, best
practices, technology and more-means your
skills can become outdated quickly. You can’t
afford to coast on previous accomplishments
and established competencies alone.
Employers are looking for candidate with the
potential to adapt and expand their roles in
this ever changing environment.
Among the traits that they look for are
curiosity, insight and the initiative to learn
With longer and twistier career paths today,
developing the habits that support continuous
learning, reflection and engagement will
ensure you remain relevant for years to come.
Almost all managers have one career limiting
habit
Learning to say NO is essential to becoming
reliable at work
Technology has made it increasingly easy to do
immediate but unimportant stuff at the
expense of important stuff.
The difference between the career you have
and the career you want is most likely to be
one or two bad habits.
At every level in the organization, especially at
the top levels, the ability to find and piece
disparate bits of information form a new
insight or view of the whole is essential.
The best CEO strategists are stunningly simple.
Communicate clearly, execute fast, think
creatively and act with courage
People hold onto jobs for all kinds of reasons,
sometimes it is loyalty, sometimes it is
complacency, sometimes it is waiting to get
promoted.
Emerging organizations are leaner, flatter and
require people to use a mix of lateral thinking
and assertiveness to move ahead on this
resources.
The question is not whether a company’s
employees and leaders have the right skills, it’s
whether they have the potential to learn new
ones.
The first indicator of potential is the right kind
of motivation, a fierce commitment to excel in
the pursuit of unselfish goals. Then there are
four other indicators – Curiosity, Insight,
Engagement, Determination.
Unfair pay surely demotivates, but at senior
levels, pay is not the reason people move, it is
more the need for challenging jobs and the
ability to make a difference.
The idea of a company man or woman is an
outdated concept
Since 1983, the average tenure of a job is less
than 5 years in the USA
In a VUCA world, experience and knowledge
are less relevant, and capacities to learn and
adapt, be resilient and connect with others
have become more crucial.
Intelligence based competencies such as
flexibility, empathy, adaptability, organizational
awareness tend to differentiate stars from
average performers at the top.
Two decades ago psychologists Robert and
Hogan created an inventory of 11 dark traits
that derail leaders.
Dark side traits can be divided into three sub
clusters
The first are distancing traits – being excitable,
being moody, skeptical and cynical and passive
aggressiveness where you seem to listen but
do not co-operate.
The second cluster is being bold and confident
to the point of being arrogant, being
mischievous to the point of being reckless.
The third is ingratiating traits, diligent to the
boss but micro managing with subordinates,
being dutiful versus being eager to please.
If you want to know your dark traits, then
people in your life as opposed to work will be
better able to tell you.
Career advancement is a function of how
people see you. Unfortunately even small
slips-ignoring negative feedback, responding
impulsively to unpleasant e mails can cause
significant reputational damage.
Unlearning is not about forgetting, it is about
choosing an alternate mental model or
paradigm.
The world has become many to many but we
still operate with a one to many mindset.
In organizational hierarchies, we are seeing a
move from formal hierarchies to fluid
networks. Our instinct is to think of an
organization as an org chart.
The process of unlearning has three parts :
first, you must recognize that the old mental
model is no longer relevant or effective.
second, you need to find or create a new
mental model. Third, you need to ingrain the
new mental habits.
Our research shows that leaders who are in a
learning mode develop stronger leadership
skills than their peers.
More time needed to Decide whether you need Schedule a block of time
learn to learn it for learning it.

Less time needed to learn Learn it as the chance Learn it right away
arises.

Less usefulness of the More usefulness of the

feature feature
It is most important to learn more than ever as
career oaths meander and lengthen
When you are learning a new skill, make sure
you have the aptitude to learn it and then be
sure that your work needs it.
One of the quickest ways to learn something is
to try and teach it as you learn.
Ongoing skill acquisition is critical to persistent
professional relevance
Changing your Narrative
Unsupportive self talk Supportive self talk

I don’t need to learn this What would my future look like if I did

I am already fine at this Am I really good, how do I compare with my peers?

This is boring I wonder why others find it interesting

I am terrible at this I am making beginner mistakes , but I will get better

Every company faces a learning dilemma, the
smartest people find it hardest to learn.
A thermostat is fixed at 68 degrees, and all it
does is either switched on or of. That is single
loop learning
A thermostat is fixed at 68 degrees, but a
thermostat that could ask, why am I set at 68,
is a double loop learning.
Highly skilled professionals are good at single
loop learning
When networking is driven by substantive
shared interests, it will feel more authentic
and meaningful
A professional CV is something everyone
needs, but not everyone bothers to write one
well and update it regularly
Your CV is a strategic play and should be
treated as such. A good CV can help you gain
visibility, can help you get hired and win
serious respect.
Poor CVs have stale information, no links, weak
verbs, just a list and don’t get action from the
reader
Generalists get better job offers than
specialists.
If you are in a tainted company( Volkswagen
for example), or worked in a tainted company,
then your choices of employment and
negotiating power in salary discussion comes
down..
Some industries are more lenient about
stigma, bankruptcy will destroy the reputation
of a financial institution but not that of a
software company.