Re-thinking what success really means

For some months now, hundreds of articles have been published on the topic of graduate studies' value. Titles such as "MBA studies don't pay off nowadays" or "25 percent of Ivy league MBA 09 graduates are still jobless" add to the mental pressure that MBA graduates looking for jobs face. This made me realize that we're living in a society which makes us believe that we are totally responsible for our career success.

Our society ruthless splits people into two categories: winners and losers. "Winners" are considered the richest, most renowned in their industry, working for the industry leader companies, while "losers" are the one who don't have one of these qualities. Added to this, business schools preach that the best for one's career is to go either into management consulting, and there only to McKinsey, BCG, Bain or Booz or into banking to Goldman Sachs & its peers. Should you think about another career, you're bound to be included in the "losers" category.

After quite a long time of being brainwashed to think this way, I've come across an inspiring talk given by Alain de Botton on the topic of success. His speech supported my previous attempts of going against this conventional flow and pursuing a personal career track. As I know that many of you are dealing with the same struggles, I wish to share the main take-outs from Alain de Botton's speech:

- Success is an individual definition. In other words, when setting a career goal make sure that it is your OWN wish, and not merely a conventional expectation that society has from you. Otherwise, as you approach to your goal and give up other things for that, you start wondering whether it is something that you really wanted, and you risk being miserable though you reach your goal.

- Society makes you believe that you can be anything and anywhere. The truth is that we cannot control our lives and success to 100%. Hazards and luck play a role in our reaching our career goals.

- You cannot be good at everything. In other words, don't expect to be the best management consultant in the FMCG industry in your country and be the best dad in your country, at the same time. In order to be the best at something, you need to give up something else. Make sure that you are well aware of your choices.

All in all, I suggest you give a thought to your goals and make sure that they are really yours and that you are well aware of what it takes to achieve them.

For the ones who feel that it's worth dedicating 17 minutes of their time to hear the entire argument, please find below the Alain de Botton's talk on TED:

Quarterlife crisis

What I thought to be a personal crisis is apparently a more wide spread phenomenon with people of my age. Until now, I've only heard about the midlife crisis, but never of a quarterlife crisis. This seems to be a quite new phenomenon in line with the increased mobility and increased career opportunities that high potential graduate students have.

The quarterlife crisis is characterized by "unrelenting indecision, isolation, confusion and anxiety about working, relationships and direction", which affects "people in their mid-twenties to early thirties who are usually urban, middle class and well-educated".

What's the explanation?
Briefly said:

"They can’t make any decisions, because they don’t know what they want, and they don’t know what they want because they don’t know who they are, and they don’t know who they are because they’re allowed to be anyone they want."

To this I could add that, when they know what they want, they are not sure that it is the right way and they are highly risk averse regarding their career. Thus, they are proofing their decision by trying out other areas of business with the result that they don't like it that much and so they become more certain that the initial plan is the right one to pursue. Nevertheless this is quite a costly way to test whether a decision is right or wrong.

What to do about it?

Some thoughts:

1) The first job is usually not the ultimate job. Job changes are possible and normal during a career development.
2) The sooner you take the chance, the better. As a young adult, you don't have too many responsibilities towards a family (spouse / children), household, bank credits, so you can afford to take the chance and do what you are in the mood for. It may be the only chance to do this in your life.
3) Follow your gut feeling. After you have analytically and structurally evaluated some opportunities and still don't know what to do, just let the information process unconsciously in your brain and follow your gut feeling. What is known as gut feeling is in fact the result of the unconscious work that our brains are doing while we are sleeping or relaxing.

I welcome any other suggestions!

May you have a smooth Quarterlife Crisis!

Source for some info: Carraway, K. (2009). Welcome to your quarterlife crisis, Eyeweekly.com

Branding yourself

In a world where everything is branded, in order to succeed we need to learn how to brand ourselves. Tom Peters gives us an overview of where and how to start doing that.Tom Peters suggests following these steps:

1) What makes You different?
- Start by identifying the qualities or characteristics that make you distinctive from your competitors -- or your colleagues.
- What is the "feature-benefit model" that the brand called You offers?
- What do I want to be famous for?

2) How to market the brand You?
- Get involved in adjacent projects that help you gain visibility: teach in a local school, make some panel presentations, write in a local newspaper
- Being aware that everything You do matters and afects the You brand perception
- Drive word of mouth marketing - the key to any personal branding campaign

3) What's the real power of You?
- Learn to get and use power to grow the You brand
- As power is a matter of perception, act in a way so that you create a halo effect around your actions
- Organize your actions in terms of projects, which have the advantage of being: time limited, organized around deliverables, measurable, and leave you with braggables.
- Choose projects based on how you want to growth the brand You

4) How is brand You doing?
- Put together your own "users group" and ask them to provide you with feedback on your performance
- Know the value of the You brand on the market at every moment so that you know your bargaining power


Finally, I would like to share with you Tom Peters' quote, which I found extremely relevant and motivating to me:

"As you scope out the path your "career" will take, remember: the last thing you want to do is become a manager. Like "résumé," "manager" is an obsolete term. It's practically synonymous with "dead end job." What you want is a steady diet of more interesting, more challenging, more provocative projects. When you look at the progression of a career constructed out of projects, directionality is not only hard to track -- Which way is up? -- but it's also totally irrelevant."

His advice:

"Instead of making yourself a slave to the concept of a career ladder, reinvent yourself on a semiregular basis. Start by writing your own mission statement, to guide you as CEO of Me Inc. What turns you on? Learning something new? Gaining recognition for your skills as a technical wizard? Shepherding new ideas from concept to market? What's your personal definition of success? Money? Power? Fame? Or doing what you love? However you answer these questions, search relentlessly for job or project opportunities that fit your mission statement. And review that mission statement every six months to make sure you still believe what you wrote."

Good luck to all of you in this challenging endeavor!

Looking for a mentor...

Let's skip today's celebration of either "the working day" (in the more socialist market countries) or "dance into the May" (in the countries without a socialist history), and get down to business. Lately, I have been struggling with the idea of taking advantage of this crisis time when jobs are rather scarce and uninteresting, to consider building my own business.
There are four driving factors towards this entrepreneurial path:

1) Awareness that there are so many market opportunities in Romania and that I know where some of the opportunities lie

2) I know at least 4 other high potential people around me who are in the same situation: fresh graduates from leading European universities, with a lot of potential, who are in need for a navigation point.

3) The acknowledgment that the sooner you make a start-up business, the better because you don't have so much to lose and are rather used to the simple standard of living as a student.

4) I already have potential clients who are in need of my strategy & consulting skills and would trust to give me my first projects.

At the same time, however, I am aware of the risks and probability of failure that an entrepreneurial start-up encompasses. In line with this, for better or for worse, I have several potential alternative jobs, even in this crisis time. So, what I am missing now is a mentor with an entrepreneurial spirit. Until I find one, I am leveraging other people's mentors.
Check out the video below, which is the evidence that if you graduate from a world top university, it hardly ever means that you should pursue "standard" career paths.

Enjoy!




Some ideas from the presentation - on how to choose the focus area for the startup:
- Find what you are really passionate about
- Develop a product / service that solves one / some of people's problems/concerns
- Gather people around you who are at least as passionate about that thing as you are
- Keep your solution fast and simple
- Develop a corporate culture
- Know when to step down

Leveraging social media to make yourself famous

Who would have thought a decade ago than one can become famous without being a star, nor investing a chunk of money in PR activities?

Julia Allison is the mere example that it is possible to be well-known by having a steady, continuous presence in targeted online websites. Julia Allison has clever leveraged social media, Web 3.0 to position herself as a person notorious enough to be regularly followed by thousands of people.

And how did she achieved this? Wired magazine explains it succinctly:

1) It's not who you know, it's who you're next to.
When you go to a party, be sure to get photographed with well-known guests — even if they have no idea who you are. By posting these pics on your blog, you can make yourself look like an established personality.

2) Dress against type.
Heading to a party filled with khaki- clad geeks? Consider a flashy designer dress. Have a reputation for glamour? Stick with a simple T-shirt. Counterintuitive wardrobe choices keep your fans guessing.

3) Embrace enigma.
One day Allison announced that online haters were ruining her life and she'd never blog again. The next day she was back. Is she a train wreck or mastermind? Narcissist or self-satirist? No one knows — that's why they keep watching.

4) Let your minions fight your battles.
Sure, Allison has her critics — but all the discussion helps keep her in the spotlight. "Create two separate camps of supporters and attackers," says Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek. "Don't spend a lot of time defending yourself. If someone attacks you, let it sit there. If you respond, you don't give other people a chance to get engaged and defend you."

5) Be a hot woman with an exhibitionist streak.


I am not saying that one should do this. Rather, what I want to point to is the increasing role that social media plays and that being aware of this and cleverly leveraging it can increase the success of a business. I´ll touch upon this more in the next post.