Move forward - Who needs your gift now?
As my previous posting is indicating there’s a life after the MBA ;-) and I’ve had interesting discussions with some students about their plans after finishing their MBA by the end of this year.
Interestingly previous experiences with students from other design management programmes as well showed that engagement in post graduate programmes like the MBA here at Zollverein School very often leads to resigning the current position and a quest for new challenges (not necessarily outside the organization). While this may sound initially worrying it demonstrates the impact of such programmes in terms of what good content can stimulate …
One good advice in order to make this process as smooth as possible is to start thinking about these transitions early on. Again it’s Canada’s Dave Pollard who provides some excellent ideas (and accordingly illustrations) in his posting called “Who Needs Your Gift Now?” on:
“… (the) need to find or create the job where What We Do Well, What is Needed and What We Love Doing overlap.”
David’s posting from Jan. 21st called “Finding Where Your Passion, Your Genius and Your Purpose Meet” refines this model by adding some relevant self-check questions in order to help you focusing on the right projects and goals. Here is his list:
- Does it pay enough?
- Do you have time for it?
- Is your ability recognized?
- Is your ability appreciated?
- Is the need recognized?
- Is the need recognized?
However very often you feel as if you’re captured by your own frameworks, thinking in the same direction (for years) and hanging out with the same old people (for a long time). Therefore one first step to break out is to look for places and spaces where to find new inspiration. These can be conferences which you find interesting as well as cultural events in general.
For professionals from the creative industries the annual DMI conferences in Europe and North America are clearly a good choice to meet folks like you. However very often these events have the character of entering a somehow “closed community”.
Therefore recent fresh initiatives like the Design 2.0 one-day symposium to held by mid February and organized by CORE77 & BusinessWeek might be a good alternative.
Finally an event I’ve never attended, but of which I’ve simply heard so much positive feedback is “InnoTown” an annual event to be held in Norway. I definitively wish to attend this conference one day … any sponsors out there? ;-) This description is from their website:
“InnoTown is Innovation Norway´s annual innovation conference. It is a truly unusual business conference for people who want to open up to the new opportunities that lie beyond the traditionally tried and tested.
The aim of InnoTown is to move people’s minds, both rationally and emotionally; to inspire and enhance creativity and innovation, to help motivate people to think new thoughts and dare to fail – to succeed.
The conference emphasizes vision, inspiration, strategy, creativity, promotion and internationalization. It creates good relations between people from different countries, trades, environments and professions. This results in stimulating new ideas and the developing, deepening and widening of existing knowledge and values.”
So if you’d wish to expand your current or build new networks this might be a great opportunity to combine a business conference with some vacation in the mid of Norway. My favorites among this year’s presenters are:
- Guy Kawasaki: Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures, and former Apple Computer evangelist. Palo Alto, USA
- Rowan Gibson: Business Strategist / Author /Expert on Radical Rethinking, Essen, Germany
- Polly LaBarre: Author, “Mavericks at Work” and former senior editor Fast Company magazine, New York, USA
Any other events you can imagine which might help you to think out of the box?