How to Become Purple You!

How to Become Purple You!

Derived from…
Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable
Previously
Redesigning Work and Organizations for the Digital Age (4)

Actions : Be Purple You!
PROFIT : Enough talk. Unless your genius is saying the right thing that makes the difference. It’s time for action. It’s time to take the steps to create Purple You. Here’s four simple questions to ask to get you started...

1 Choose
Do I want a career as a Cog or an Artist?
(Read: RAP 2 + 3)

2 Define
What’s my gift? My art? My talent? My special ability?
(Read: RAPs 4 + 5)

3 Overcome
What will I need to do to overcome any resistance within myself and from others?
(Read: RAP 8)

4 Gift
What will I start giving away to share my talent, make a difference and build my reputation?
(Read: RAPs 5 + 6)

Get the full Book Rapper issue: Purple You

Redesigning Work and Organizations for the Digital Age (4)

Redesigning Work and Organizations for the Digital Age (4)

Derived from…
Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable
Previously
Redesigning Work and Organizations for the Digital Age (3)

Conversation
Traditional big-media technologies like TV, newspapers, advertising and PR promoted one-way conversations.
The internet and digital technologies have replaced this with two-way conversations.
This is a significant shift that requires organizations to be re-designed to listen, initiate, enable and participate in conversations internally and externally with customers and suppliers.
This is crucial for getting things done.

Book Rapper References

• Talk With Me (How to have Organizational Conversations)
• Brand Worship (Involving customers in brand building)
• We Blog (Another pathway for talking with your customers)
• Twittergy (Conversing with customers in new ways)

Design
In an era of dramatic change and global hyper-competition, the need for design, innovation, growth and learning within an organization is crucial.
A decentralized structure allows innovation to be embedded in the DNA of the organization through crowdsourcing and micro-business units.
Crowdsourcing is also central to brand building as it engages the customer almost to the point of ownership.
And, building a design thinking culture and work practices unites internal teams.

Book Rapper References

• The Bees Wees (Multiple examples of crowdsourcing)
• Brand Worship (Involving customers in brand building)
• Design Advantage (The Importance of Design Thinking)

Get the full Book Rapper issue: Purple You

Redesigning Work and Organizations for the Digital Age (3)

Redesigning Work and Organizations for the Digital Age (3)

Derived from…
Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable
Previously
Redesigning Work and Organizations for the Digital Age (2)

Leisure
The work modes of the Industrial Age reflected the machinery of the time.
We did standardized jobs in fixed locations and set blocks of time to produce standardized products marketed in standardized ways.
In the Information/Knowledge/Digital Age we can work wherever our brain is and whenever we feel like it on stuff that appeals to us.
The customized niche of designing your own work and lifestyle is the promise of the Leisure Age.
It’s the Leisure Age not because we are doing nothing, it’s because when we work in our passion/gift our work becomes our pleasure and leisure.

Book Rapper References

• The Four Hour JOLT! (The 40 hour work week retires)
• How to Think Right (The outsourcing of left-brain work)
• Make Money From Niches (the long tail of niches)
• Purple You (The demise of standardized work)

Not for Profit
Previously, owning the means to production was the key to making profits.
And there was a clear distinction between who owned it and who were the workers who ran it.
This line has blurred and possibly evaporated.
Now, via the internet the tools of production are in the hands of everyone with access.
As a direct result the pursuit of profit changes.
Even a so-called not-for-profit organization needs to pursue profit to fund the future.
The big difference is the need to make profit to fund a future and then make profit on top of that to feed shareholders.
Take away the shareholder level, add the freemium models and the gift economies and all of a sudden the pursuit of profit and ultimately capitalism changes.

Book Rapper References

• The Great Business Gestalt (Blurring of customer/company)
• Make Money From Niches (Change in digital economics
• Web Line (Shift in access to production
• Purple You (Shift in access to production)

Get the full Book Rapper issue: Purple You

Redesigning Work and Organizations for the Digital Age (2)

Redesigning Work and Organizations for the Digital Age (2)

Derived from…
Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable
Previously
Redesigning Work and Organizations for the Digital Age (1)

Connection
Traditional organizations were composed of various elements.
Marketing sat over there, sales was here, production down there and management upstairs.
No more.
The internet and digital technologies dissolves the boundaries between these internal divisions.
It also promotes co-operation between suppliers at an unprecedented level and with crowdsourcing the line is blurred between customer and company.
Add the ability to connect with people globally and you have a huge opportunity to work in new ways.

Book Rapper References

• The Great Business Gestalt (Building ecosystems)
• Global Glue (The power of connection technology)
• Google Think (Rethinking your organizational architecture)
• The Bees Wees (Numerous examples of crowdsourcing)
  

Social
We can no longer rely on corporations and governments to address social concerns such as climate change, the homeless or poverty.
New organizations will focus on fulfilling social needs.
Aligning to social causes is the key to branding.
And, it’s the lesson learnt from tribes forming on the internet.
Corporate Social Responsibility is mere icing on a stale cake.
Social Orientation designs the organization to create a profit that is channelled to fulfil the social need.
The younger generations won’t be interested without it.
And, through social media the means to connecting around events and causes is quicker and easier than ever before.

Book Rapper References

• Brand Worship (The potency of a cause in branding)

Get the full Book Rapper issue: Purple You

Redesigning Work and Organizations for the Digital Age

Redesigning Work and Organizations for the Digital Age

Derived from…
Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable
Previously
Related Reading to Seth Godin's Linchpin

BR Context : Business and Work Map
Lets draw some loose threads together...
Linchpin is another piece in the puzzle that we’ve been tracking at Book Rapper through most of our issues.
It revolves around two questions:

1. What does ‘work’ look like in the digital age?
2. And, what does an ‘organization’ look like in the digital age?

The starting point for this conversation is:

If you were designing work/organizations from scratch today, what would you create? How would it look?

Here’s eight design principles for todays work and organizations linked back to the Book Rapper issues that discuss these topics.

1 Leadership
Command and control leadership styles have flowed from the military.
In a decentralized world, they no longer works.
For instance, you can’t control the internet.
To be a leader here you need to build trust, respect and reputation.
Lighthouse Leadership is a very different way of looking at the world and interacting with people.
And, with generational change, the old leadership styles are less tolerated, further prompting new styles.

References

• Leaderful (Decentralized leadership)
• Web Line (The shift to online leadership)

2 Decentralized
The internet is the defining and all pervasive structure of modern society.
Any new organization would reflect this and be decentralized in its design and structure.
Or, at least be a fusion of centralized control and decentralized flexibility.
There are two basic ways of doing this:

1. Either separate business units that run independently of it’s parent company, like GE.
2. Or you can decentralize the customer experience, like Ebay.

This presents significant benefits with regard to building to scale through network effects especially through internet technologies.

References

• Leaderful (Decentralized organizations)
• The Great Business Gestalt (Network effects)

Get the full Book Rapper issue: Purple You

Related Reading to Seth Godin's Linchpin

Related Reading to Seth Godin's Linchpin

Derived from…
Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable
Previously
What's the opposite of Resistance?

Companion Pieces
If you want to expand your reading further, here’s four other Book Rapper issues that discuss the changing nature of work...

The Four Hour JOLT!
New rules for living and working.
Includes practical strategies for changing your work.
Including the promotion and retirement of the 40 hour work week.
Derived from: Timothy Ferris, The Four Hour Work Week

How to Think Right
Your Right Brained Career Path.
How left brain work is being outsourced.
And why your right brain skills are becoming increasingly important for your future career.
Derived from: Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind

Design Advantage
The Secret to Creating Long-Term Value.
Of particular interest is the Knowledge Funnel.
It's a potent model for reviewing three important types of work that may influence your career direction.
Derived from: Roger Martin, The Design of Business

Web Line
How to succeed online.
Presents a similar view to Seth around being generous, giving gifts and the limits of quid pro quo.
Derived from: Chris Brogan and Julian Smith, Trust Agents

Get the full Book Rapper issue: Purple You

What's the opposite of Resistance?

What's the opposite of Resistance?

Derived from…
Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable
Previously
How to Overcome Your Natural Resistance

To Resist or Ship
Shipping is the opposite of resisting.
The reason we start anything is to finish it.
And, the only way to create a masterpiece is to finish.
It’s not a guarantee to master-piecedom and it is essential.
The world moves and changes when we publish.
Without it we only have wonderings.
Wondering what might be...
To be a Linchpin we need to put our art out there and into the world.
We need to ship.

Making Time to Ship
Here's four ways to increase the time you have to ship...

Internet Diet
Stop checking your email every five minutes. Instead limit it to five times a day. The same applies to social media...

Blitz
Go flat out for a short sprint and get things done. When you go fast there’s no time to be anxious!

Employ infrastructure
Use existing platforms to amplify your idea and results. For instance, use a publisher to get your book out quickly.

Use Seth’s Strategy

1. Highlight the date you’ll ship.
2. Take notes: use post-it notes, index cards or whatever to record every thing you can do about your idea.
3. Thrash out the idea with your team.
4. Collect your cards and discuss them with your team.
5. Put the cards into a database.
6. One person reviews the database and creates a complete project description.
7. Take the blueprint from step ➏ and get approval to proceed.
8. When you get a clear and decisive approval then start work.

Get the full Book Rapper issue: Purple You