Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Author: Karl Edwards

  • Action Ideas During Recession

    insightful-linkIn this month’s newsletter article we started a series on, “When Crisis Presents Opportunity.“

    This morning I came across this article over at Harvard Business.org entitled, “Four Actions to Survive the Recession and Emerge Triumphant.” How’s that for a title?!

    I really enjoyed Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s insights:

    1. Move while others are distracted.
    2. Announce and own a grand concept.
    3. Get rid of things that have outlived their usefulness.
    4. Concentrate on helping your users, clients or customers succeed.

    It may be more difficult to find or create opportunities during a distressed economy, but the need for new ideas to emerge and the upside for success are greater. Everybody piles into fields that are already successful, exasperating the competition. Few venture to forge new opportunities in struggling areas, so the early entrants become the experts.

    Most important is to remain steadfastly confident in your own value even as you increase your flexibility as to what form its expression might take.

    On your side,

    – Karl

  • Listen In -> Resume Branding #3: What Do We Bring To The Table?

    We bring more to the table than our work experience alone.

    We bring a distinct working style, rich values, personality traits, approaches to leadership, teams, problems, communication, etc.

    The challenge with a resume is communicating who you are given the limitations of a piece of paper.

    How do we then find ways to describe what we bring to the table beyond merely listing past jobs we’ve held?

    Listen in.

    Don’t miss our Resume Workshop coming up on February 7th in Los Angeles! Register now.
    Catch up on past episodes of Resume Branding here.

  • Loving Monday: A Pause to Remember

    I find it intriguing that our means to extend honor is to pause from work.

    Today, we celebrate the life and accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Worthy of honor and remembrance he certainly is. He rose to meet the challenges of his time, and we will be forever in his debt.

    As a nation, we extend a working holiday to commemorate these most significant of contributions and causes.

    We pause from our frenetic busyness and the incessant pursuit of wealth to remember who we are and from where we came. We dare not forget at what great price and by which great principles we enjoy our current well-being, security and opportunities.

    When we forget the path down which we came, we will lose the bearings that would guide us forward.

  • Question of the Week

    Who would benefit from you verbalizing your appreciation today?

    The Question of the Week is offered to increase awareness of one’s personal leadership practices and encourage experimentation with creative alternatives.

  • Listen In -> Resume Branding #2: What Do We Want?

    With our Resume Workshop coming up on February 7th in Los Angeles, we continue our series on Resume Branding.

    Traditional resumes ask you to list what you have done. They ask, “What have you already done?” But your next job is not a step toward the past. You want to progress forward. You want your next job, not your last job.

    The question, then, becomes, “What do you want?”

    In this week’s show, Claudia and I discuss how to turn this question into a resume. How can we use our work experience to make a case for what we want to do next?

    Listen in.

  • When Crisis Presents Opportunity

    No doubt the news of 700,000 lost jobs can be nerve-wracking. Of course stress levels increase and worries of job security can fill our horizon.

    Maybe you have already lost your job. Maybe your nightmare has become your reality.

    But what if the current crisis were to present an opportunity? What if that opportunity outweighs the trouble and trauma experienced on the way to it? What if something far better lies on the other side of the muck and mire in which we currently find ourselves?

    Do we risk proceeding through the muck, knowing neither its extent nor its resolution? Or do we scramble back to where we were before, reverting to what we knew as safe and secure, (however much we hated our job at the time.)

    What if making our way forward involved three components: some creative re-visioning, some relational research and some intensive effort on our part? Would you choose to go forward? Or back?

    This month we look at the opportunity that may lie in some creative re-visioning of ourselves and our professional contribution.

    The creative re-visioning might be in any of three areas: your role at work, the professional field within which you exercise your role, or you may have an idea that changes how we view or use a product or service altogether.

    Maybe your role needs to change. Expand, focus, involve new skills or new responsibilities. Are you learning continually? Always challenging yourself? Do you try to add value to your role each year?

    Look around the office and ask yourself which roles and/or tasks are attractive to you. Do you admire Mark’s ability to work with others? Do you come up with ideas that you wish you could implement? Is Sarah overwhelmed by a project with which you could help?

    Maybe your skills would be better suited in another professional field. Which of your skills are task-specific and related to your particular job description, and which skills are transferable and applicable anywhere? Knowing how to use a particular contact management/calendar computer program would be an example of the first. Knowing how to make plans, organize events and stay in touch with people is an example of the second.

    Make a list of your transferable skills. Get people who know you to help. Transferable skills are the keys to expanding your opportunities to fields outside your own.

    Finally, maybe you don’t see the world the way others do. Maybe the source of your frustration is at a deeper, more fundamental, even structural level. A more radical change may be in store for you.

    Who would have imagined listening to music in random play lists? Who would have foreseen using a phone for multiple communication and organizational purposes? Maybe you’re like us at Bold Enterprises and foresee a working world where people design for themselves working environments that are worth getting up for and pouring oneself into.

    Maybe this economic crisis is your opportunity to take a step forward.


  • Loving Monday: Jury Duty

    I have jury duty this week. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the jury duty system in Los Angeles, we are placed “on call” for one week. We call in every evening to find out whether we’re expected to be present the next day. The entire week may pass without a request, in which case one’s obligation is fulfilled.

    Having said that, though, no plans can be made during the week because there is no way to know whether the next day might be the one you are summoned.

    On the whole, the system works reasonably well. I’d rather be on call than sitting in a jury room every day.

    On the other hand, I can’t make any plans!

    My challenge this week involves incorporating a extra element of flexibility into my attitude.

    I could feel put out and resentful. I could become overwhelmed by the sudden shifts. I could feel like my life is on hold and not make progress on important projects. This strange sort of week could throw me for quite a loop.

    But if I choose to be flexible. If I choose projects that can be put on hold temporarily. If I let people know my situation, then a sudden absence cannot wreak as much havoc.

    I have quite a bit of room for choices, even if I don’t know what I’ll be doing tomorrow. As long as I recognize that those choices are mine and make them, then this week of public service need not be the negative intrusion that I often mistake it for.

  • Question of the Week

    Does it matter who’s sitting in your chair? (What is your unique contribution to the role and functions of your position?)

    The Question of the Week is offered to increase awareness of one’s personal leadership practices and encourage experimentation with creative alternatives.

  • What’s In A Perception?

    Perception MattersSo what’s the big deal with how others perceive me?

    I can’t control what another person thinks. I can’t force them to change their mind about me if they have settled on some incorrect perception.

    The big deal is that those other people are making decisions that affect you. To the extent that their perception about who you are and what you bring to the professional table is incorrect, so will their decisions be.

    Decisions like whether to hire you, promote you, invest in your training, or in the worst case, lay you off in a recessionary season.

    While you cannot make someone see what they will not or cannot see, you can exert influence.

    Our conversation topic this month is how our resume can be a powerful perception influencer. That is, if we accept responsibility for choosing how we present our professional interests and work history.

    Begin by listing three responsibilities you would love to have in a job, even if you don’t have any work experience in them.

    Now turn each of them into a job title, however silly it might sound. For example, if I want to be in charge of the development of a new product and lead the process from beginning to end, I might call myself a “Project Manager” or a “Lead Designer” or a “Brilliant Idea Implementor.”

    The idea is to create for yourself some job-related vocabulary that would be helpful for describing yourself in terms of what you want to do next.

    Try it. Share one or all three of your desired responsibilities and corresponding job titles in a comment here.

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Don’t forget to sign up for our Resume Workshop: A Fresh Approach to Career Advancement coming up in Los Angeles on February 7th! Or contact us for information on inviting us to your community.

  • Listen In -> Resume Branding #1: Controlling How We Are Perceived

    With our Resume Workshop coming up on February 7th in Los Angeles, we thought we would revisit a series on Resume Branding.

    In this series, Claudia and I explore using the resume as a tool for describing what we’ve done in the past in such a way that we communicate what we want to do in the future.

    We want to accept responsibility for maximizing the communication opportunity that this awkward piece of paper (the resume) offers us.

    Over the course of the next four weeks, we’ll introduce an entire method for crafting a resume that articulates your distinct “brand.”

    While listening to the show, make your reservation for the Resume Workshop on February 7th now!