The Secret Knowledge of Freelancing–Neil Gaiman

This is author Neil Gaiman addressing the University of the Arts Class of 2012.

It’s a genuinely inspiring speech in which he exhorts his audience to Make Good Art.

 

 

He also shares the secret knowledge of freelancing: people get hired because they get hired but … people keep working because:

• their work is good
• they are easy to get along with
• they deliver the work on time.

“And you don’t even need all three.  Two out of three is fine.”

Well worth a 20 minute watch. 

Keep moving towards your mountain.

Technorati Tags: Neil Gaiman,University of the Arts,Writing,Freelancing

Mike Pegg’s Positive Life

Remarkable people. 

On his new blog, The Positive Life, Mike Pegg highlights the attitude of Alice Herz-Sommer, a gifted pianist of 103 who is also “the world’s oldest living Holocaust survivor”: a remarkable optimist.

Mike Pegg is a thinker and a writer, a teacher and an ardent proponent of the Strengths approach.  He has spent his life encouraging others to discover and build upon their strengths.  Recently diagnosed with prostate cancer, he was inspired to share his experience, and his outlook, in a new blog, The Positive Life.

Take a look.

Technorati Tags: Mike Pegg,Prostate Cancer,Alice Herz-Sommer,Strengths

How Social is B2B?–NowSourcing.com

Great infographic for nowsourcing.com showing how social media is a real force in B2B marketing today. NowSourcing are internet marketing specialists (and a great source of fascinating infographics). 

Thanks to Matthew Stibbe on the HP Business Answers blog for flagging this.

Technorati Tags: Nowsourcing.com,HP Business Answers,Matthew Stibbe,Social Media,Infographics

Just Sentencing … for Better #Writing

There is so much beauty and depth and elegance in a well-constructed sentence.  And something zen-like in the study and understanding of how that is achieved.

This book by Stanley Fish (a New York Times columnist), entitled How To Write A Sentence has just made it onto my must-read shelf (currently log-jammed by the dense but fascinating Megachange – The World in 2050 from the Economist).

The recommendation comes from this web-site review via the wonderfully eclectic Nicholas Bate.

Technorati Tags: Writing,Stanley Fish,NPR.org,Nicholas Bate

Public Sector Interims and Disguised Employees

Public Sector pay is in the headlines again this evening as the findings of the review ordered by Danny Alexander are published.

According to the BBC, more than 2,000 public-sector workers “could be avoiding the full rate of income tax through special contracts”.

The proposed remedy is to have anyone who is engaged for more than six months and earning more than £220 a day compelled to join the payroll.  And Mr Alexander wants this achieved within three months.

This is short-sighted and wrong.  Yet another in a long list of situations where the reaction of politicians is to create new laws rather than enforcing perfectly adequate existing ones.

Enforcing this remedy will deprive the public sector of the valuable skills, experience and flexibility that interim executives and managers bring to any organisation; skills and experience that are needed for a limited period that may well be longer than six months.  Driving change, transformation and transition often need skills for a limited length project.  That’s what interims do and they frequently do it at a senior, or board, level.

There is no point in rehearsing the arguments that interims are legitimate small businesses, here.  It ought to be obvious to those who pause to think beyond a knee-jerk reaction.

However, legitimate interim projects seldom run to more than two years in length.  According to Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight, some 40% of the 2,000 identified have been in role for longer than two years.  Why?  In all but the most exceptional circumstances, a role that runs for 24 months is surely “permanent” by definition.

The answer then is to ask why those in long-term roles, with long term responsibilities have been allowed to operate as independent businesses, when their business (of providing executive skills) is clearly not independent.  How did it happen, who authorised it where were the checks and balances?

Just don’t hamstring the public sector with new rules that deny it the flexibility and skills that legitimate interim managers and other freelancers bring.

The Institute of Interim Management has posted a response, here.

Technorati Tags: BBC Newsnight,Jeremy Paxman,Danny Alexander,Tax Avoidance,Interim Management,Disguised Employees,Freelancing,Ed Lester

eMigration, a Path from Austerity?

This piece from Elaine Pofeldt set me thinking. 

She joins some interesting dots in her piece on The Gig Economy’s Answer to the European Debacle on Forbes.com.

In some of the hardest hit economies in Europe, people are taking their talent freelance and using sites like Elance or oDesk to find international work.  Elance has seen earnings from freelancers in Spain jump by 142% and in Greece by 122% over the last year.  Similarly, outside of Europe, earning for Egyptian freelancers grew by 147%.

Freelancing is growing across Europe (as we noted before) and Pofeldt’s piece seems to point to a prime example of individuals succeeding despite, rather than because of, government.

It reminds me of some research last year from InfoDev on the virtual economy (my summary post, here).  In their research, the World Bank project sized the virtual economy in the developing world as being around $3.0 billion, nearly all of which lands in those developing economies (in contrast to the $70 billion global coffee market where only $5.5 billion is captured in those local markets).

Both are examples of individuals reaching beyond the constraints of their local economy / government and creating new markets across the flatter world.

This “eMigration” ( a virtual emigration that requires neither visa nor adapting to a new climate) can only grow.  It has been predicted in a stream of books (including The Sovereign Individual, The World Is Flat and last year’s The Shift) and offers enormous opportunity to those who can hone their skills to meet demand. 

Perhaps sclerotic government and austerity measures will provide the push for more people to seek opportunity beyond their geographical horizons.

Technorati Tags: Forbes.com,Elaine Pofeldt,Elance.com,oDesk.com,Freelancing,Sovereign Individual,Sovereign Professional,Portfolio Career,Euro Crisis,Austerity,eMigration,organisational humanity,Flexible Working,Strategic Resourcing

Book Spine Poetry – Maria Popova

I love this….

… from Maria Popova at brainpickings.org via Nicholas Bate.

Can’t wait to get home and attack the never-ending Must Read shelf.  Inevitably the result will be more Viking saga than haiku.

Technorati Tags: Book spine poetry,Maria Popova,Brainpickings.org,Nicholas Bate,Strategic Edge,Writing,Poetry