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Thanks to the Be Excellent blog for pointing me to this article in Entrepreneur Magazine. In the article, Robert Kiyosaki stresses that businesses need to hire people with a passion for their mission.
Hiring the right people — the people with the right passion — is one of the toughest jobs for any business. But maybe not the toughest. The toughest job may be getting rid of the wrong people. Hiring for skills will get an organization only so far. Hiring for passion will help the organization excel.
Kiyosaki says his rich dad told him
“Hire people who are mission-driven — people who share your vision. If you don’t, your business will struggle, or may never even get off the ground.”
In other words… if you own a butcher shop, don’t hire vegetarians.
Implication for Job Seekers
Why is it so challenging for businesses to hire for passion? One reason, I suspect, is that many job applicants don’t know or cannot convey their passion.
If you don’t know what your passion is, how will your employer — or potential employer — ever know? You need to know what you are passionate about, and be able to effectively express your passion. If you don’t know what your passion is, there are many tools to help you. One such tool I just came across recently is a new book by Dan Miller entitled 48 Days to the Work You Love.
You should also consider finding a coach who can help you discover your strengths and passions.
What were you created to do?
Developing an online presence is an effective way to establish your professional brand, expand your network, and create opportunities. In fact, many writers now consider an online presence to be an essential – not optional — component of a candidate’s portfolio.
One of the questions that often comes up is about “youthful indiscretions.” What about those posts, comments, and photos that may have been posted years ago?
I came across this article in the Washington Post recently about a newly minted lawyer named Kiwi Camera. And not just any lawyer — a magna cum laude Harvard graduate. He cannot land a job as a law school professor because, at age 16, he wrote racist remarks in a summary of a Supreme Court decision that was subsequently posted to the Web. Despite his otherwise stellar resume, his racist comments are now part of his online profile.
Lest you think this is an unfair indictment for a youthful indiscretion, consider one student’s perspective:
“We shouldn’t have to be put in a position where we have to defend [racist comments] by our professor.”
Given the choice bewteen two equally qualified candidates, why would a potential employer risk the potential embarrassment and liability of hiring such a candidate?
They wouldn’t.
So that raises the next question: Why would a student or job seeker sabotage his or her online profile by posting objectionable material on a blog, a personal web site, or a social networking site like LinkedIn, Facebook, or MySpace?
They shouldn’t.
This reminds of a story about an old man teaching a boy about the impact of his words. He told the boy to pluck the feathers from a chicken and spread them along a path. When the boy finished and returned, the old man told him to now g and retrieve every feather and put them back in the chicken. The boy complained, saying that many of the feathers had blown away or been picked up and could never be retrieved. And even if he could, it would be impossible to put them back on the chicken.
So it is with our words — once departed, they can never be retrieved or taken back.
A lot of networking sounds, in effect, something like this:
Hello, I’m looking for a job. Do you have any openings?
Too many people approach networking as an opportunity to get something they need — usually a job — and when the need is fulfilled, they quit networking. It’s all about ‘getting’.
True networking, however, is about giving. Instead of “What can you do for me?,” the focus should be “What can I do for you?” When networking is about getting, it becomes a temporary event. But when networking is about giving, it becomes a lifestyle.
I call this Lifestyle Networking vs. Crisis Networking. Some of the differences are shown in the following comparison chart:
Lifestyle networkers look for opportunities to give, even when they don’t expect to receive anything in return. Lifestyle networkers expect to serve, rather than gain. Lifestyle networkers find the process energizing, and not draining. And yet, the irony is that the lifestyle networkers typically receive abundantly — much more than the crisis networkers.
Seth Godin had an interesting post yesterday in which he relates this irony to marketing. He writes:
“Now, more than ever, it’s easier to give even when it seems like you’re not going to get. The happy irony is that this turns out to be a very effective marketing approach, even though that’s not the point.”
The same is true in networking (of course, some would argue that networking is marketing). When you give without expecting anything in return, it turns out to be a very effective networking approach. You receive by giving, not by taking. Effective networkers, therefore, are givers.
These are just some raw thoughts about networking that are still baking in my mind, so you may have some additional ideas about the differeces between Lifestyle Networking and Crisis Networking. If so, I would love to hear them.
And perhaps someday soon we’ll meet each other at a networking event and we’ll say:
“Hello. What can I do for you?”
Virgin America has a new business partner — a two-year-old upstart ad agency aptly called Anomoly. The agency did not win the contact by pitching a traditional marketing campaign of slogans and 30-second commercials. Instead, the agency offered to “partner” with Virgin America by offering product design, strategic consulting, and other services in exchange for a cut of the sales. (See the full story in the January/February 2007 issue of Business 2.0.)
According to Spence Kramer, Virgin’s marketing chief,
“They never even mentioned ads. They were telling us how we could make more money.”
and this,
“Anomoly is in it to share risk. They’ve become a business partner.”
I was already mulling this over and wondering about the implicatons for the industry when I read Seth Godin’s surprisingly similar comments in his blog post:
“What ad agencies ought to do, in my opinion, is not focus on selling ads anymore. And instead, focus on getting in deeper within the clients, and help the clients make products that people want to talk about.”
This has implications not just for advertising agencies, but for any professional who offer services to businesses. No longer is it good enough for consultants to be tangentially related to their clients. Those who will succeed must be willing to get some skin in the game. And become business partners.
I used to be a big fan of Office Depot, but lately they seem to be struggling to keep up with Staples. Their latest advertising campaign is an example.
Staples has “That Was Easy” and the big red easy “Easy” button. I’m amazed at how many people spend $5 to have an Easy button on their desk. My boss has one on his desk, and even my wife has one in her classroom. Their commercials are fresh, fun and engaging. While the commercials never really explain how the Easy button works, we are left to imagine that the little Staples elves somehow work their magic in the background to solve all of our problems.
Now Office Depot has the “helping hand.” Is is just me, or does this have too much of a “Me, too!” ring to it? It’s like the local grocery that advertises “Friendly service.” And not to be outdone, the competitor down the street offers “Courteous service.” It’s the same thing, just packaged differently. The “Helping Hand” is the essentially the same idea as the “Easy Button” — just packaged differently. And not even as well.
Maybe somebody should get Office Depot an Easy button… and fast!
