Thursday, May 26, 2005

Notes on a Book Introduction

Back
in 1996, I purchased a book entitled "Multipreneuring". I would have to
admit that apart from the Holy Bible, I cannot immediately recall any
other title which has changed the way I think business-wise (yes, there
are business tips too in the Bible!).

Written below is the
introduction to Tom Gorman's book, "Multipreneuring". I read the
introduction last night and couldn't help but smile as so many
resounding events have transpired over the past forty plus days that
I've been resigned from McCann.

Before you move on to read, allow me to give you an idea of what I've "bumped into" in the past forty days since resignation:

-a week after resignation, a call for an interview from McCann's rival media independent agency
-other job offers (2)
-meetings to discuss possible marketing consultancies (10)
-meetings to discuss partnerships in advertising related ventures (7)
-meetings to discuss partnerships in non-advertising related ventures (5)
-offers for participation in start-up companies (4)

As
you go through the paragraphs below, you will know why I've been
smiling all along as I read the intro for the nth time last night....

Imagine
if you will, that you are not independently wealthy, but that you are
certain of your ability to generate a high income. Imagine that you can
leave your current employer or line of work, even leave your current
industry, and continue earning this income as you move on to a new
situation. Imagine that you have total confidence in your ability to
locate and even create income-generating situations. Imagine that you
are contacted regularly by people who want to hire you, but you often
turn them down because they cannot afford you or you are too busy to
take on new assignments.

Now imagine that you
are never bored with your work. Instead you are excited by the economic
opportunity you see everywhere. You wake up in the morning energized by
the possibilities you see around you. You are an opportunity seeker and
a creator of value. You are a profitable economic entity, taking
inputs, working with them, and getting results such that people know in
their hearts that you are worth every penny they pay you.

Imagine
that you have moved beyond the cycle of employment, unemployment, job
searches, and employment. You have moved beyond the adolescent
corporate rituals of recruitment/indoctrination and
membership/betrayal/ostracism. Instead your work-life consists of open,
mature, adult-adult business relationships founded upon mutual need and
value for value.

Imagine the accompanying sense
of self-respect. Imagine saying to the next person who tries to flummox
or exploit you, “Frankly, I don't see that as fair, and I'm
disappointed that you would suggest it”, and imagine that you are
telling them this, not as you are walking out the door, not as they
hand you your final check, not after you've given them ten years of
your time and talent, but rather as you sit across from them the very
first time they try to flummox or exploit you, And imagine that they
respect you for telling them this as you move on to address the next
topic of discussion.

If you cannot imagine any
of this, you are reading the right book. If you can only imagine this,
you are reading the right book. Because multipreneuring can make this
imagined state of affairs a reality for you. All it takes on your part
is a willingness to face reality and a deep desire to change.

Others
have done it, and their experiences are the essence of this book. Years
of secondary research, scores of formal interviews, hundreds of
informal conversations, and two decades of my own experience have
demonstrated that the multipreneurial approach to career management can
be learned. There has never been a better time to start learning it.
And, like it or not, an approach like this has become a necessity in
the radically changed workplace of today and tomorrow.

This
is a book about how to manage your career in a way that will work for
you in the newly restructured corporate world. Life in the managerial
and professional ranks has undergone true structural change. The social
contract between employer and employee has changed. The skills that you
need in order to get a job have changed. Even the idea of what "to get
a job" means has changed, and so has the attitude and the very identity
that you must bring to the work place. I call this attitude the
multipreneurial attitude and this identity that of the multipreneur.

What
is multipreneuring? It begins with the idea that each of us is an
economic unit. So each of us-as either internal staff or external
contractor-must add value to our work in excess of the amount we are
paid. Our economy will be in flux for years to come, so each of us must
develop and sell a portfolio of high-level skills useful in generating
revenue, cutting costs, or improving processes in a variety of
settings. That is multipreneuring. Companies are fostering new ways of
getting work done-telecommuting, job sharing, and outsourcing-and are
forming strategic alliances that result in virtual, modular, and
networked corporations. So we must adapt to new ways of working and
managing. That is multipreneuring. And since companies are becoming too
flat to offer traditional paths to advancement and are relinquishing
the role of provider of social goods in fat benefit plans, each of us
must develop the flexibility, maturity, discipline, and courage to
create our own career path and to become our own benefits managers.
That is multipreneuring.

I've coined the word
"multipreneuring" from the Latin multi meaning "many" or "more than
one" and the English word "entrepreneur," which stems from the French
verb entreprendre, which means to undertake." So multipreneuring
literally means "more than one undertaking." The play on the word
"entrepreneur" is obvious: to succeed in business today, and even in
many non-business fields, you have to be something of an entrepreneur,
that is "one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a
business enterprise." This is largely what multipteneurs do. They
organize their resources, manage their careers, and assume sensible
risks. But multipreneuring entails more than just acting
entrepreneurially.

Multipreneuring entails
actually having multiple skills, so that you can develop multiple
sources of income and multiple careers, either simultaneously or
serially. Multipreneuring enables you to manage risks financial risks,
professional risks, emotional risks, and creative risks-rather than
deny them or be disabled by them. Multipreneuring represents a
continual process of learning new skills, new strategies, new fields,
new businesses, and new markets and of developing new contacts,
customers, and friends. Essentially, multipreneuring entails
understanding the principles and practices that will enable you to
prosper in times of massive economic change, like, for example, the
times we live in now.

To become a multipreneur
you must realize that your economic value depends upon your ability to
make or save money for others and your ability to add value to
processes. Your economic value will not depend upon your position,
seniority, or connections. You must therefore train yourself to see
opportunities where others see problems, dislocations, and barriers.
You must choose your assignments on the basis of the skills you can
learn as well as those you can apply. You must develop your
interpersonal and technological skills to a high level so that you can
make things happen rather than hope they will happen.

You
must grasp the truest nature of what it means to live in a free country
that is moving from corporate feudalism to individual capitalism. The
new factors of production-knowledge and technology are available on an
almost laughably open basis. Access to distribution channels and even
to funding is openly available. It is all there for you to take and use
to express your concept of how it should he done in the marketplace.
What "it" is depends entirely upon you.

In this
book you will meet people who are multipreneurs. They are positive
examples of how to achieve business success today. Some have left long
term corporate life-either walking or feet first-and have found a new
way of working. Others never really labored in the corporate vineyard,
at least as full-time employees, for-any length of time. They are not
traditional freelancers, although some of them (like myself) have
freelanced. They are not traditional entrepreneurs, although many of
them have started and operated businesses. They are among the fleet of
foot in today's economy (in fact, one multipreneur founded a chain of
athletic shoe stores called Fleet Feet). They are among the most
flexible, creative, successful careerists in the country.

I
know that these are difficult times for many people, including many who
never dreamed that their careers could fall into such seeming disarray
or end so unceremoniously. Many people never thought that downward
mobility could lie so close at hand. But if you have a decent
education, or access to one, and work experience, wherever you acquired
it, you have the ability to become a multipreneur. If you have been
truly privileged and hold an undergraduate and perhaps a graduate
degree, have significant work experience, and possess analytical,
technical, and interpersonal skills, then you are extremely well
positioned to become a multipreneur.

This is a
threatening time for those who lack the right career management
approach. But with this book you will learn how to develop an approach
that will make this a time of opportunity, a time to achieve high
levels of function, income, and independence. In this book you will
learn how some of the most successful and agile businesspeople in our
economy have prospered despite the chaotic career conditions around us.
With this book you will, in your own way, learn to become a
multipreneur.


What have I to say? Tom Gorman, YOU ARE A GENIUS!

Thanks Tom.