Category career

It’s not just millennials – we all want to learn and grow @work

Eileen Kohan 2 Comments

“How Do Employers Retain Job-Hopping Millennial Employees?” That was the question posed on Quora.com earlier this week. After reading the response from millennial entrepreneur, Elijah Medge, posted on Slate.com, I realized that what we want from work is not a generational issue, we all have similar expectations @work: to learn, grow and be challenged in an “awesome work environment”.

The American worker is tired of hearing about the ‘outrageous expectations’ of the millennial generation.

Instead, let’s step back and thank the millennials for their workplace vision that demands a voice in decision making, requires meaning @work, invites a diverse set of views and creates a bit of fun on the way to productivity.

There will always be a clash between employer and employee expectations when the process lacks honesty. Employers are scrambling to create ‘band aids’ to attract new hires. Job candidates, anxious to please a potential employer, play the game to get the offer, only to depart in a few months when promise and reality don’t match.

Media reports are full of stories of companies trying a variety of experiments to entice millennials to sign on the dotted line. There is no considered approach, just a bunch of ideas being thrown at the wall to see if any stick. The most recently publicized, ‘unlimited vacation time’.

Mr. Medge’s suggestions remind us that a fundamental tenet of management is ‘keep it simple’:

“Facilitate team bonding outside of the office.”

“Mix it up and have a little fun.”

“Take the time to coach, train, and develop successful mentalities.”

“Offer awesome incentives.”

“Encourage learning and mistakes.”

“Don’t micromanage.”

“Consistently recognize top performers.”

“Talk to your people about their goals.”

Do you see anything here that’s generation specific?

When corporate contracts with workers began to disintegrate in the late ’70s, members of the greatest generation and baby boomers were forced to rethink their relationship with the workplace. The disruption of downsizing signaled the end of ‘job stability’.

The level of workplace disruption came as a shock. Those generations were new at this and slow to respond. They had families and mortgages and the risks were too high to challenge the status quo, even thought the status quo had been shattered. The economy was changing and maintaining a standard of living required two incomes.

In contrast, today’s new workers, although saddled with debt, have few other ties. They are the ‘free agents’ of the contemporary workplace and they have watched previous generations, their parents and grandparents, and concluded there is a better way to work.

Let’s engage all workers in conversation about work culture that incorporates Mr. Medge’s common sense components.

The question of employee retention crosses all generations @work: the leaders, the mentors and the newbies. Calibrate the expectations of all members of the workplace community, align with the organization’s culture and restore credibility into the recruitment and retention process.

Leadership: When arrogance trumps common sense, no one wins

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

There are memories of life @work that are etched in your brain forever. One of those for me was the morning I received a call from one of my managers. A member of our team had walked into a location late at night, inebriated, and punched a security guard when he was denied access to the building.

This sounds like one of those exercises created by consultants for leadership assessment. What would you do?

It’s not a far fetched scenario and it’s one that many of us will encounter in the course of our career.  Today, in a very public way, the leadership team at the University of Southern California is forced to address a similar situation with their head football coach. And it’s heartbreaking because arrogance trumped common sense.

I do not know Steve Sarkisian, the head football coach at USC. But I do have another memory @work when I was invited to be a guest coach for a day with the USC women’s volleyball team. I joined the team for dinner prior to the match in the athlete’s dining hall. It was past the normal dining hours and the only folks in the room were the volleyball team, coaches and at another table, Steve Sarkisian with Matt Leinart. At the time, Matt was the starting quarterback and Steve was his position coach.

What I observed that evening was a coach committed to his player, taking the time to sit, listen and offer advice and counsel. They were there when we arrived and there when we left. Given the circus atmosphere around NCAA Division I football, this quiet moment formed my perception of Steve Sarkisian.

Many years have passed. The pressure on Division I coaches has increased. Coach Sarkisian accepted a head coaching job at the University of Washington. Matt Leinart was drafted into the NFL. The coach returned to USC and Matt is now a sportscaster for Fox Sports.

Coach Sarkisian’s days @work pass in the glare of media in a town where there are no NFL teams. It’s difficult to imagine the pressure on both players and coaches to perform at a consistent level each week in an environment where losing is never an option and every decision is questioned.

There was an incident in August at a fundraising event. Yesterday, another. And now, former players from UW are sharing memories@work on social media of other incidents. It may be cathartic for them to ‘pile on’ at this point, but where is the humanity that separates a college athlete from a tackle dummy?

You may argue that folks fear retribution, loss of scholarship, lack of playing time and a missed opportunity to play on Sunday. But these are the ‘big guys’ that employers clamor to hire because of their team and leadership skills. Leading from behind carries far less risk than a conspiracy of silence. And can we not forget we are talking about the health of a human being here?

And then there are the adults, the stewards of the workplace community, the folks who are paid for their leadership skills: emotional intelligence, listening, taking action. There are few public details, so innuendo will fill in for facts. But in an environment so preoccupied with rankings, success and winning, we are witnessing an epic leadership fail when it came to empathy toward a key member of the Trojan family.

When you fumble the football, it’s difficult to recover. For the USC leadership team, the clock may have run out. But I hope there is an overtime opportunity for Coach Sarkisian and that he gets well and returns to pursue his dream job.

What did I do? I followed the facts. My team member was going through a divorce and his partner had just denied him visitation with his toddler children. It didn’t justify his behavior. But it did provide a context for a leadership response. The day of the incident he entered rehab, knowing the alternative was losing his job. When he returned to work, he worked every day to stay sober and continued to add value to the organization.

Leading is difficult. But the most valuable assets a leader can possess are a catalog of memories@work and common sense. When it comes to the really tough, human issues @work, there is no proxy for common sense.

The Saturday Read – ‘The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World’ by Andrea Wulf

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

This weekend we celebrate exploration and discovery in recognition of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. What motivates those who choose a life of adventure and exploration? The ‘Saturday Read’ is the career story of an intrepid pioneer whose curiosity drove him to become one of the most famous of his age.

The ‘Saturday Read’ this week is ‘The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World’ by Andrea Wulf.

I first encountered von Humboldt when reading ‘The Art of Travel’ by Alain de Botton. At the end of a chapter ‘On Curiosity’, de Botton shares a quote attributed to von Humboldt near the end of his life:

“People often say that I’m curious about too many things at once: botany, astronomy, comparative anatomy. But can you really forbid a man from harboring a desire to know and embrace everything that surrounds him?”

Alexander von Humboldt was the master of connecting the dots and lived at a point in time when the multidisciplinary approach fueled exploration and discovery.

“Alexander von Humboldt has been largely forgotten in the English-speaking world. He was one of the last polymaths, and died at a time when scientific disciplines were hardening into tightly fenced and more specialized fields. Consequently his more holistic approach – a scientific method that included art, history, poetry and politics alongside hard data – has fallen out of favour. By the beginning of the twentieth century, there was little room for a man whose knowledge had bridged a vast range of subjects. As scientists crawled into their narrow areas of expertise dividing and further subdividing, they lost Humboldt’s interdisciplinary methods and his concept of nature as a global force. 

One of Humboldt’s greatest achievements had been to make science accessible and popular. Everybody learned from him: farmers and craftsmen, schoolboys and teachers, artists and musicians, scientists and politicians…Unlike Christopher Columbus or Issac Newton, Humboldt did not discover a continent or a new law of physics. Humboldt was not known for a single fact or discovery but for his worldview. His vision of nature has passed into our consciousness as if by osmosis. It is almost as though his ideas have become so manifest that the man behind them has disappeared.”

Today universities scramble to attract students with multidisciplinary offerings, but the silos of academia continue to resist cross-pollinization of knowledge. This is why we need to remove the invisibility cloak from von Humboldt and revisit his curiosity and travel the roads that led to his discoveries.

Author Andrea Wulf wrote an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times, ‘Alexander von Humboldt: The man who made nature modern’, linking his conclusions to the environmental challenges we face today.

“At a time when scientists were classifying the world into ever smaller taxonomic units, Humboldt regarded Earth as one great living organism in which everything was connected. It was a radically new approach, and it makes him a naturalist hero for the 21st century.”

“With California in the fourth year of serious drought, with forest fires burning, oceans rising and extreme weather spreading havoc, Humboldt deserves to be rediscovered. His interdisciplinary methods and his concept of nature as one of global patterns should underpin our policymaking.

As scientists try to understand and predict the consequences of climate change, Humboldt’s belief in the free exchange of information and in fostering communication across disciplines is vitally important. His insights that social, economic and political issues are closely connected to environmental problems remain resoundingly topical. “Mankind’s mischief …disturbs nature’s order,” he warned, in words as relevant today as they were two centuries ago.”

Alexander von Humboldt’s legacy echoes in the works of John Muir and George Perkins Marsh and in the wild gardens of California where the native ‘Humboldt Lily’ thrives in a dry climate. And now it’s preserved in the words of Andrea Wulf. Enjoy the ‘Saturday Read’ and encourage your children to grow up to be polymaths.

humboldt lily

‘Vocation’ a poem by Sandra Beasley

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

How many times have you asked someone, What would you like to do next @work? And how often have your received the response, “I’m not sure, but I would like to work with people”. It can be the beginning of an extremely frustrating conversation because there are many ways you can work with people and not all of them pleasant.

The Friday Poem this week is from poet Sandra Beasley’s Barnard Women Poets Prize winning poetry collection, ‘I Was the Jukebox’. In reading the poem, what caught my eye was the twist on the ‘working with people’ ambition in the last lines of the poem.

Her words give voice to all of us who struggle to find our perfect place @work.

“If it calls you, its your calling, right?”

Maybe there’s more to career choice than hearing voices.

Vocation

For six months I dealt Baccarat in a casino.
For six months I played Brahms in a mall.
For six months I arranged museum dioramas;
my hands were too small for the Paleolithic
and when they reassigned me to lichens, I quit.
I type ninety-one words per minute, all of them
Help. Yes, I speak Dewey Decimal.
I speak Russian, Latin, a smattering of Tlingit.
I can balance seven dinner plates on my arm.
All I want to do is sit on a veranda while
a hard rain falls around me. I’ll file your 1099s.
I’ll make love to strangers of your choice.
I’ll do whatever you want, as long as I can do it
on that veranda. If it calls you, it’s your calling,
right? Once I asked a broker what he loved
about his job, and he said Making a killing.
Once I asked a serial killer what made him
get up in the morning, and he said The people.

Sandra Beasley  ‘I Was the Jukebox: Poems’  2010

9780393339666_198

What if we approached job search as an adventure?

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

Take a minute to search the online dictionaries for a definition of the word ‘adventure’. All will include a version of “an ​unusual, ​exciting, and ​possibly ​dangerous ​activity, ​trip, or ​experience, or the ​excitement ​produced by such ​activities”. What if we approached our job search as an adventure?

There are bookcases full of career exploration guides and a plethora of simulation exercises marketed as navigational tools for the job seeker. The industry of career consulting has depreciated the complexity of vocational discovery and led folks to believe that career mysteries can be decoded with minimal effort.

It’s a cookie cutter approach assuming that we know what jobs are out there and know the skill set required for each. What we also know is that the world @work is volatile and many job titles have been retired along with their occupants and many more have evolved with the emergence of new employers.

If you frame your job search as an adventure, your expectations adjust to prepare for the unexpected. Your time frames align with reality. The anticipation of meeting new folks, cataloging what you still need to learn and testing your ambitions @work will catapult you out of bed each morning.

Where do you start? Select an individual who is known for their sense of adventure. Focus on the excitement vs. the danger. Why are they successful?

“To me, adventure has always been the connections and bonds you create with people when you’re there. And you can have that anywhere.” Bear Grylls

Start making the connections – scheduling conversations.The adventure is in the discovery of what you don’t know about work. It’s asking questions, listening and connecting the dots. As you accumulate knowledge, various scenarios begin to emerge in the experience of others.

It’s a lifetime commitment once you open the door to adventure.

“Remember what Bilbo used to say: ‘It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”” — J.R.R. Tolkien

The week@work – Jobs report, valuing low-skilled workers, succession in fashion and another college scorecard

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

This week@work ended with the release of a disappointing September jobs report. On Thursday, an English instructor and restaurant server in Las Vegas shared her views on the value of unskilled labor. In the world of fashion the transition in leadership at Ralph Lauren was the most publicized succession news, but a number of fashion houses are facing business continuation challenges. And, potential college students have one more metric to use to select a college, the Obama administration’s ‘College Scorecard’.

Patricia Cohen provided a detailed analysis of the September jobs report from the Labor Department.

“The Labor Department found that the jobless rate held steady at 5.1 percent in September, but wage gains stalled, the labor force shrank and employers created many fewer positions than they had been averaging in recent months. While the latest report is only a snapshot of the economy and the weakness may ultimately prove fleeting, it made clear that ordinary workers are still failing to take home the kind of monetary rewards normally expected from a recovery that has being going on for more than six years.”

The low skill areas of the economy continue to be the hardest hit. It’s this group that was the topic of an opinion piece by Brittany Bronson, an English instructor with a perfect view to comment from her other job as a restaurant server. She posed the question, do we value low-skilled work?

“We’re raised, in the culture of American capitalism, to believe certain things, without question, namely that the value of work is defined by the complexity of the task and not the execution of it, that certain types of work are not worthy of devoting a lifetime to.

The labels “low-skilled” or “unskilled” workers — the largest demographic being adult women and minorities — often inaccurately describe an individual’s abilities, but play a powerful role in determining their opportunity. The consequences are not only severe, but incredibly disempowering: poverty-level wages, erratic schedules, the absence of retirement planning, health benefits, paid sick or family leave and the constant threat of being replaced.

…When you witness a great restaurant server or see a particularly effective janitor at work, you aren’t observing a freak talent, but someone who took the time to learn his or her job and improve on it. Now imagine if more “low-skilled” workers were given the compensation, job security and encouragement to do the same.”

The conversation about valuing the work of low skilled labor has recently centered around raising the minimum wage. While important, it plays into the narrative that value is validated by the size of a paycheck. Ms. Bronson addresses the bigger issue.

“But the more difficult challenge is to redefine the language and perceptions that trap large segments of reliable workers in poverty. All work can be executed with skill, but denying that fact is useful to those who justify the poor treatment of, and unfair compensation for, millions of workers.

Convincing those workers that their treatment is temporary, that if they just keep working harder, learn to do their tasks more quickly, more efficiently, more fluidly, they will eventually surpass it — this is a myth we can’t keep telling.”

On the other end of the economic spectrum, Nikki Baird examined the implications of the transition at the Ralph Lauren company as its namesake and leader leaves his chief executive officer position.

“Ralph Lauren, the company, will undergo a critical transition as its namesake founder steps down, to be replaced by the former president of Old Navy , Stefan Larsson. The transition comes at an interesting time for high-end fashion brands, and for the Ralph Lauren brand in particular.

It’s always tricky when a personality-driven brand’s primary personality steps down, though granted in this case, Mr. Lauren will remain the company’s chief creative officer. New blood means new opportunities, and even brands with very established values and specific lifestyle appeal can lose relevancy during a leadership transition.”

“But Ralph Lauren is making this transition in the midst of a much larger change happening within specialty retail, a change driven by the rise of the internet and consumers’ cross-channel shopping behaviors, and exacerbated by consolidation in the department store landscape.”

The challenge of leadership continuation is not restricted to the fashion industry. Many of the changes that have occurred in other business sectors can trace a direct line to disruption from players outside traditional marketing and delivery channels. Now the spotlight shifts to the world of fashion as a generation of designers departs and executive recruiters seek leaders who will be both relevant in imagination and design, and grow revenue in an increasingly competitive global, digital market.

“The question of succession is a pressing one for many major brands, not just labels with leaders d’un certain âge (Karl Lagerfeld, of Chanel and Fendi, is in his 80s; Giorgio Armani, 81). Even among young designers, turnover is a regular occurrence.”

“The responsibilities of branding in a rapidly changing digital age — not necessarily the skills honed in fashion colleges 20 or 30 years ago — have put a new premium on youth and comfort in the digital space.”

“If a brand is not meaningful through the screen, there is very little hope that you can really build a success,” Ms. de Saint Pierre said. “I think we are at a time when the majority of the consumers are coming from non-Western countries. Their education to luxury, their education to brands has not been generational. It has been through a screen. This is a major shift of paradigm for the 21st century, and this is not going to change.”

The last story of this week@work comes from James Stewart, ‘College Rankings Fail to Measure the Influence of the Institution’.

“The bottom line is that no ranking system or formula can really answer the question of what college a student should attend. Getting into a highly selective, top-ranked college may confer bragging rights, status and connections, but it doesn’t necessarily contribute to a good education or lifelong success, financial or otherwise.”

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

Where do the remnants of your childhood dreams reside? In the back of a closet? In a pile of boxes in a storage locker? In the memory of a childhood hero? Or, is there a kernel of that imagined life germinating in your days @work?

When we get stuck in our careers it makes sense to step back and imagine our work in the eyes of a five year old. Most of us are probably not dressed in the costumes of our earliest aspirations, but taking a look back at a photo of our pre-school self might provide the starting point for redirecting our career GPS.

We spend a lot of time in our lives fulfilling the expectations of others. In school we excel to please teachers and parents, we compete to attend the ‘right’ college to impress our peers, and we contend with other candidates to land the ‘best’ job offer. The process can become an end in itself, and one day we are sitting at our desk wondering how we arrived.

Rewind. What did you want to be when you grew up? Is there an element of that wish that links to the career decision maker you are today?

Maybe the opportunity to be the prima ballerina with the New York City Ballet is no longer an option, but could your dream of the dance connect with an alternative artistic career choice?

Start with small steps. Talk to people who actually are @work in your imagined dream job. What’s the reality? Could you test your interest with an internship or volunteer experience before you abandon your current source of revenue?

When we are young our career fantasies are limitless. We haven’t encountered any opposition to our imagination. That picture of our five year old self is a ‘screen shot’ of us before brick walls. Adults didn’t take our plans too seriously and encouraged our wildest dreams.

Now, you are the adult, looking at the photo of yourself BBW (before brick walls). What has happened over time between that image and today’s selfie? Maybe it’s time for the two of you to have a conversation about what’s next.

Finding your passion is not terrible career advice

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

When we talk about passion@work we talk about ‘fit’. If we trivialize the importance of dedication, we devalue enthusiasm and energy in the workplace. Suggesting that someone follow their passion is not bad career advice.

Yesterday, New York Post journalist Mackenzie Dawson added her voice to the doubters.

“But for all its good intent, “Find your passion” can actually be pretty lousy career advice — and it usually doesn’t leave people feeling as though they’re any closer to finding something they really like doing.

The problem with “finding your passion” is that it’s completely overwhelming — kind of like starting the next Facebook — and face it, most of us aren’t the next Mark Zuckerberg. That’s because the idea of “finding your passion” is completely overwhelming — kind of like heading off to “paint the Sistine Chapel” or “start the next Facebook.”

Her argument is that this advice sets folks up to fail. OK. But how do you learn if you don’t try? And, BTW, most of us embark on passions that are far more manageable than starting the next Facebook. I’m reminded of a conversation I had at a reception a couple of weeks ago with a NYC charter school principal who has found her bliss and whose excitement was downright contagious.

This is what finding your passion is about: finding that place@work where you learn, grow and thrive.

Ms. Dawson’s article found support in quotes from recruiting firm ReWork co-founder, Nathaniel Koloc.

“A lot of people don’t know what their passion is — it’s a monolithic way to describe a career. Also, careers don’t work like that directly,” says Nathaniel Koloc, co-founder of the progressive recruiting firm ReWork. “Your career grows as you learn to give more value. Also, it’s misleading to imply that simply because you like to do something, other people will value it enough to pay you. At the end of the day, you’re talking about the marketplace.”

Instead of the dreaded P-word, Koloc recommends approaching your career choices from a different perspective, and asking yourself two main questions: “Where will I learn more?” and “Where will I provide more value?”

Not sure the charter school principal would agree, and I would offer that her workplace offers both lifelong learning, and adds significant value to the lives she touches daily. A calling, career is not always about the marketplace.

No one would offer advice to knowingly set someone up for failure. Success is an evolution built on learning and experience. Passion and value and learning are not mutually exclusive terms.

One more thing. Mr. Koloc currently serves as the Director of Talent and Acquisition & Development for ‘Hillary for America’. I always thought that political campaigns were the vortex of commitment and passion @work.

Telling someone to pursue their dream is never bad advice. Suggesting they understand the financial implications of their decision is prudent. Doing what you love is priceless.

‘The Saturday Read’ Pope Francis’ Speech to the Congress of the United States of America

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

On Thursday morning Pope Francis addressed the a joint session of the 114th US Congress. He challenged his audience to address issues of immigration, climate change, poverty, family and to abolish the death penalty. Throughout his delivery he demonstrated his quiet but firm leadership style and structured his remarks to reflect American values in the stories of four American careers.

‘The Saturday Read’ this week is the text of Pope Francis’ congressional speech.

“My visit takes place at a time when men and women of good will are marking the anniversaries of several great Americans. The complexities of history and the reality of human weakness notwithstanding, these men and women, for all their many differences and limitations, were able by hard work and self-sacrifice — some at the cost of their lives — to build a better future. They shaped fundamental values which will endure forever in the spirit of the American people. A people with this spirit can live through many crises, tensions and conflicts, while always finding the resources to move forward, and to do so with dignity. These men and women offer us a way of seeing and interpreting reality. In honoring their memory, we are inspired, even amid conflicts, and in the here and now of each day, to draw upon our deepest cultural reserves.

I would like to mention four of these Americans: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton.”

“Three sons and a daughter of this land, four individuals and four dreams: Lincoln, liberty; Martin Luther King, liberty in plurality and non-exclusion; Dorothy Day, social justice and the rights of persons; and Thomas Merton, the capacity for dialogue and openness to God.”

He included remarks that provided insight to his view of leadership.

“It is my duty to build bridges and to help all men and women, in any way possible, to do the same. When countries which have been at odds resume the path of dialogue — a dialogue which may have been interrupted for the most legitimate of reasons — new opportunities open up for all. This has required, and requires, courage and daring, which is not the same as irresponsibility. A good political leader is one who, with the interests of all in mind, seizes the moment in a spirit of openness and pragmatism. A good political leader always opts to initiate processes rather than possessing spaces.”

But, as noted by NPR, the pope omitted a section in the text challenging the influence of money in American politics.

“A potentially controversial sentence in the prepared text of Pope Francis’ address went unspoken when he delivered the speech to Congress.

The line appears to challenge the dominant role of money in American politics.

A paragraph in the prepared text quotes briefly from the Declaration of Independence — the passage on self-evident truths — and then says, “If politics must truly be at the service of the human person, it follows that it cannot be a slave to the economy and finance.”

The paragraph defines politics in terms of the “compelling need to live as one” and building a common good that “sacrifices particular interests in order to share, in justice and peace, its goods, its interests, its social life.”

The text is written to be read. It is a model of how to craft a message: connect with an audience, employ storytelling to illustrate that message, and insure individuality shines through.

The ‘gig economy’ and ‘the new romantics’

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

The ground is shifting the foundations of our world@work. New economic models are emerging of mosaic careers where freelancing is the predominant driver of income. In order to flourish workers will have to reimagine their life@work and add skills previously delivered through full time employers. This is the conversation that should be taking place in corporate boardrooms, university classrooms, state legislatures and presidential debates.

Don’t believe me? How did you get to work? Uber? Where did you stay on vacation? Airbnb?

The initial repercussions of the new world@work are being felt in the halls of justice as folks try to fit old definitions of work and workers into new, entrepreneurial business models.

Sarah Kessler writing for Fast Company summarized the dilemma.

“What’s at stake with these lawsuits and protests? The very definition of “employee” in a tech-enabled, service-driven 21st century American economy. Gig economy companies do not own cars, hotels, or even their workers’ cleaning supplies. What they own is a marketplace with two sides. On one side are people who need a job done—a ride to the airport, a clean house, a lunchtime delivery. On the other are people who are willing to do that job. If Uber and other companies are going to be as big as some claim, a new deal has to be brokered, one that squares the legal rules governing work with new products and services. What benefits can you expect from a quasi-employer? What does it mean to be both independent and tethered to an app-based company? The social contract between gig economy workers and employers is broken. Who will fix it, and how, will determine the fate of thousands of workers and hundreds of millions of dollars.”

James Surowiecki writing in The New Yorker described just how difficult it is to define the difference between an employee and an independent contractor.

“We hear a lot these days about the gig economy, but the issue of whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor has been the subject of intense legal battles for decades. The distinction can be surprisingly hard to make. The I.R.S. has a list of twenty factors that it takes into account, but other federal agencies have different criteria, as do most states. The fundamental issue is usually whether an employer has “control” over the work being done, but defining control isn’t always easy.”

This is where it begins in the U.S., in the court system. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs will continue to connect clients with products and hire workers who will supplement their income performing a variety of part-time professional services. Eventually the laws will catch up with the workplace reality. But in the interim, universities have to decipher the emerging skill set and prepare the next generation of workers for success.

Joseph Aoun, President of Northeastern University in Boston conducted an informal survey of the university community, tweeting the question, “What skills will graduates need for success in the gig economy?”

“…we can see five skills that will be invaluable for thriving in the gig economy:

Generativity: How to create something unique, be it a product, a service, or an idea. E.g., coming up with the idea for a widget.

Entrepreneurship: How to spot an opportunity and act on it effectively. Discovering a market for widgets.

Originality: How to view an existing subject through an unexpected lens. Realizing that the widget can be made more sustainably from recycled water bottles.

Interdisciplinary thought: How to bridge concepts from different fields to form new ideas. Combining engineering and design so that the widget is not only functional, but beautiful.

Dealing with ambiguity: How to confidently address a problem with no clear solution, often by using a blend of experience, intuition, and grasp of human nature. Faced with plunging stock prices, reinventing the company as a widget-sharing app.”

The ‘new gig workers’ will also need a basic understanding of business law and finance. Arun Sundararajan writing in The Guardian assesses the micro and macro implications of the new model.

“There’s certainly something empowering about being your own boss. With the right mindset, you can achieve a better work-life balance. But there’s also something empowering about a steady pay cheque, fixed work hours and company-provided benefits. It’s harder to plan your life longer term when you don’t know how much money you’re going to be making next year.”

In many countries, key slices of the social safety net are tied to full-time employment with a company or the government. Although the broader socioeconomic effects of the gig economy are as yet unclear, it is clear we must rethink the provision of our safety net, decoupling it from salaried jobs and making it more readily available to independent workers.”

Fundamentally, the new ‘gig worker’ will focus on human interaction vs. transactional activities. We are back to the core curriculum of a liberal arts education. The lawyers, politicians and business folk will figure out the structure and protections. The humanists will find job security in the ‘gig economy’.

David Brooks writing in The New York Times imagines the new world@work.

“What are the activities that we humans, driven by our deepest nature or by the realities of daily life, will simply insist be performed by other humans?”

“Secure workers will combine technical knowledge with social awareness — the sort of thing you get from your genes, from growing up in a certain sort of family and by widening your repertoire of emotions through reflection, literature and a capacity for intimacy.”

“I could imagine a time when young thinkers discard the strictures of the academic professionalism and try to revive the model of the intellectual as secular sage. I could see other young people tiring of résumé-building do-goodism and trying to live more radically for the poor. The romantic tries as much as possible to ground his or her life in purer love that transforms — making him or her more inspired, creative and dedicated, and therefore better able to live as a modern instantiation of some ideal.”

Gig learning is lifelong learning. We will need leaders in both education and business who will welcome the feedback of their constituencies and be nimble in their response to a world@work that is driven by human interaction in the relational and supported by technology in the transactional.