In defense of going off the grid - Winston Churchill

During World War II, Winston Churchill was famously called on to lead the fight against Adolf Hitler as Prime Minister and see Britain through the war in the face of insurmountable challenges.

What many people don’t know, though, is that prior to this appointment, Churchill disappeared abroad on a vocational adventure—a period that he called his "wilderness years." And without it, the world today would arguably be a very different place.

THE SABBATICAL THAT SAVED THE WORLD

After losing his seat as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1929, Churchill left England for Germany to research the Battle of Blenheim, a war fought by his ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough.

In 1932 Hitler was on the rise but not yet a dictator. He was considered by much of Europe a model leader who was helping Germany out of depression and transforming it into one of the most organized and productive countries in Europe. It was only natural that Churchill wanted to meet him while he was visiting.

As it happened, a German-American businessman named Ernst ‘Putzi’ Hanfstaengl, a leading Nazi who knew Hitler intimately and who would become a mediator between Germany and the Allies in the war, was at the hotel where Churchill was staying—and that Hitler frequented—and agreed to arrange an introduction.

Churchill wrote in his memoirs, "I had no national prejudices against Hitler at the time. I knew little of his doctrine or record and nothing of his character."

But he was curious. And he did have one question that he posed to Putzi: "Why is your chief so violent about the Jews? I can quite understand being angry with the Jews who have done wrong or are against the country and I can understand resisting them if they try to monopolize power in any walk of life; but what is the sense of being against a man simply because of his birth? How can any man help how he is born?"

Churchill waited for two days to meet Hitler, but the Nazi leader, who otherwise appeared at the hotel almost every day, did not show up. The snub was particularly suspicious considering Hitler’s reputation for showing famous Brits all around Munich as part of his propaganda campaign while he quietly planned to take over Europe.

With his curiosity aroused, Churchill observed firsthand how Germany was transforming under Hitler’s power—he witnessed the national fervor and the look of intensity in the eyes of the marching youths.

On his return to England from his sabbatical to Germany he made a landmark speech in parliament. Churchill explained that while in Germany he saw "all these bands of sturdy Teutonic youths, marching through the streets and roads of Germany, with the light of desire in their eyes to suffer for fatherland, are not looking for status. They are looking for weapons!"

Churchill’s predecessor Neville Chamberlain famously fell under the highly seductive spell of Hitler, pursuing peace through diplomacy as the Nazi leader bulldozed through Europe. But the loudest voice of resistance was Churchill. He knew there was something inherently evil about Hitler and understood the real ambitions behind his invasions.

At the time of Churchill’s election as Prime Minister in 1940, there were several politicians who had military experience without the controversial reputation Churchill had. What led to his appointment was how right he was about Hitler.

WHAT SABBATICALS CAN DO FOR INNOVATION

Churchill’s story is a great example of how a personal vocational adventure can provide someone with invaluable direct experience, while others rely on theories and conjecture.

While most of the British government had nothing more to go on than Hitler’s propaganda and their own assumptions, Churchill had taken himself out of his comfort zone to get the answers he needed and to acquire the innovative thinking that would give him the edge.

We all face transitions in our lives. They may include facing an innovation challenge at work, feeling disillusioned by one’s career, being drawn into doing more meaningful work, or even being fired like Churchill.

If there is anything that Churchill’s story teaches us, it’s that there is no greater wisdom during these times of transition than gaining direct personal experience.

To ensure that we are at our cutting edge, we need to design windows of exploration that give us the freedom to reflect, experiment, and conceptualize new ideas. We need real experiences that challenge our assumptions, reinforce our values, and open ourselves up to trends that are shaping our world.

Traditionally called gap years or sabbaticals, these windows can take on various durations and don’t even require travel. Often seen as luxuries, these experiences are now critical gateways to innovation that can be completed in a very sustainable way. Ultimately, an exploratory and curious mindset seeks out new experiences no matter where you are.

The next time you feel the urge to get out and explore, but feel guilty that you should be getting on with "real work" or should be following conventional career development path, embrace your curiosity. You may be on an adventure that will one day save the world.

Written by Jeremy Behrmann for Fast Company 

Freedom leads to structure

It is not often that you meet someone who has found the theory of everything. As a coach who was doing research into what promotes growth in businesses and individual careers, ours was an unlikely meeting.  He has been attending one honoring ceremony after another to celebrate his work in thermodynamics, the physical forces that shape our very universe. His name is Adrian Bejan and he became the J.A. Jones Distinguished Professor at Duke University because of his work to create what is now called the Constructal Law. As we discussed his new findings which have just been released in the journal Nature, I felt as if I was discovering the biggest of secrets- one which had been under my nose the whole time.

If you look at the design of a tree, lightening, a river basin, the human lung or the architecture of an airport-they all depict a similar shape. Bejan has discovered why this shape exists in all of nature. Everything that we see around us whether it be species, companies or ecosystems all have one hell of a survival story to tell. The way they are designed is as much a symbol of success as it is a guide on how we should grow ourselves.

The Constructal Law says that for a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it. In Laymans terms, Adrian is saying that freedom is good for life.

This may seem like a simple and esoteric statement but the implications for career and business builders are profound. To understand the root of this we should understand the man and how he came across his theory.

Adrian comes from Soviet occupied Romania. He grew up in a culture where people were unable to travel, listen to the radio or express any of the freedoms that we took for granted in the West. At the time, Romania was one of the least innovative countries in Europe. Like many of the strange manifestations of communism, mathematics and basketball were the only two professions that were promoted. Going with the flow, Adrian embraced and excelled at both.

As a basketball player he understood that the ball flows though channels in a live system like any other body or organisation. The offence is trying to open up channels while the defense is attempting to close them down. As a result the channels are not rigid and are constantly morphing. What Bejan noticed is that the better players got the ball more often making certain channels busier and bigger while the other channels that were used less, got smaller. These channels depict the exact same design hierarchy seen in all of nature.

Bejan believes this organisation builds fitter and stronger organisms because it helps to improve flow.  What does it mean though to be a fitter business or career builder in this turbulent landscape and what are the flows that are shaping the economy?

The Deloitte’s Shift Index shows the average life expectancy of a Fortune 500 company has declined from around 75 years half a century ago to less than 15 years today. The job for life of the baby boomers has been replaced by the expectation that we will change our careers 4-5 times in our lifetime.

To say that things have got a whole lot more competitive and fast moving is an understatement! The combination of people exploring their own unique sense of meaning, coupled with sweeping trends in technology, education and culture make for a whole new set of currents that are flowing through the system. So it begs the question of what stops people and companies from going with the flow?

Consider the most recent billion dollar buy out by Microsoft of Markus Parson’s Minecraft. Being a dedicated gamer he was creating interesting indie games all the time. His bosses were not amused. “We felt that we couldn’t have someone working for us that at the same time was building his own gaming company,” says Lars Markgren, the Midasplayer cofounder who had hired Parson. One can only speculate whether Lars wishes he had let go of this outdated notion and provided greater freedom for Parson, who was clearly demonstrating the capability and desire to follow his own currents of creativity. If Lars had provided not only freedom but also money to Parson in exchange for equity, he could be laughing all the way to the bank.

Clearly employers have to manage the entrepreneurial and vocational aspirations of their employees with a lot more care. Having an idea is one thing, having the freedom to discover one is a different thing. One of the most famous paradigm shifting moves made by a company was 20% time at Google. Employees reportedly were given 20% of their time to work on whatever they liked. According to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and previous Google employee it was more like 120% time where employees were required to do their regular jobs and work the equivalent of an extra day for free to discover innovative ideas.

Why are companies so averse to paying employees to have the freedom to explore whatever they want? In America, 47% of employees refuse to take their holidays for fear that it will count against them. So if employees are not even taking the time to recuperate, you can be sure that proposing a longer period of exploration and creative renewal such as a sabbatical will be even riskier.

It becomes obvious that the behaviors we see on the ground and the lofty words found on corporate innovation manifestos are a contradiction in terms.  Innovation is an evolutionary learning process and what companies don’t fully appreciate is that new experiences are critical for the cross pollination of new ideas. Creating time for experience away from the conditioned routines and thought processes of one’s role is just the beginning. One also needs the space to reflect, conceptualise and to experiment with new approaches to doing things.

As individuals we all contemplate big questions about how best to design our career. The bigger challenge for people according to Bejan, is to understand and appreciate the currents that run through each and every one of us. We all have a unique set of passions, values and abilities which when discovered allow us to add the most value and which naturally influence the design of our career.

Companies that can embrace their employees as actual architects of a living and morphing system rather than fixed bolts in a rigid machine, will adapt far more quickly. As Bejan so aptly put in the poetry of physics, “the person who hears his own calling is better than the one driven from behind”.​

Is university as we know it finished?

In an astonishing move, one of the UK's biggest graduate recruiters has announced it will be removing the degree classification from its entry criteria. 

The accountancy firm Ernst & Young says there is "no evidence" success at university correlates with achievement in later life. This means that whether you got a first class degree or a third, it will have no bearing on how they view your ability to add value. 

What a curve ball. It completely disregards the value of the institution that we call university from an academic viewpoint.

Yet for all those people worrying about what companies really want from a skills point of view, don’t worry, they don’t really know either. Consider the following:

This month a survey by the Institute for Leadership Studies found that only 30% of all employees are satisfied with the future career opportunities within their organisation.
 
Anyone who does not enjoy their work is constantly asking themselves:

“How will what I am doing now lead to something better in the future?

Whether that is the promise of an easier work load, better status or more money in the bank, their engagement and commitment is based on future expectations.

These are being shattered with more frequency as companies fail to offer employees any certainty of where they will be career wise in the short term.  

According to the same report 73% of 124 of the biggest companies in the world agree that upwardly linear careers are a thing of the past. 

Yet at the same time most of the HR managers in these companies say they will experience a significant skills shortage in the next three to five years. 

Something does not add up! They say that they worry that they won’t have enough talent yet they cannot offer employees with the skills they want any certainty of career succession.

Why? The reality is that we exist in the most unpredictable and competitive age we have ever seen. Companies cannot predict where their businesses are going and as a result what skills they will need.
 
In the 1930s an organisation could expect to spend 75 years in the Fortune 500, the ranking for the five hundred biggest companies in the world. Today that has dropped to just 15 years!

Take a moment to reflect on that. 

What does this mean for you? The game is wide open and the conventional rules no longer apply. You are just as competent and able to lead your company in innovation as anyone.  

If you cannot answer these three questions YES you need to find another career:

1. Am I consistently asking myself how I can innovate my role and in my company?

2. Do I feel my managers see me as a source of innovative ideas that are being implemented?

3. Do I find myself willingly putting in work after hours to develop innovations irrespective of whether I am getting paid overtime?