Category: Adapt, Innovate, Win

Adapt, Innovate, and Win: Welcome to the cornerstone of jaywren.com, where we believe that career growth is a continuous journey fueled by adaptation and leads to success, both personally and professionally. This category unites the core principles of thriving in a dynamic world with the practical steps for individual development. Here, you’ll find insights and actionable strategies to accomplish these things:

Cultivate an Adaptive Mindset
Learn to embrace change, navigate uncertainty, and develop the resilience needed to thrive in evolving circumstances.
Fuel Personal and Professional Growth.
Explore techniques for self-improvement, skill development, building confidence, and achieving your full potential in all areas of your life.
Embrace Innovation and Creativity.
Discover how to think outside the box, generate new ideas, and implement innovative solutions to overcome challenges and seize opportunities.
Define and Achieve Success
Understand what success means to you and gain practical guidance on setting meaningful goals and developing effective strategies to reach them.
Develop Essential Skills for a Changing Landscape
From communication and leadership to critical thinking and problem-solving, equip yourself with the skills needed to excel in today’s world.

Summary

Whether you’re navigating a career transition, seeking personal fulfillment, or aiming for greater achievements, this category provides the framework and inspiration to adapt, innovate, and win on your unique path to growth and success. Join us as we explore the continuous journey of becoming the best version of ourselves in an ever-evolving world.

The Top 6 Soft Skills

Soft skills help workers become more successful and enable them to help other workers become more successful.

6 Top Soft Skills

The Top 6 Soft Skills

Soft skills help workers become more successful and enable them to help other workers become more successful.
According to the United States Department of Labor, these are the most important soft skills:

1. Communication

Communication skills enable people to say things in a way that other people can understand them and enable people to understand the things people say in response.  Obviously, team members and team leader become more effective when they understand each other.

2. Enthusiasm and Attitude

Enthusiasm and Attitude are skills that help workers enjoy the job more.  Furthermore, your enthusiasm and attitude can help coworkers enjoy their job. Developing these skills is an ongoing process to keep a fresh, positive point of view.

3. Teamwork

Teamwork skills enable workers to respect the work, ideas, and opinions of other workers.  For example, in a YouTube video titled “The Myth of the Genius Programmer,” two Google engineers talk about the value of teamwork at Google.  They explain that the success at Google comes from the understanding that no one person has the answer for everything.

4. Networking

Networking as a skill has many elements.  A person must develop the confidence to contact and interact with other people.  Additionally, the skill to connect face-to-face and to  network direct through the Internet enables a person to have a career with more opportunities and more support.

5. Problem Solving & Critical Thinking

These skills are is important to making decisions and  to working with others.  Furthermore, people with these skills can see the value of their ideas and the value of the ideas of the other members of the team.

6. Professionalism

Ending on the most powerful skill, professionalism is the combines all the other skills into creating a person who thinks and works in the best interest of the company and the other workers.

Picking A Career

In picking a career, start with an understanding of what you want to do and what you need to do to have that type of career.

First, answer these questions.

    1. How well do you relate to other people.  If you enjoy helping people, jobs in service industries, health care, hospitality, and other jobs requiring people skills will interest you.  If you have no interest in human relations, you may prefer performance jobs: writing, computer programming, sales, or other jobs where the focus is on a task more than interaction with other people.
    2. Are you a leader, team member, teacher, or worker?  Leaders need opportunities with companies that use more people.  Team members work well in companies with a focus on planning or innovation.  Teachers find jobs in education or training.  Workers should focus on jobs where the company expects them to do their job but does not need that they accept responsibility in management.
    3. What are your interests?  Answering this question will help you pick a trade or industry.
    4. How much do you like risks? If you need security, you may want to work in large institutions or government.  If you love risks, self-employment or start-up companies will excite you.
    5. Where do you want to live?  Some jobs exist in abundance in some places.  Other jobs only exist in specific locations.  If you want to sell surfboards, you should consider living near beaches.
    6. How important is income?  Your focus on income can affect the risks, amount of education or training, and the levels of responsibility you will accept.

Second, answer these questions.

  1. What skills do you need?  When you are planning your career, consider what skills you will need to move through the stages of your career.  You can build your skills through volunteer, hobbies, training, and at your workplace.
  2. What education do you need?  Understanding the education can save you a great deal of time and money.  For example, if you need specific classes to get a teaching credential, you can include those classes in your curriculum and save returning to complete those courses after you graduate.
  3. What experience do you need?  Similar to planning your career based on the skills that you will need, you can get specific experience through your work and education as well as hobbies and volunteering.
  4. Where do you need to live?  Often people have family or health needs that limit their choices for where they can live.

6 Things to Know Before Accepting a Job Offer

6 Things to Know Before Accepting a Job Offer

When a company makes you a job offer, you have done a lot of hard work and now you are in control of the process.   You have the power to accept or decline the offer. You are also in a very important part of the process. This is the time for you to make certain that the job is as nearly right for you as you can find.
Here are some job offer questions as to help you evaluate the offer.

1. Have you met your supervisor?  When I went to work at Procter & Gamble, I did not meet my supervisor until the day I started to work.  I was in a division that Procter & Gamble had created to expand the field sales organization in the West.  Procter & Gamble conducted the interviews in an office of a recruiting firm in San Francisco.  The people who interviewed me were charismatic, outgoing, and personable sales people.   I had expected someone who was a fire-in-the-belly mentor who would raise my performance to new levels and teach me how to move ahead in one of the finest companies in the world.

However, on the first day at work, I met my supervisor, and he was anything but what I had expected.  He had been in the same first-line management job for fifteen years.  He was unenthusiastic about what he did.  He emphasized getting the job done as quickly as possible and heading home.  He was a good person, an excellent father and husband.  He was just different from what I had expected based on the people I had met during my interviews.

2. Is there anything in the job description you do not understand?  I have learned from working on recruiting assignments that job descriptions can create confusion.  Here are some things you might want to clarify before you take a job.

  • If the job involves travel, where will need to go and how often?
  • What are the reporting relationships in the new company?  If the job title includes a word such as “manager,” what does that mean?  Will you manage a budget or perhaps manager an overwhelming number of direct reporting relationships?
  • What is the job?  If you think that you are joining an innovation team and you find that you are joining a planning team, you will need to do a lot more analysis that creative thinking.
  • What is the promotion opportunity or expectation?  If you want promotions and there is little opportunity, you are facing frustration.  If the company expects you to take promotions and you want to settle into a career position, you could find that you face pressure to leave for people who can keep the promotion pipeline fluid.

I saw one instance at Polaroid where the company hired a person who quit when he found out he had to fly to a sales meeting in the Bahamas.  The man was afraid to get on an airplane.

3. Is the workplace right for you?

  • How long is the commute?
  • What type area surrounds the office?
  • Does the job allow you to work at home or require that you commute daily?
  • Do you have affordable transportation?

4. Do you have any special conditions that you want to set up?  Perhaps you sunk a few thousand dollars into a family vacation that will start six months into your new job.  If you cannot get your money back or if this vacation has special importance to your family, the time to raise the subject is before you accept the offer.  I married my wonderful wife four months after I started to work for Procter & Gamble.  The management team at Procter & Gamble fully supported my taking time for my wedding honeymoon.  I discussed the matter with them before I accepted the job.

5. Do you understand the benefits? There are a few things for you to consider about benefits before you accept a job offer.

  • When do the benefits start?  This information is critical to transitioning your healthcare coverage from your current coverage to the coverage at your new job.
  • What are the out-of-pocket costs for the benefits?  There are differences from one company to the next.  I placed people with a company that had terrific coverage for people who lived in California, the home state of the company.  However, the costs to people who lived outside of California were several thousand dollars a year.
  • What benefits are you giving up in the transition?  If you have prescription, major medical, primary care coverage, dental, and optical coverage at your current company, and the new company does not cover some of these things, based on your health, you might find a big gap between what you are getting and what the new company will give you.
  • What are the deductibles in the plans at your new company?  Insurance companies offer lower rates for higher deductibles.  You not need in any surprises in these potential gaps.

6. How often will the new company pay you?  If the new company pays you twice a month, you get 24 checks a year.  If the new company pays you every two weeks, you get 26 checks a year.  Companies often state income in the amount that the company will pay an employee per paycheck.

The Side Hustle: Finding New Ways to Make Money

With the Internet expansion and coincidental high unemployment starting with the 2008 recession, companies began to spring up to connect personal assets into ways of making money.

The “sharing economy” or “gig economy” exploded as a major economic force, powered by the proliferation of digital platforms that connect people who need services with freelance workers who can provide them on demand for everything from rideshare and home rentals to delivery services. Companies like Uber and Airbnb are considered the quintessential examples of this phenomenon.

Finding Opportunities for Income in the Sharing Economy

The internet drives the gig economy. Knowing how to use the Internet to find opportunities is critical to your success. Knowing keyword for the sharing economy will help you locate opportunities on the Internet. Here are some of the categories of gigs and asset sharing:

• Vehicle or equipment renting
• Home sharing for vacation accommodations
• Ridesharing alternatives to taxis and busses
• Delivery services from store to consumers
• Ad-supported video sharing
• Sharing Economy
• Peer-to-Peer Redistribution Markets
• Social Commerce
• Crowd Funding
• Collaborative Consumption

Knowing the Risks of the Gig Economy

The gig economy, with its promise of flexibility and freedom, has undeniably reshaped the modern workplace. But beneath the allure of independent contracting and flexible schedules lie some significant drawbacks.

Income Instability:
• Fluctuating Earnings: Gig work often involves unpredictable income streams. Earnings can vary wildly from week to week, making it difficult to budget and plan for the future.
• Lack of Benefits: Gig workers typically lack access to employee benefits such as health insurance, paid leave, and retirement plans.

Job Insecurity:

• Platform Dependence: Gig workers are often at the mercy of the platforms they work for. Algorithms can change, demand can fluctuate, and platforms can deactivate accounts with little warning.
• Competition: The competitive nature of the gig economy can make it difficult to find consistent work and maintain a stable income.

 

Job Searching: Hard Skills and Soft Skills

Hard skills get you the interview.   Soft skills get you the job.

When interviewers read your resume, they are looking for hard skills.  Your experience shows your hard skills.  Here are some examples.

    1. Accounting
    2. Analysis
    3. Brand Development
    4. Computer Programming
    5. Data Management
    6. Education
    7. Financial Management
    8. Internet Programming
    9. People Management
    10. Planning
    11. Mathematics
    12. Research and Development
    13. Software knowledge (e.g., word processing, spreadsheet, image editing, database, etc.)
    14. Selling
    15. Typing
    16. Writing

You show your soft skills in an interview.   Your interpersonal skills and your character skills are soft skills.

  1. Flexibility
  2. Integrity
  3. Listening
  4. Motivation
  5. Negotiation
  6. Patience
  7. Positive Attitude
  8. Self-initiative
  9. Sociability
  10. Speaking
  11. Teamwork
  12. Trustworthiness

Some people list soft skills in their resume.  If you find that you are having trouble keeping your resume from getting too long, remember that interviewers are not looking for soft skills when they read a resume.  They are looking for hard skills that show your qualifications for a job.  Therefore, put hard skills on your resume and practice your soft skills for your interview.

Getting a Job and Getting Promoted through Skills Development

When you are not going forward, you are going backward.   If you make stagecoaches and your competition makes buses, your competition has moved forward.  You have moved backward.

Some people, teams, and companies continue to become more skilled and successful.  Other people, teams, and companies become less competitive through a failure to keep up with the growing strengths of their competition.

There are several ways to continue to develop skills.

Do volunteer work that will expand your skills.  I became involved in working with public schools.

In one case, I worked with cell phone companies to pay to place cell towers on school property.  The result of this work is that a cell phone company built lighting towers for a high school stadium for night games.   I learned a great deal about complex public administration and have used that knowledge in working across the internal structure of my clients.

In another case, one of the parents on a volunteer committee asked me to get Cornell West, PhD and Harvard professor, to speak at John H. Kennedy High School, Sacramento, CA.

West is an alumnus of that high school and had recently published a best-selling book titled Race Matters.

Typically West was highly compensated for public appearances.

Neither I nor the high school had the money to pay West to speak at the high school.  I negotiated a deal with West’s agent.  I would create an alumni award in West’s name:  The Cornell West Distinguished Alumni Award.

West spoke at the campus. He gave a terrific speech.  I presented the award to West at the finish of his presentation to 750 students.  The school made the award an annual tradition to honor other alumni.

I learned that great people like West want to make the world a better place and not get rich off everything that they do.

Interact with your counterparts in other departments.  If you are a junior or mid-level manager, you do not have to know how to do most of the things that happen in your company.  However, if you are going to get promoted, you will need to know more about the other departments as your responsibility progresses.

Invite people from other departments to join you for lunch and to take a walk during breaks.  Ask productive, meaningful questions of your counterparts during business meetings.  Thank people when they give you information that expands your knowledge and skills.

Pay attention in group discussions.  Stay focused on what each person contributes to the discussion.

During the workday, speak with your counterparts or visit their departments.  Be polite.  Make sure your boss is okay with your spending a few minutes each day during your break to visit other departments in your company.  Get their permission from the department head to come in and see what the department is doing.  Take a real interest in their job and show an appreciation for their time and their contribution.  Research their work before you visit them.

Remain curious and continue to learn.  When you hear or read words you do not know, look them up.  When you do not understand a subject, research it.   There is information on the Internet to answer questions on almost any subject.

When you are among people who are talking about things you do not know, you can easily feel bored.   Your mind may wander.   Show an interest in what they are discussing and ask them to explain things to you.

Read books.  I recently saw an article that libraries are disappearing.  I have seen bookstores close.  However, I have a library card and I check out books.  I buy books.  I trade books with friends and family.  Internet tablets are great, but they are not great everywhere.

Some books are great for reference material.  Other books are great for picking up new ideas.  Sometimes I may read just a few pages of a book and come across solutions or ideas that enrich my life.

Take an interest in the people you meet.  When you meet people, give them an opportunity to talk about themselves.  Ask them about their interests, their job, and their family.  Most people like to talk about things that interest them.

Don’t be afraid to show your ignorance.  If they are into fantasy football, Rotisserie League Baseball, fashion design, or some other hobby or interest, and you are unfamiliar with those subjects, ask them about their interests.   I can learn a lot more from listening than I can from speaking.

Skills development is a lifelong practice.  I want to continue to grow.  I want to stay competitive and flexible.   I want to add value to my clients and future clients.  I want to continue to bring greater value to my family and my friends.  I want to stay relevant in an ever-changing world.  To do those things, I have to continue to develop skills to match and exceed the needs of the people I wish to help.   From continual skills development, I have more fun, I feel more secure, and my career grows from the new skills I develop.

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