Advances in technology, the rise of social media, and 24/7 connectivity mean all of us have to promote ourselves and take ownership of our careers in ways that previous generations wouldn’t or couldn’t have imagined. I have found this interesting set of basic ideas, I believe they are pertinent in our current macro context and the future of work. 

-Philippe.

[The following is adapted from an article by Jenna Goudreau, itself adapted from “Promote Yourself” by Dan Schawbel. Thank You Business Insider | By Jenna Goudreau on 09.03.13]

1. Your job description is just the beginning.

If you want to succeed in today’s workplace and make a name for yourself, you’ll have to do a lot more than what you got hired to do. In fact, your job description is just a scratch on the surface of what you should be doing. Always be on the lookout for new projects and collaborations with other groups, and do as much training and development as possible.

2. Your job is temporary. 

As the world changes, so does the workplace. Companies are acquiring or being acquired, merging with other companies, or crumbling. Your team could be eliminated, your position outsourced, or you might lose interest in your job altogether. 

3. You’re going to need a lot of skills you probably don’t have right now. 

A recent Department of Education study shows that companies are having trouble finding and retaining the right talent. Soft (interpersonal) skills have become more important than hard (technical) skills. It’s never been easier to acquire hard skills — and those skills will only get you so far. Companies are looking for leadership, organizational, teamwork, listening, and coaching skills. 

4. Your reputation is the single greatest asset you have. 

Titles might be good for your ego, but in the grand scheme of things what really matters is what you're known for, the projects you’re part of, how much people trust you, whom you know, who knows about you, and the aura you give off to people around you. Sure, what you do is important. But what others think you do can be just as important if not more so. If you build a strong reputation, the money and opportunities will find you. 

5. Your personal life is now public. 

The 15 seconds it takes you to tweet about how much you hate your boss or to post a pic of you passed out with a drink in your hand could ruin your career forever. Even the littlest things — how you behave, dress, your online presence, body language, and whom you associate with can help build your brand or tear it to the ground. 

6. You need to build a positive presence in new media. 

There are plenty of benefits to new media and the convergence between your personal and private lives. Your online social networks enable you to connect with people who have interests similar to yours. Your online presence can help you build your reputation, and the educational opportunities available online can help you dig deeper into the things you’re passionate about and want to become an expert in. 

7. You’ll need to work with people from different generations. 

There are now four distinct generations in the workforce: Gen Z (interns), Gen Y (employees), Gen X (managers), and Baby Boomers (executives). Each of these generations was raised in a different period of time, has a different view of the workplace, and communicates differently. By learning how to manage relationships with those in other generations, you will be more successful.

8. Your boss’s career comes first. 

If your manager is unsuccessful, his frustrations will undoubtedly rub off on you, and the chances you’ll ever get a promotion are pretty slim. But if you support your manager’s career, make his life easier, and earn his trust, he’ll take you with him as he climbs the corporate ladder — even if that means going to another company. 

9. The one with the most connections wins. 

We have moved from an information economy to a social one. It’s less about what you know (you can find out just about anything within seconds with a simple Google search), and more about whether you can work with other people to solve problems. 

10. Remember the rule of one. 

When it comes to getting a job, starting a business, finding someone to marry, or just about anything else, all it takes is one person to change your life for the better. People may be saying no all around you. But as long as one person says yes, you're on your way. 

11. You are the future. 

By 2025, 75% of the global workforce will be Gen Y. That means that even though you may be early in your career, in the not too distant future you’ll be at the forefront. Right now, you have to position yourself to take one of these major leadership roles when the workforce shifts and older generations retire.

12. Entrepreneurship is for everyone, not just business owners. 

A lot of people define "entrepreneurship" as starting a business, but in recent years the meaning has broadened to include someone who’s accountable, who’s willing to take risks, and who sells him- or herself. If you want to get ahead, start looking at your company’s management as a venture capital firm. Be persistent, sell your ideas to them, and come up with innovative solutions no one else has thought of.

13. Hours are out, accomplishments are in.  

If you want to keep your job and move up, stop thinking that you have to put in a ridiculous numbers of hours per week. Instead, realize your value, deliver on it, measure your successes, and then promote yourself. 

14. Your career is in your hands, not your employer’s.  

No matter what they say, companies are looking out for themselves. And while you should definitely try to make your company successful, you need to make sure that you’re getting something out of the deal, too. If you aren't learning and growing, you aren't benefiting anymore, and that's an issue that you will have to resolve. Don't rely on anything or anyone: Be accountable for your own career, and take charge of your own life.

The Original Article by Jenna can be found here: http://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-need-to-learn-these-14-rules-2013-9

The Most Beautiful Places on Earth by Lonely Planet. Week-End Reading: http://philippemora.us
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Have a great week-end, -Philippe.

“Own your story, and you own your life” - Talk to yourself as a friend, not an enemy. And remember, you cannot change anything unless you first see your own self as powerful enough to act. The way we talk of ourselves and to ourselves grants power – narrative power — to what happens next.

-Philippe

[Thank You HBR | by Nilofer Merchant  11.08.13]
“I am such a big failure. I can’t believe that I’ve made this mistake and it’s cost me months and months of time.  I might never recover…What an idiot to not see that one coming.” On and on, he went. In distress, my colleague was clearly suffering because of a recent fiasco.

Seeking counsel, he had come to me supposedly to problem solve. But all he could focus on was how this incident made him a failure. I got frustrated listening to him. Not at his words, but at how vicious he was being to himself. In the end, my advice was not as cogent and articulate as I had intended — I used a popular vernacular term for bovine droppings — but I stand by it.

Talking to yourself like you are worthless is not helpful. Yes, mistakes  mean you might be in hot water, or that there is a lesson to learn. But there is a huge cost to telling your story in such a limiting way. You give away your power. When you define your “I” as what I call a “weak I” you have lost your ability to effect change.

Sometimes it’s less important to know how to learn specific things, than how growth itself works. You cannot change anything unless first you believe in your ability to drive change. That’s what lets you start to engage ideas, problem solve, enlist others, and focus your energy. In other words, to have an impact, you need to think of yourself with a “strong I”, not a “weak I.”

Most of us talk to ourselves in ways we’d never talk to anyone else. More than likely, you are unkind to yourself when you’ve had a failure. You expect yourself to “get it right” — every single time. More often than not, you hold yourself responsible for the whole of the failure. You believe you should have seen it coming. As if somehow you can actually control everything. But, let me ask you – would you speak to someone else this way? Would you talk to them in an unforgiving, demanding, and invalidating way? Likely not. Were you to say it to someone else, you would almost see him or her shrivel up from the inside. A label given to another person can transform a person’s sense of self and their ability to contribute and create. So can a label you give to yourself.

This is a not about self-help, though it might help you. This is an opportunity to talk about the role of narrative power, through the form of “weak I” and “strong I,” and how it affects our entire economy.

Carmakers are developing vehicles that have an increasing ability to autonomously drive themselves, potentially reducing accidents and traffic congestion. The allure of automation for car companies is huge. In a fiercely competitive market, in which the makers of luxury cars race to indulge customers with the latest technology, it would be commercial suicide not to invest heavily in an automated future. But don’t expect self-driving taxis in Manhattan any time soon.

-Philippe.

[Thank you MIT Technology Review | By Will Knight 10.22.13]
A silver BMW 5 Series is weaving through traffic at roughly 120 kilometers per hour (75 mph) on a freeway that cuts northeast through Bavaria between Munich and Ingolstadt. I’m in the driver’s seat, watching cars and trucks pass by, but I haven’t touched the steering wheel, the brake, or the gas pedal for at least 10 minutes. The BMW approaches a truck that is moving slowly. To maintain our speed, the car activates its turn signal and begins steering to the left, toward the passing lane. Just as it does, another car swerves into the passing lane from several cars behind. The BMW quickly switches off its signal and pulls back to the center of the lane, waiting for the speeding car to pass before trying again.

Putting your life in the hands of a robot chauffeur offers an unnerving glimpse into how driving is about to be upended. The automobile, which has followed a path of steady but slow technological evolution for the past 130 years, is on course to change dramatically in the next few years, in ways that could have radical economic, environmental, and social impacts.

The first autonomous systems, which are able to control steering, braking, and accelerating, are already starting to appear in cars; these systems require drivers to keep an eye on the road and hands on the wheel. But the next generation, such as BMW’s self-driving prototype, could be available in less than a decade and free drivers to work, text, or just relax. Ford, GM, Toyota, Nissan, Volvo, and Audi have all shown off cars that can drive themselves, and they have all declared that within a decade they plan to sell some form of advanced automation—cars able to take over driving on highways or to park themselves in a garage. Google, meanwhile, is investing millions in autonomous driving software, and its driverless cars have become a familiar sight on the highways around Silicon Valley over the last several years.

The allure of automation for car companies is huge. In a fiercely competitive market, in which the makers of luxury cars race to indulge customers with the latest technology, it would be commercial suicide not to invest heavily in an automated future. “It’s the most impressive experience we can offer,” Werner Huber, the man in charge of BMW’s autonomous driving project, told me at the company’s headquarters in Munich. He said the company aims to be “one of the first in the world” to introduce highway autonomy.

Thanks to autonomous driving, the road ahead seems likely to have fewer traffic accidents and less congestion and pollution. Data published last year by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a U.S. nonprofit funded by the auto industry, suggests that partly autonomous features are already helping to reduce crashes. Its figures, collected from U.S. auto insurers, show that cars with forward collision warning systems, which either warn the driver about an impending crash or apply the brakes automatically, are involved in far fewer crashes than cars without them.

More comprehensive autonomy could reduce traffic accidents further still. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that more than 90 percent of road crashes involve human error, a figure that has led some experts to predict that autonomous driving will reduce the number of accidents on the road by a similar percentage. Assuming the technology becomes ubiquitous and does have such an effect, the benefits to society will be huge. Almost 33,000 people die on the roads in the United States each year, at a cost of $300 billion, according to the American Automobile Association. The World Health Organization estimates that worldwide over 1.2 million people die on roads every year.

Meanwhile, demonstrations conducted at the University of California, Riverside, in 1997 and experiments involving modified road vehicles conducted by Volvo and others in 2011 suggest that having vehicles travel in high-speed automated “platoons,” thereby reducing aerodynamic drag, could lower fuel consumption by 20 percent. And an engineering study published last year concluded that automation could theoretically allow nearly four times as many cars to travel on a given stretch of highway. That could save some of the 5.5 billion hours and 2.9 billion gallons of fuel that the Texas Transportation Institute says are wasted by traffic congestion each year.