Purple Cow and Your Career Success

More on Seth Godin's books.

SG is the author of Purple Cow and other marketing books.

Interestingly, I first came across the Purple Cow back in 2006, when I hadn't even heard of SG. I was researching how to give effective presentations, and found an online article with a strange title: "Embrace The Purple Cow". I had never heard of SG or Purple Cow, and the significance of that title completely slipped me.

Funny how seemingly random events come together when you're ripe for a new idea in your life.

A few months back, I received an email invite from the professional networking association I used to attend. The invite was for a talk about business success and... the Purple Cow.

So, what or who is a Purple Cow, and what's the hype about?

According to the marketing blurb on the book -

"You're either a Purple Cow or you're not. You're either remarkable or invisible...

Purple Cow describes something phenomenal, something counterintuitive and exciting and flat out unbelievable.

Every day, consumers come face to face with a lot of boring stuff-a lot of brown cows-but you can bet they won't forget a Purple Cow.

And it's not a marketing function that you can slap on to your product or service. Purple Cow is inherent. It's built right in, or it's not there. Period.

In Purple Cow, Seth Godin urges you to put a Purple Cow into everything you build, and everything you do, to create something truly noticeable.

It's a manifesto for marketers who want to help create products that are worth marketing in the first place."

Here's SG's advice on how you can use the Purple Cow to find your dream job:

#1 You can't be Purple at the last minute. You need to be Purple before you start looking for a job. That means doing a remarkable job at work (hence the amazing referrals you'll get for internal jobs) and with clients (hence the unsolicited job offers). People who are remarkable in the way they deal with customers and clients rarely find themselves unemployed for long.

#2 Fight the temptation to print 1,000 resumes and to submit yourself to the cattle call that is the typical job search. This won't work. You'll get an average job if you do that. Instead, focus on the people who are searching for a truly special hire. If you're that person, it'll happen. What usually occurs though, is that average people are pretty desperate and try to persuade the hiring person that they are in fact remarkable. They end up not getting the job because their references belie their assertion.

So...

• Be remarkable
• Build a network of people who truly want to hear from you

...and you'll find the job you seek.

Serena Recommends: MindTools.com

I've subscribed to MindTools' newsletter for more than a year now.

The articles are excellent and I always learn something new.

You get tips and advice on:

• time management
• stress management
• communication skills
• leadership skills
• how to improve your memory
• project planning
• decision making
• problem solving

What's great is that the site caters not just to employees, but to everyone who is involved with an organization. So you could be an owner, worker, manager or HR practitioner, and you'll find something you can apply right away to improve your personal effectiveness.

If you mouse over Decision Making, for instance, you see these subtopics:

Pareto Analysis

Paired Comparison

Grid Analysis

Decision Trees

Force Field Analysis

Six Thinking Hats

Cost/Benefit Analysis

Wow.

I like the site's simple, uncluttered layout. It hints of professionalism, just what you and I would aspire to demonstrate in the workplace.

No wonder it's "The Internet's most visited career training site".

Wish I'd had access to such info when I was an employee!

Finding Your Allies: Building Strong and Supportive Relationships at Work

From MindTools.com

"A problem shared is a problem halved", as the old saying goes, and it's true in business as well.

When it comes to working your way through the challenges that you face every day, it's a great help to be able to draw on a network of supportive individuals that you can work with to find a solution.

Allies are the people who give you backing, assistance, advice, information, protection, and even friendship. They are your support base. With strong, mutually beneficial relationships with your allies, you can survive and thrive in the corporate arena, and you can get things done quicker, and more smoothly.

Working together with allies simply helps you and them achieve more. (Here, we're using the word "ally" in it's positive sense - we're not implying that you're trying to circumvent proper channels, engage in politics or game-play, or create any kind of "us and them" culture. It is clearly wrong to behave in this way.)

Anyone and everyone who can help you achieve your objectives is a potential ally.

Some are natural: These are people who share a common interest with you. The colleague who's been around for years and can offer an invaluable voice of experience, the team member who is always happy to be a sounding board for your ideas, or the vendor who is ready to accept seemingly-impossible deadlines; these people are your natural allies.

But you can find allies in unexpected places too.

Alex in finance, who pulls together an extra report on your projects finances; Claire, the secretary, who tells you when the boss is in a good mood; or Simon, your ex-department head who is always available for advice. They too are important allies.

Allies can help you directly and indirectly. For instance, if you're running behind schedule on a project, your subordinate can help you directly by working longer hours, while your boss can help you indirectly by delegating another part of your workload to someone else.

Building Your Personal Support Base
This is one of the reasons that it's important to be open and supportive to others in the workplace, and why it's worth making at least some of your time available to help others out when they need help. After all, if you're a positive and supportive person, many other people will be equally supportive towards you.

So who could your allies be? Just your team mates? Actually, your list of potential allies goes much further than this!

Rest of the article...

How Hard Do You Work?

I am reading books by Seth Godin.

Started with All Marketers Are Liars and am currently midway through Small Is the New Big.

It's a collection of A-Z essays on SG's thoughts on everything from AAA Autos to Zebra Cake. :-)

The one I want to share is A Brief History of Hard Work, Adjusted For Risk.

SG's question to us: how hard do we actually work? What exactly does it mean to work hard?

Working hard doesn't mean sitting at a desk for long hours or being always connected with your BlackBerry.

That's working long.

SG says:

"Our future in the workplace is not about time at all. The future is about work that's really and truly hard, not just time-consuming. It's about the kind of work that requires us to push ourselves, not just punch the clock. Hard work is where our future job security, our financial profit, and our future joy lie.

It's hard work to make difficult emotional decisions, such as quitting a job and setting out on your own.

It's hard work to invent a new system, service, or process that's remarkable.

It's hard work to tell your boss he's being intellectually and emotionally lazy.

It's hard work to tell senior management to abandon something that it has been doing for a long time in favour of a new and apparently risky alternative.

It's hard work to make good decisions with less than all of the data.

It's much easier to stand by and watch the company fade into oblivion.

Today, working hard is about taking apparent risk...something that the competition (and your co-workers) believe is unsafe but that you realize is in fact far more conservative than sticking with the status quo.

...many of us are choosing to take the easy way out. We're going to work for the Man, letting him do all the hard work while we put in the long hours.

Some people...are realizing that this temporary recession is the best opportunity they've ever had. They're working harder than ever - mentally - and taking all sorts of emotional and personal risks that are bound to pay off.

Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things you'd rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection.

Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, tunnel under that barrier, drive through the other barrier and after you've done that, to do it again the next day.

The riskier your co-worker's hard work appears to be, the safer it really is.

It's the people having difficult conversations, inventing remarkable products, and pushing the envelope (and perhaps, still going home at 5 pm) who are building a recession-proof future for themselves.

So tomorrow, when you go to work, really sweat. Your time is worth the effort."

PS. My good friend and ex-colleague OTL is exactly the kind of hard worker SG had in mind. A visionary, always tinkering with new ideas and new ways of doing things, always challenging the status quo and asking "Why?" and "Why not?"
OTL, you'll have job security for life. :)

PPS. If you've enjoyed this post, get more SG pearls at www.SethGodin.com.

Don't sweat the small stuff. Sweat the ones that matter. :-)

The Secret to Being Happy

If you want to be happy...

For an hour, take a nap

For a day, go fishing

For a month, get married

For a year, get an inheritance

For a lifetime, help someone.

Martin Seligman