Strategically Selecting Outside Activities and Boards to Enhance Your Career
I would like to start today’s column with an interesting and thought provoking perspective from a scientist on the turbulence and globalization we are currently experiencing:
“Physicists calculate that in about 100 years time we will have a planetary civilization. And that is what all the chaos is about. We are witnessing one of the great transitions in human history from a fragmented savage Type-0 to a planetary and rather civilized Type-1 civilization. It’s quite dangerous, this transition. Every single headline I see is related to the birth pangs of the birth of a Type-1 civilization.” - Scientist Michio Kaku, BBC Interview
From this perspective, what we are going through is not a small patch of whitewater we’re temporarily churning through with smooth sailing ahead. Instead it is constant whitewater for the duration of all of our lives. As Thomas Friedlander pointed out in “The World is Flat,” three billion new players have entered the capitalist marketplace, now that Eastern Europe, Russia, India and China, to name a few, have jumped on the playing field. Add to that that now almost all the world’s information is available to nearly everyone – at least in developed countries – how do we differentiate ourselves and keep our own value up and rewarded? As a CEO of a major European multinational once said, “We’ve grown addicted to our high salaries, and now we’re going to have to earn them.”
Why bring that up here, now, in a discussion about corporate citizenship? Because these times demand that we are knowledgeable, flexible and interconnected in order to stay afloat. That means aggressive learning on all dimensions to continually build our intellectual and social capital – to be valued, one must be valuable, afterall – and corporate citizenship is one way to do so. As Lou Gerstner, former head of IBM, once said: “No more prizes for predicting rain. Prizes only for building arks.”
What do I mean then by corporate citizenship, and how can it be an ‘ark’ to ensure our survival? I am not referring to professional ethics or internal corporate performance. I am referring to the work so many of us do outside our companies – with non-profits or industry associations, for example – to make the world a better place.
My premise is that we can be both strategic and passionate about the choices we make in this arena. The need for our time and talent is endless – how do you choose? What we’re going to talk about is how to select the right ‘extra-curriculars’ to improve your skills, visibility, brand and network.
Let me start with some questions that focus on skills development within the context of serving your passion and your career:
- How do you determine what community organizations to get involved in? What are your criteria for decision making? What should they be?
- Do you understand what skills and brand you need to develop, and how you could develop them via community involvement?
- How do you align your community development activities with your career long term?
- How do you communicate and leverage your community involvement professionally?
So let’s take another question set or quiz to check ourselves here. This one I have used before, and is from Dr. Wayne Baker’s book, “Achieving Success Through Social Capital”
- Do most of your friends know each other?
- What are your affiliations and involvement (temple, soccer, book club, etc.)?
- Who do you:
- Discuss important matters with?
- Have work related discussions with?
- Need support from?
- Socialize with?
- Is there diversity in gender, age, experience abroad, education and ethnicity?
In the next column, we’ll talk about another dimension to consider in addition to your internal considerations of strategic fit, diversity and passion. This will be to look externally at the organization you are considering joining, and if the role is well defined and the organization well run.