Given layoffs, outsourcing, off-shoring and the destruction of the traditional job and job security, we desperately want to own our future now more than ever. How can you do that when so much seems out of your control? Control what you can: you. Make yourself as valuable as possible by actively building a strong career platform from which to operate despite job changes. Ensure that your marketable skills portfolio is current, strategic and aggressively growing in ways the market will reward through increasing pay and employment opportunities. Putting together that proactive plan for career buoyancy is what this series of articles is about.

Two building blocks of that transcendent career platform are intellectual and social capital. The futurist Gary Marx believes that “intellectual and social capital are the economic drivers of the future.” What are they, why are they so important, and how do you increase the value of yours? These are the questions we’ll seek to answer for this multi-column series of discussions.

First, a focus on intellectual capital. The term is usually applied to organizations as the knowledge, skill, and technologies used to create a competitive edge (Skandia). Intellectual capital at the organizational level encompasses the access to and use of all employees' knowledge and applied experience, and the organizational structure, technology, and professional systems. These elements translate into competitive advantage and monetary gains. For an individual, I define it as the knowledge and experience a person builds that gives them competitive advantage and monetary gain. And what are those skills for you now, and what should they be going forward?

Let’s first look at the dangerous path of assuming rising value, and resultant vulnerability. As a consultant, I have seen people who claim with pride that they have been in a job for 20 years, but don’t realize it has been the same year 20 times. If they ever had to leave the company, they would find their external value has most likely declined.
During the layoffs of the early 1990’s, IBM asked everyone to put their resumes on-line. This had a catalyzing effect on many levels. One is that it forced employees to realize that they had nothing new to add for years of same service work. The market would not reward them the way IBM paternalistically had. They had to face their vulnerability. Too often people get in a groove that becomes a rut, and then, if they aren’t careful, it becomes a grave.

Unfortunately and surprisingly, this confirms what studies have shown: that as a person’s expertise grows, the less motivated they are to learn. And yet scholars consistently point out “motivation to learn” as a key leadership skill. Why does this gap exist? How does this on-the-job fossilization occur? Clearly this points to an opportunity for those that do proactively grow their skills and have more opportunities than those that do not.

For example, as consultants that are rewarded to know what is valued in the marketplace, we actively work to understand what it is now and how it is changing. We have, for example, seen a shift from cost reduction engagements (such as business process improvement work) to business expansion projects (new product and market expansion work). We would be interested in your feedback regarding the skills that you see the market needing more of in the immediate future. Please send an email to mcook@ageos1.com, and we’ll include it in future columns.

What steps should you take now? How do you create a strategy to build your intellectual capital? When our company does strategic planning with our clients, there are three questions to be answered that fit well at a personal strategic planning level as well:

1. Where am I today?
2. Where do I want to be tomorrow?
3. How do I get there?