You should also think about how you could connect your network to your professional and personal goals. Joe, the investment banker, identified counterparts in the Asian and European operations of his company who had relationships with the clients he was focused on and then scheduled regular calls with them to coordinate efforts.
One of the big challenges for Paul, the consumer products executive, was managing a new facility and line of innovation in China. Write down three business results you hope to achieve in the next year, and then list people who could help you with them. Are there people you rely on in one sphere, such as political support, that you could also use to fill a need in another, such as personal development?
Could you get more out of some relationships if you put more energy into them? Our research shows, for instance, that high performers at all levels tend to use their information contacts to gain other benefits, such as new ideas. Reciprocal relationships also tend to be more fruitful; the most successful leaders always look for ways to give more to their contacts. Alan, a top executive at a global insurance company, realized that although he had a good network, he was still making decisions in relative isolation.
So he started inviting his more-junior contacts, who were informal opinion leaders in his company, to lunch and asking them open-ended questions. I was able to step in and help make things happen. A network constructed using this four-point model will build on itself over time. In due course, it will ensure that the best opportunities, ideas, and talent come your way. You have 1 free article s left this month. You are reading your last free article for this month.
Subscribe for unlimited access. Create an account to read 2 more. Career planning. Successful executives connect with select people and get more out of them. Listen to an interview with Rob Cross. Download this podcast. The Wrong Relationships The disconnected expert sticks with people who keep him focused on safe, existing competencies, rather than those who push him to build new skills. The Wrong Behavior The superficial networker engages in surface-level interaction with as many people as possible, mistakenly believing that a bigger network is a better one.
C and R. Read more on Career planning or related topics Managing yourself and Professional networks. Rob Cross is the Edward A. And when work is divided into tiny tasks, it may become dull and meaningless, perhaps even producing ill psychological effects on the people who perform it.
Two other potential problems are the growing amount of work done on spec that is, with no guarantee of payment and the increased surveillance of electronically connected workers. Neither is unique to hyperspecialization: Spec work has long been prevalent in fields like graphic design and writing, and close surveillance of workers is still common in factories. And other intermediaries have pushed electronic surveillance to a degree many find ominous.
Finally, over the long term hyperspecialization may eliminate certain kinds of jobs, just as the Industrial Revolution eliminated some traditional crafts. During the industrial era, social mechanisms eventually emerged to manage employment arrangements, but the transition was wrenching. A move into the age of hyperspecialization could prove equally so. How might we address some of the less attractive aspects of hyperspecialization? Currently, a patchwork of regulations, mostly designed for the industrial era, govern work—including hyperspecialized work.
Each country or region has its own rules. If roughly comparable rules were adopted across national boundaries, through either agreed-on company standards or new government regulations, egregious exploitation or deception could be reduced, along with uncertainty for both companies and workers.
The goal would be to create the equivalent of a free-trade zone in which workers were protected, companies got the work they needed, and governments collected the appropriate taxes.
Establishing global rules and practices to govern hyperspecialization would be a big challenge. On the other hand, some developing economies may well resist any rules or standards, fearing they would curb growth.
It might be possible to reframe knowledge work undertaken on the web as a form of international trade. Thus global rules for the exchange of knowledge work might create win-win outcomes—much as the loosening of trade restrictions, first under GATT and then under the WTO, has enabled a massive expansion of trade in goods since World War II. Mechanisms are needed for hyperspecialized workers to develop skills over time and to transfer their work records from one intermediary to another.
Those who operate online from home may also want to connect with peers to share war stories or simply to vent. In prior writings we have called for the rise of a new form of guilds to provide the dispersed digital 21st-century workforce with professional development and a sense of community.
The New York—based Freelancers Union and other independent-worker organizations have emerged to help fill this void; hyperspecialization intermediaries could do so as well. Medical specialists, for instance, often focus on very narrow aspects of keeping people healthy but continue to find their work rewarding. And unlike specialized workers in a factory, who do the same tasks all day, digital hyperspecialists can easily construct personal portfolios of tasks.
An engineer, for instance, might spend part of a day working on a difficult challenge for InnoCentive and then relax by doing some less demanding work on Mechanical Turk. No discussion of the future of knowledge work should neglect to mention artificial intelligence, whereby computers take over tasks formerly performed by people. One recent example is a new generation of software tools that analyze massive amounts of text. Used during the discovery phase of lawsuits, this software can accomplish what young associates at law firms once did by laboriously reading box after box of documents.
In the future some first-generation hyperspecialization initiatives will become viable candidates for pure automation. In many other areas artificial intelligence will enable or augment hyperspecialization, by automating some tasks or managing portions of the process.
Given the march of technology, firms that want to take advantage of hyperspecialization should continually monitor the potential for fully automating certain knowledge work. Hyperspecialization is the human cousin of the information technology tools that have become available to businesses over the past few decades.
In the case of computer technologies, the simple act of buying and deploying them was not enough: Companies that used these new tools wisely, in concert with organizational innovations and people practices, gained an edge. Hyperspecialization presents a similar opportunity. How companies use it will determine which ones achieve competitive advantage.
Many first-generation experiments with hyperspecialization have relied on intermediaries like Mechanical Turk and TopCoder. But as it becomes more prevalent, enterprises will most likely try using it to organize their internal activities as well. We envision the emergence of a rich ecosystem—for-profit firms, government agencies from many nations, and nonprofits, all governed by global rules and standards—to support hyperspecialization.
You have 1 free article s left this month. You are reading your last free article for this month. Subscribe for unlimited access. Create an account to read 2 more. Personal productivity. Malone, Robert Laubacher, and Tammy Johns. Reprint: RC Since , when Adam Smith described how the division of labor could spur economic progress, work has increasingly been broken into ever smaller tasks performed by ever more specialized workers. The Idea in Brief As labor becomes more knowledge based and communications technology advances, the division of labor accelerates.
Workers can choose their hours and tasks. Companies can rapidly ramp capacity up and down. Jobs can be refined to off-load lower-skilled tasks.
Traditional job-market barriers can be jumped. Workers in developing countries get virtual mobility. Tasks may be used for creating spam or astroturfing. Work can become dull and meaningless. More work may be done with no guarantee of payment. Workers may be subjected to more electronic surveillance. Read more on Personal productivity or related topics Managing people , Process management , Operations strategy and International business.
Thomas W. During the summer months, thousands of hopefuls line the path leading to his door, seeking his wisdom. From bombastic, wealthy nobles intent on cheating their way to the top to drunkards who gradually build the physical and mental strength they need to quit their addiction, The Man on the Mountaintop is a rousing tale full of humour, wit and life lessons.
By: Susan Trott , and others. Overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work you need to accomplish? Being pulled in different directions by competing priorities? Getting Work Done runs you through the basics of being more productive at work. Maya loves to cook with her grandmother - her Halmunee - to connect with the rich family history associated with each dish, a history Maya's mom would prefer stayed in the past.
While cooking with Halmunee, something remarkable happens - the food creates such a strong memory that Maya and Halmunee are transported back in time through the memory itself. Halmunee explains that the women in her family have the gift of time travel through food and Maya can do it too, if she practices.
By: Flora Ahn. Try to imagine a leader without this expertise doing your job. By: Wanda T. Whether you're dealing with a problem employee or praising the good work of a colleague, you need to communicate in a way that promotes positive change in others. Giving Effective Feedback quickly walks you through the basics of delivering feedback that gets results. When half your galaxy is unexpectedly sucked into a black hole - when a hitherto-unknown species of space aliens lays waste to your home planet - when disaster rears its ugly head or heads - who can you call for faster-than-light appraisals and best-in-the-multiverse customer service?
In this latest chapter of his interstellar exploits, Tom is about to deliver a crushing performance evaluation to Jimmy the Intern when the unimaginable happens: The beloved Wendell the Manatee has been kidnapped! By: Larry Correia. Feeling stressed about your upcoming presentation? The key is to define what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.
Christensen, which explains how we can all think more purposefully about the balance between our professional and personal priorities. Just a few weeks later, the economy went into a tailspin. The students seem highly aware of how the world has changed as the sampling of views in this article shows. The students wanted to know how to apply them to their personal lives. He shared with them a set of guidelines that have helped him find meaning in his own life. And so we asked him to share them with the readers of HBR.
He had read one of my early papers about disruptive technology, and he asked if I could talk to his direct reports and explain my research and what it implied for Intel. We have only 10 minutes for you. Tell us what your model of disruption means for Intel.
Just tell us what it means for Intel. I insisted that I needed 10 more minutes to describe how the process of disruption had worked its way through a very different industry, steel, so that he and his team could understand how disruption worked.
I told the story of how Nucor and other steel minimills had begun by attacking the lowest end of the market—steel reinforcing bars, or rebar—and later moved up toward the high end, undercutting the traditional steel mills. But instead of telling him what to think, I taught him how to think—and then he reached what I felt was the correct decision on his own. That experience had a profound influence on me.
When people ask what I think they should do, I rarely answer their question directly. Instead, I run the question aloud through one of my models. My class at HBS is structured to help my students understand what good management theory is and how it is built. In each session we look at one company through the lenses of those theories—using them to explain how the company got into its situation and to examine what managerial actions will yield the needed results.
Second, how can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness? Two of the 32 people in my Rhodes scholar class spent time in jail.
These were good guys—but something in their lives sent them off in the wrong direction. As the students discuss the answers to these questions, I open my own life to them as a case study of sorts, to illustrate how they can use the theories from our course to guide their life decisions.
I tell the students about a vision of sorts I had while I was running the company I founded before becoming an academic. Then I pictured her driving home to her family 10 hours later, feeling unappreciated, frustrated, underutilized, and demeaned.
I imagined how profoundly her lowered self-esteem affected the way she interacted with her children. The vision in my mind then fast-forwarded to another day, when she drove home with greater self-esteem—feeling that she had learned a lot, been recognized for achieving valuable things, and played a significant role in the success of some important initiatives.
I then imagined how positively that affected her as a spouse and a parent. No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team.
More and more MBA students come to school thinking that a career in business means buying, selling, and investing in companies. A theory that is helpful in answering the second question—How can I ensure that my relationship with my family proves to be an enduring source of happiness?
I can guarantee you that not a single one of them graduated with the deliberate strategy of getting divorced and raising children who would become estranged from them. And yet a shocking number of them implemented that strategy. The reason?
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