While I haven't yet read Daniel Pink's -- the other dp -- latest literary offering, "To Sell Is Human" I can glean from the chapter titles -- and chapter one in particular -- that he believes a) we're all in the business of selling ourselves and/or our ideas and b) we unknowingly devote a good portion of time doing so.
The first chapter is described as follows:
Over at Google, there are 'rumours' the oft described "20 percent time" of their engineers is being thrown to the bin. That particular morsel of free time was given to engineers so they could create and/or work on whatever they thought might be useful, cool, creative ... even funky. Heck, they brought us AdSense. Ok, bad example, but you like your Gmail account, right? Between Google's 20 percent time concept, Pink's new book and my own mental musings, I've stumbled across a theory I'd like to test. I've never personally worked on my own, as a freelancer or as 'my own boss'. I've always worked for 'the organization', be it at a high school, a higher education institution or for the past 12 years in the corporate jungle. What I've begun to realize (and observe) however in my time in 'the organization' is that employees need to be thinking of their own time management planning in a different light. I believe that in order to be successful in the organization we need to do a much better job of selling, communicating, pitching, positioning and depicting our ideas -- and to a degree ourselves -- inside the organization itself. The problem we all face, however, is time itself. Ever hear of the term, "we need to do more with less"? Employees may in fact need to devote 20 percent of their time to the activity of selling themselves and communicating their ideas to not only be successful but to feel good about themselves, their roles, their career and their objectives.We're All in Sales Now - Some 1 in 9 workers still earn a living in traditional sales. The other 8 in 9 are engaged in "non-sales selling." We devote upward of 40 percent of our time on the job to moving others.
Over at Hacker News, my thoughts seemed to magically converge when surfing the ole internet in a quest to validate my assumptions. On one hand there was debate amongst anonymous Google engineers who chimed in on the discussion forum regarding Google's 20 percent time concept. On the other, surreptitious and unknowing discussion of Pink's new thesis/book. One of the comments from an engineer suggested the following:
Take aside the actual point to this engineer's post -- which of course has more to do with the Jack Welch inspired stack ranking model of performance management, which I'll deal with at another point in time in this space -- and you will see a hint of what I'm trying to point out.However, I would agree that it <Google's 20 percent time> is "as good as dead". What killed 20% time? Stack ranking.
Google's perf management is basically an elaborate game where using 20% time is a losing move. In my time there, this has become markedly more the case. I have done many engineering/coding 20% projects and other non-engineering projects, with probably 20-40% producing "real" results (which over 7 years I think has been more than worth it for the company). But these projects are generally not rewarded. Part of the problem is that you actually need 40% time now at Google -- 20% to do stuff, then 20% to tell everyone what you did (sell it).
I am a bit disappointed that relatively few of my peers will consciously make the tradeoff of accepting a slower promotion rate in return for learning new things. Promotion optimizes for depth and not breadth. Breadth -- connecting disparate ideas -- is almost invariably what's needed for groundbreaking innovation.
I've posted it again above from the original comment and made it both bold and green for super cool special effects to solidify my point. If that doesn't work, I swear I'll electronically mail you a dancing baby animated gif once a day until further notice. As I only personally know an existence within 'the organization', I can assure you this engineer is emoting candidly about the nuances of the organization itself. It is happening to you. It is happening to me. It happens to everyone in 'the organization'. It takes time to make change and it takes an inordinate amount of time to sell and communicate your own ideas for change. As a result, perhaps we all should be sorting through our own time management planning mechanisms and coming up with ways in which to devote 20 percent of our time to this necessary action. I'll keep an eye out for an AdSense advertisement that might help us both. I'll read Pink's new book as well, where he probably has already solved my corporate anthropology nightmare.Part of the problem is that you actually need 40% time now at Google -- 20% to do stuff, then 20% to tell everyone what you did (sell it).
