Why CKN should exist

CKN is my latest entrepreneurial venture, this time with my brother Joe as business partner. In the following text, I try to explain -- in a very messy but hopefully interesting way -- why CKN should exist.

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The basic premise of CKN (www.careerknowledge.net) is that every person is in charge of his/her career and economic life. Peter Drucker has been writing this for the last decade. He says that "self-management" will be the greatest challenge of professionals in the knowledge economy.

Self-management is difficult for many reasons, and not necessarily because people can't control or discipline themselves.

First of all, there's lack of self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is not what people think it is. True self-knowledge is not about knowing what colors you like, or places you enjoy visiting, or people you like to hang out with. This is the easy sort of self-knowledge, the kind that any teenager has.

The difficult self-knowledge is lodged in our subconscious, which is a very dark place, a very subjective and personal space. For most people, it's totally unfamiliar territory, often dating back to their childhood.

Oftentimes, we fear going to that place, because it contains embarrassing or humiliating events, memories, etc. This is why psychoanalysis has become famous: its chief methodology is the guided exploration of the biographical past, often during childhood, where a key event has disproportionately shaped our values, views or philosophy about life. In the worst-case scenario, such a past event might even have created a huge fear which causes people to be paralyzed in the present, without knowing WHY they are paralyzed.

The psychiatrist's job, then, is to help people find that place, and get them to acknowledge that THAT event is the key, and should therefore be reinterpreted in the present in order to eliminate the CAUSE of disorders, traumas, fears, doubts, etc.

What does psychoanalysis have to do with career management and CKN?

In August 2005, I created a framework for helping people explore their subjective side (passion and values) as well as their objective side (talent, skills, world's needs, etc.).

Called the Ideal Career Framework (ICF), this self-exploration tool was designed to help people verbalize (in the presence of loved ones or trusted career collaborators) the hidden dimensions of who they are.

Harvard Business Review this year has published an article on the Inner Work Life, pointing to the fact that a person's emotional life and sense of meaning (derived from his representational apparatus) can have an impact on productivity and motivation. This expert article published in a prestigious business magazine officially validates the ICF in corporate boardrooms. Yay!

Only by knowing who they ARE, can people begin to ACT effectively in order to BENEFIT materially.

In other words, BE, then DO, and then HAVE.

(Note: Prior to 1820, people could not improve their lot in life, even if they worked hard. Capitalism did not exist, so a boy could never hope to do better than his father. If the father was a farmer, the boy would become a farmer.

On the other hand, if the father was wealthy, the boy would also be. In short, depending on whether you were born in the "right" family, you either "had it" or "will never have it." This was the "Have or Not" era.

After 1820, sons did better than their fathers, generation after generation, since capitalism unleashed torrents of prosperity for all those who were willing to work hard, save and build capital to increase their wealth -- this was the "Do so you have Have" era.

We have now arrived at a stage in history where "working hard" every day, five days a week, for 40+ years, in the hope of eventually retiring, NO LONGER MAKES SENSE. 9/11, worldwide disasters, etc. have increased in people the awareness that life is short and can end ANY TIME. People realize that life should be lived NOW, HERE. Delaying life until 65 years of age no longer seems rational, let alone moral. People want to BE. Now and here. This is the Be, Do and Have era.)

But to "be" is hard, because it requires self-knowledge, and most of all, the courage to accept who we truly are. It takes courage because society will often OPPOSE vigorously the emergence of individuality (society wants everybody to follow the rules; no exception, please!). Indeed, the industrial revolution has created a "mass" society where everybody is treated the same (for efficiency purposes).

The Japanese proverb captures this philosophy: The nail that stands out will be hammered down.

Furthermore, the industrial revolution was focused on machines (starting with the steam engine) and did not require originality from people. Routines and procedures were in place to ensure that workers (labor) did a good job.

Workers were paid to DO, not think. (Note: IBM was and is a highly successful company whose motto for employees is "Think.")

This has created a generation of "mindless" workers who do, do, do. No original thinking is required (let alone encouraged).

Now, we are finding, especially through the book by Thomas Friedman (The World is Flat), that 3 billion people can also do, do, do. And they can do it cheaper and faster!

We have no choice, then, but to start thinking. Imagining. Creating.

But imagining and creating unique solutions and intangible value, requires a keen awareness of what makes us unique and special.

This is why ICF is so critical. It helps people to discover the "field of diamonds" deep within themselves. The new economy and the new career is no longer about competing against others, but about creating a field (of customer value) where no one can compete against you. The smart talentist/careerist thus seeks to move away from being "uniform" to becoming "unique."

Aside from the threat of job loss to emerging economic powers like China, India and Russia, there is also another sort of threat, more subtle and more difficult to tackle: our perpetual unhappiness, despite our achieving levels of material abundance unprecedented in history.

People have more, but enjoy less. We read more, but understand less. We work more, but have less wealth.

CKN seeks to help people by facilitating a return to who we truly are. CKN focuses on individuals, not on corporations. We help people connect to the experts and consultants and coaches who can help them. We summarize the world's knowledge on one single portal. We help people design and build their human capital, and even export it. We help people engage on the path of their true self, so they can have an amazing career.

In short, we empower talented people for success and happiness.

CKN also raises in people the critical awareness that as "talent", they do have power vis-a-vis their employers. The labor-management relationship may have been asymmetrical politically, because labor was easily replaced.

However, talent is NOT easily replaced. This means talent-management relationships will be a constant negotiation, and has a greater chance of being win-win. (Note: by enabling talents of the world to unite and collaborate via various CKN forums and directories, CKN will concentrate political power to effectively negotiate with corporate employers).

More and more, managers are losing power to people in many spheres of human activity:

- Managerial capitalism, based on enterprise logic, will soon give way to "distributed capitalism" (where customers have a voice and a choice) -- See the book The Support Economy, by Shoshana Zuboff. (www.thesupporteconomy.com).

- Managers' capitalism is giving way (or must give way) to owners' capitalism, as John Bogle wrote forcefully in his book The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism, and as Don Tapscott has written indirectly about in his book The Naked Corporation.

- Managers' capitalism, at the workplace, will soon give way to Talents' Capitalism, where talented workers have more voice and power in designing win-win employment conditions (see writings of Bill Jensen (www.work2.com), Stan Davis, Charles Handy, Peter Drucker and Edward de Bono).

The above trends, described lucidly by exceptionally smart people, point to a major shift in power from managers to co-creating customers, talented workers and capital owners.

Women customers, in particular, are a rapidly growing market and will have the potential of significantly changing the way businesses do business. See Trendsight.com. Women do have a voice, but as a collective entity, do not yet know how to organize that voice into political power in order to make demands of management. A certain Thatcherization (Margaret Thatcher) of female leadership might be needed.

Talented workers must know more about ICF in order to craft win-win arrangements with employers. Note: A job is no longer a job, but merely "training ground" or a "career development platform". In short, just as companies have been treating people as "human resources," people will now treat companies are "career resources". Employers will wage the war for talent on the basis of EVPs (employee value proposition). EVP should be replaced by TVP (talent value proposition). The main strategic question that talented workers will ask before accepting a job offer, will be: "Mister Employer, how will working for you increase significantly my portable equity and market value every month? Please explain to me in detail, with facts and numbers to back up your claims, and please give me the phone numbers of your current employees so I can check for myself. I do not wish to talk to your PR person or your HR director."

Capital owners must know more about BMW (www.businessmodelworkout.blogspot.com) in order to understand and monitor closely their portfolio investments. Many people rely on financial intermediaries to manage their portfolio, and this is a mistake. Buffett has often said that investors should own a business (that is, totally understand it) and not just legally own a piece of paper.

Note: Kiyosaki talks about financial education, but he's referring to the financial side of the economy, whereas BMW refers to the productive side, where value is created entrepreneurially and through sound management systems.

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Although the above trends point to the inevitable flowing of bargaining power to individuals, there is one great obstacle: information overload.

Knowledge is becoming "secret" because it is increasingly buried under piles of useless, irrelevant and sensationalistic information bombarding people through a proliferation of new media platforms and devices.

In fact, "junk information overload" is a more accurate description of the overwhelming avalanche of (irrelevant and useless) information that "assaults" people on a daily basis.

If knowledge is power, then people receive very little knowledge every. They learn VERY LITTLE every day.

They may watch CNN, the six o' clock news, tons of websites, etc. but they still get close to ZERO knowledge every day.

The proof is that most people do not take notes. If people received valuable knowledge from society and the media, they WOULD take notes, and be able to show those notes (like students in a university classroom).

Another proof is that people's performance every week doesn't change much, therefore no knowledge has been transferred (knowledge being defined as "the capacity for effective action").

It is ironic that Tim Sanders, former Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo!, wrote a book (Love is the Killer App) where he forcefully advises people to read books and ignore TV and magazines and, presumably, the Web, including Yahoo). He says only books contain knowledge. It's ironic because he formerly worked for Yahoo!, which doesn't offer knowledge (with the exception of its Answer Platform).

So now, we come to the main REASON why CKN should exist and should be supported by people who wish to succeed and thrive in the New Economy.

PROBLEM: We have arrived at a point of great turbulence in history, where mega trends and changes bring threats and opportunities for the economic security of people. To avoid the threats and maximize the opportunities, people need KNOWLEDGE in order to EMPOWER themselves at work and, in the long term, ensure their economic survival, prosperity and security.

SOLUTION: CKN offers a one-stop portal where talented people can find the knowledge they need, in order to increase their personal power and professional ability to contribute to the bottom line (thereby increasing their bargaining power vis a vis employers as well as increasing their portable equity and market value, should they wish to jump ship). CKN only requires 20 minutes of people's time every day. The reward is perpetual empowerment and greater economic security, not only for professionals but also for business owners since they can count on CKN to continually empower their workers to be more effective and productive!

My intellectual heroes

Dr Edward de Bono was undoubtedly the first author that I truly consider to be my intellectual teacher and master.

I've never met him, but his books I have studied quite religiously, with almost erotic zeal.

I discovered his book The Mechanism of Mind, which blew my mind away. The mysterious thing is that at the time, I was completely confused about life, since I had just dropped out of McGill University. I was a lost soul searching for answers. Somehow, Dr de Bono's masterful understanding of the human mind gave me many of the answers I was looking for.

Another intellectual whom I admire greatly is Hernando de Soto, founder and president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Peru. His book The Mystery of Capital is endlessly fascinating and his work in developing countries have made him a hero to poor people trying to find a better path through life.

Dr de Bono and Mr. de Soto are what I call "integral and practical intellectuals." That is, they not only create powerful theoretical frameworks to guide one's thinking, but also teach people how to implement their ideas and theories in real life (hence, "integral" and "practical").