creative maverick

Daniel Pink is definitely a Creative Maverick. His new book “The adventures of Johnny Bunko (the last career guide you’ll ever need)” is a careers book in the form of a Manga (Japanese comic) novel.

In it, he covers “6 career secrets no one ever told you”. A couple of these really struck me. The first is “There is no plan”.

He explains that there’s no point picking some goal in the distance and planning your way there - because life never turns out the way you expect it to anyway. And yet you don’t want to wander aimlessly. So what do you do?

Here’s the explanation as given in the book by a magical pixie called Diana (as I say, it’s not your average careers book):

“You can make career decisions for two different types of reasons. You can do something for instrumental reasons - because you think it’s going to lead to something else, regardless of whether you enjoy it or it’s worthwhile…

OR you can do something for fundamental reasons - because you think it’s inherently valuable, regardless of what it may or may not lead to.

The dirty little secret is that instrumental reasons usually don’t work… you end up stuck.

The most successful people - not all of the time but most of the time - make decisions for fundamental reasons. They take a job or join a company because it will let them do interesting work in a cool place - even if they don’t know exactly where it will lead.

They’re not fools [they don't just follow any whim], they’re enlightened pragmatists.”

The disctinction here is between picking a point in the distance and plotting the most sensible way to get there, and just choosing the next project because you really want to pursue it for its own merits - even if you can’t see how it might fit with your “career” or how it will lead to great riches.

As my friend Mark said when he caught me reading a careers books “Why do you bother? Don’t worry about a ‘career’, just pick an interesting project and go do it. And when you’ve done that one, see where it’s landed you and pick the next one”. This process has led to him becoming an expert in his field (teaching English as a foreign language) and travelling all over the world with his work. He’s currently in Vietnam setting up his own English school.

Two of my best career moves were for fundamental reasons and turned out very well. I joined a tiny software startup of 3 people who went on to become one of the best known names in broadcast technology, installing systems all over the world to control entire TV stations.

Then I moved to a small startup in London making special effects software. The week I joined they were bought by Avid Technology, also one of the biggest names in the industry. This led to me having an extremely impressive CV (résumé) entirely by accident.

So was I just lucky? Perhaps not. Even if I couldn’t describe my criteria at the time, I was joining early stage companies with smart people doing very original work. And smart people doing very original work often go on to become industry-leading companies.

When later I joined a “Big 5″ consultancy because it seemed a good career move, I gained an impressive name on my CV but I was miserable.

The Creative Maverick experiment is to make career choices for fundamental reasons - and see if this leads to better results, greater success and greater financial riches than plotting for some far-off end goal and making compromising ‘good career moves’ along the way.

Keep reading for more on how to choose the right next move…