-
[Warning: This post contains Zs. Yes, I’m an American and therefore not a native speaker of English.]
A question for the community. The first step on the way to a portfolio career is to define monetizable skills, and we’re urged to be as specific as possible (not lawyer but drone lawyer). However, since it’s all about portfolio, is it sensible to have two (or several) skills (and websites, and social media efforts, and etc.)?
In my case, my expertise, and most of my work in the last three years, has been at the intersection of customer experience (CX) and data privacy (GDPR, CCPA) — helping marketers and CX teams understand the challenges and the opportunities of the new ”beg data” environment.
In parallel, my extremely nascent side gig addresses broader ”strategy” issues — in particular what Clayton Christensen called ”understanding the problem.” If a team (say marketers, but it applies across the organization) does not correctly understand the problem they are trying to solve (say customer journey management) their efforts will be inefficient if not entirely futile. This wasted effort is often compounded by the prevailing organizational conviction that the most important thing is to *get stuff done.* As an analyst, I’m expected to end every report and presentation with the key action items. As an employee, you might be required to track your activities and accomplishments. As a manager, a large part of your raison d’etre is to monitor output.
But, as ee cummings said, ”always the more beautiful answer / who asks a more beautiful question.” Just as zero is the ”meaningless” number that makes mathematics possible, so in business the best way to get stuff done is sometimes to stop doing it — and take time to reflect on the problem. I call it (perhaps too cutely) zero theory. I’ve secured the URL http://www.zerotheory.solutions. Using only my thumbs, I’ve designed a pretty bad logo in PPT.
Now, trying to get companies to hire me to help them *stop working and think* might be a fabulously awful value proposition. You could join the 16 November Catapult and tell me so. But assuming for the time being that it isn’t, my question again is whether I could/should have one proposition and website and social identity for privacy-based marketing and another for Zero Theory? Or should I focus entirely on one thing?
5 Comments-
Hi Tim,
We always have a big debate about this. While I am a massive believer is having ’ninja’ specialist skills – as that is generally what companies outsource, and it tends to pay better – you don’t need to only focus on one skill. The key is to try and have one story that stands out. Ideally this one story weaves together all your skills, but sometimes you need to drop the odd skill from your core narrative in order to not apprear flaky.
Zero Theory would definitely stand out, and I think your story is shaping up to be compelling. Do less, but do it really well. There are some risks with the name, e.g. zero might imply doing nothing, and theory might not sound too academic. Therefore you would need a great tagline or other way to tell your story to overcome this and make your (very good) point.
Does that help?
Ben
-
I think the proposition is a really interesting and compelling one. As Ben says you could offer this as a standalone service on a dedicated website and also still do the other things that people are prepared to pay you for. The key is painting a picture of what the application Zero Theory will do for a company. How will it make them better? Then they can decide whether that is worth paying for.
-
Sorry pressed return and it filed the above. Just to continue that point you must articulate the possible future for the recipient of Zero Theory. For example, pre application of ZT the organisation is being wasteful – in money, effort and allocation of resources. Post ZT the organisation is focused, efficient and, most likely, spending less money on getting to the right place. A net gain for them and a client for you. Please excuse the S’s, by the way.
Hi Tim! Thanks so much for posing this question, and you are forgiven for all the Z’s – we’re a fan of Americans here (if not American English)!
So from my perspective, a portfolio career is about having your cake and eating it – using the skills you have across connected activities – most importantly the skills you love using, and the activities and industries you love being involved with.
I can wholeheartly say that you will get the bottom of this during Catapult, but also to say that it sounds like you are very much heading in the right direction. We propose positioning yourself as an expert but you can have value propositions for each of your expertise, and you can also have separate websites or sections of one website to illustrate this to your audience(s). Your social identity is flexible, and it’s about remembering your audience. It sounds like your audience – whether for privacy-based marketing and Zero Theory is going to be similar (forgive me if I’m wrong) in the fact that often it is the marketing departments and beyond that need to become more strategic than tactical – so you represent two sides of the same coin.
This is a topic I really look forward to diving in with you on – Mitch Bradford and I had a conversation today along the lines of this very theory! And we always say that we’re learning together, going further – together. So I’m sure Ben Legg or Laura Thomas may have things to add to this – my answer is one of many voices you’ll hopefully get to hear in the community.
Lexi (disguised as the TPC team!)