This article is part I of the talk on multipotentiality and the transfer of skills that I gave a few months ago during Stichting Hoogbegaafd!’s (The Gifted! Foundation) Symposium in the Netherlands. I originally gave the talk in Dutch.

And I began..

My presentation will be about three things:

1. The ‘business of you’ and the importance of a vision in order to support your different pivots or business acts

2. The design mindset as a methodology to embrace multipotentiality and make it bloom

3. The transfer of skills and how you too can achieve it as well

I chose the title ‘Met vleugels kun je vliegen’ — ’With wings you can fly’ because I thought it to be a cool wordplay. I was born on Tenerife. And growing up, I had absolutely no clue what my work was going to be in the future. As in, no clue whatsoever. But training as a performing pianist from an early age — grand piano, ‘vleugel’ in Dutch, translates as ‘wing’ in English, gave me literally wings. I would be sent abroad to study with great teachers. And that, discovering the world, was definitely something I wanted to do.

That, and making my own money, I was a feminist.

See, even though I had no idea what my future work was going to be, I could definitely take my next step, traveling.

Traveling gave me energy and joy. And energy and joy are the compass of a designer when you don’t know your exact destination but yet you want to follow a direction.

That’s also the reason for the subtitle ‘building your way forward’, and not ‘solving your way forward’, because work is for us, and for more and more people in these complex times, not an ‘engineering problem’ that you solve once and forever, but a ‘wicked problem’. A problem for which you don’t know the exact outcome beforehand and one that continuously challenges you to take the next step. Careers are not ladders anymore, but jungles. Besides, no one knows today what the jobs of the future are going to be, anyway.

And there you have it. I just introduced you to two elements of the design mindset: energy and joy as a compass, and a bias to action, to taking the next step.

By the way, this presentation has two parts. Part I is about my journey from pianist to team development consultant. Part II contains concrete steps you yourself can take to give shape to new and joyful business acts or jobs.

Let me tell you about my acts!

Career Act 1: Sonsoles the Pianist.

Before becoming a team development consultant, I was a well-known pianist of contemporary music in The Netherlands. Composers wrote pieces for me, and my fellow artists and I used algorithms to both enhance the sound possibilities of our acoustic instruments and trigger visuals.

After having followed a solid academic path along Madrid, Freiburg and New York, this odd bird landed in Amsterdam to pursue the experiment: How can music be notated differently and what would that do to the collaboration with other musicians? How do I create a market for multidisciplinary contemporary productions? What happens when plugging a piano into a power socket? That explains the picture with the cables around my neck.

At the same time, I had 36 other ‘jobs’, like creating a market for those productions for which there was no clear demand and supply, being my own agent, and developing strategies to perform abroad, just to name a few of them.

Career Act 2: Sonsoles the Team Development Consultant.

I pivoted.

In the picture, I am in Berlin mentoring for the Founder Institute, where I told founders the same thing that I am telling you today, the importance of having a vision for your business for the long term.

Right here and now, I would like to make an analogy between a ‘business’ and the ‘business of you’. Today I want you to look at yourself as a business.

What you see in the picture is the vision of three well-known businesses.

And here’s the thing, Google’s doesn’t say anything about searches, Amazon’s doesn’t say anything about books, and Twitter’s doesn’t say anything about tweets.

This is long term thinking. Because you can’t let your business depend on technologies, trends, or other businesses. Why? Because those come and go, and you want to stay relevant independently from what happens around you.

Instagram started as a local social network competing with Foursquare, Flickr started as an online game, Twitter as a podcast. Thanks to their long term vision, today they are still in business. How? By pivoting to something else.

The same hard truth that applies to Instagram and the likes applies also to you as a business. You will encounter many challenges. The art is to see them as a chance to pivot instead of as an insurmountable brick wall.

Your vision is, therefore, your protection. It gives you air cover for the long term, making you flexible and nimble.

I too have a vision — to make sense out of things, especially if complex or complicated, by thinking differently and challenging the status quo.

On the left, I am playing contemporary music, also known as complex music. I also initiated and produced complex projects using algorithms to trigger visuals and soundscapes with our acoustic instruments, as I mentioned before. To add to the complexity, I had to hire personnel too, from musicians to developers to transport guys and everything in between.

On the right, you see me with a client working on a complex business and organizational problem.

If you look at the pictures, both settings look kind of similar. On the one hand, the pianist and initiator working with an ensemble; on the other, the facilitator and entrepreneur working with a team. In both cases, people everywhere who need to organize around the achievement of a goal: a performance on the stage or a performance off the stage respectively, but nevertheless a performance. An ensemble and a team are the same thing.

Having a vision is what helped me change course, be able to explain my seemingly bizarre career transition to my clients, as well as make clear to them why I could help them. The conversation was not one about pianos or teams, but about making sense out of complexity. That’s what I was selling.

This is the perfect moment to talk about multipotentiality. In a nutshell, a multipotentialite is someone with several career or business acts.

The pyramid on the left represents a business, and for today’s purpose, the ‘business of you’. The drawing on the right represents the model of the 3 levels of reality used in systems theory.

The lowest bit is the essence level, the field of possibilities. This level is multipotentiality, here everything is possible!

And that matches awesomely with the vision bit in the pyramid, which we just spoke about a few slides ago. I make sense of complex things. Here I don’t say anything about ‘pianist’ or ‘team development consultant’. That would be what I materialized when completing a successful trip to the top of the pyramid. The pyramid, just like the 3 levels of reality, is a spiral of creation.

Why do I say ‘a successful trip’? Because every time that you pass along the dreaming/strategy level (depending on which model you are looking at) you are passing the level of interaction with your environment, with the market. And at that level, you will learn something, and you will have to go down to the essence level several times to fine-tune your offering until it becomes a reality at the consensus/product level (once more, depending on what model you are looking at). Not everything that you think of at the essence level will become a product. And that’s ok, not everything HAS to become a product or a career.

Today I want you to look at yourself as an artist who goes back and forth, up and down this spiral several times to give shape to your different acts or jobs.

So, multipotentiality is in any case about a diversity of acts. What else?

Look at this beautiful drawing by Tanmay Vora based on Emilie Wapnick’s TEDTalk on multipotentiality.

Looking at myself, and starting from the bottom up, I can say that I am adaptable.

Why?

When I saw that the Arts were going to come crashing down in the Netherlands, I realized that I was dealing with a ‘gravity problem’, a fact, a situation that I could not change. So I decided to focus on what I could do. To keep it musical, I could orchestrate a transition to a different domain. I was pragmatic and agile, just like Instagram, Twitter, and Flickr. Because besides wanting to travel, there was something else I knew when growing up in Tenerife, remember? I was a feminist and wanted to make my own money, good money.

And now I would like to tell you about the other two bullet points on Tanmay Vora’s drawing: combining two or more fields and creating something new at the intersection, and the transfer of skills across domains.

How did I combine two fields to create something new?

The hexagon you see at the bottom of the slide is a graphic score. A graphic score is a serious game for modern collaboration, a one-pager resembling a business canvas used to notate music visually.

What you see on the right is me using a systemic tool with a team. I ‘drew’ a canvas using floor markers to help the team organize around the achievement of their business goal, $3 million in revenue in Q3.

So, look at this!

I effectively translated the concept of the graphic scores to systemic tools for teams. Or to quote Jeff Bezos, I used my ‘lemonade stand’ skills to open a ‘hamburger and hot dog stand’.

An ensemble and a team are the same, and so are a graphic score for ensembles and a systemic tool for teams, it’s just a different setting!

And my vision/essence? It remains the same — to make sense out of complexity.

Let me tell you how such a serious game works using this animation of Kandinsky’s Composition 8 as an example:

1. The light yellow background is the workshop space in the workplace

2. The light blue area in the middle stands for “how do we reach “$3 million in revenue in Q3”

3. The circles and triangles stand for female and male team members respectively

4. The squares stand for events that are having an impact on the team (e.g. a new competitor in the same market, import/export restrictions…)

5. The straight lines and curves tell whether there is a relationship between team members, and team members and events, and how strong the relationship is depending on the shape of the lines

In the animation all these elements stand in a certain formation, landing at the end in a different one.

With my help as a team development consultant, the relationships within a team change or become stronger to achieve that desired goal of ‘$3 million in revenue in Q3’.

I gained this experience by performing graphic scores (visually notated ensemble music) for 17 years in Amsterdam. Such a score is an iterative serious game that allows modern musicians to develop new skills in real-time while moving in space on the stage. The result after each iteration is improved collaboration skills among musician performers.

Today I use floor markers to jumpstart similar processes with my clients’ teams.

To paraphrase Paul Klee — who said: “a line is a dot that went for a walk” — a line is a sound that went for a walk. In other words, my work as a team development consultant is to get people (sounds) in motion so they strategically grow towards each other to achieve the desired business goal.

This journey from A to B is a re-alignment of existing relationships within a team in service of a goal, in the same way as with the graphic scores.

See me HERE working with a team in real-time.

Let’s say that you too want to transfer your skills.

Everything starts with awareness. Your first step is becoming conscious of your current skill set in your current domain.

I said earlier that I had 36 jobs as a ‘pianist’. A pianist is the ultimate systems thinker: knows their part, knows other ensemble players’ parts, initiates projects, networks, manages overlapping projects, etc, etc, etc.

Do you know what your current skill set is?

Only once you do, can you ask yourself — how can I transfer them?

And then you take the second step, which is communication. You need to translate your skills to the new domain using a language that makes sense to your new type of client or employer.

Let me give you a heads-up by telling you about the skills I transferred:

1. Managing emotions and stage fright became Executive Presence
2. Performing when the curtain goes up became Hitting Deadlines 100% of The Time
3. Staying calm when ensemble players create drama and leading them back to the work became Facilitative Leadership
4. The pianist knows everyone’s part and has an overview of the whole became Systems Thinker
5. Delivering high quality in spite of constantly shrinking budgets became Lean Consultant
6. Good at working with different cultures in an ensemble became Cross-Cultural Competency
7. Good at working with different generations in an ensemble became Multi-Generational Teams
8. Producing multimedia projects became Project Manager
9. Producing several overlapping multimedia projects became Program Manager
10. Connecting and creating win-wins became Entrepreneur

Then I also discovered that some skills remained the same:

1. Adviser
2. Reading the Emotional Field
3. Networker
4. Reading Financial Reports

Stay tuned for part II where I will dive deeper into the Design Mindset while giving you concrete steps you can take towards designing new business or career acts.

* * * *

Sonsoles Alonso

Misfit helping CxOs and Founders Build Highly Efficient Happy Teams in 6 Months or Less with the Right Hires. Also virtually.

sonsoles@sonsolesalonso.com

www.sonsolesalonso.com

Today’s post is about the inner work of a leader, about you being the change you want to see in your team or organization in the era of adaptability.

It is about using the wisdom of the Alexander Technique, Tao, professional athletes, and cats, so you can land on your feet and enjoy the 9 lives you will need to stay in business today.

 

Are you laughing enough? Being the change you want to see in your team

One of the threads going throughout all of the different stages of my life has been wanting to gain an awareness of how my body works, and how to use it efficiently and productively. For that reason, chiropractors, physiotherapists, orthomanual therapists, Rolfers, Tai Chi masters and all kinds of body workers around the world have been some of my best teachers throughout the years. In fact, I could speak about different world cities in terms of the body workers I have met.

The other day I paid a visit to Fernando Rosa, a physiotherapist, athlete and board member of the Skyrunning Federation (ISF). He asked me about my smile, and I said it’s not easy to smile when you are in pain.

And then, boom! He said it, just like that: you just need to laugh more! The man I was hoping would fix my cervical pain so I could laugh and smile again, was actually telling me to do the exact opposite, to laugh so my neck would get better!

It reminded me of a time when I practiced Healing Tao with a woman called Ka Wah Choy in Amsterdam, in a studio overlooking one of the many canals of the city. All of a sudden, she would start laughing, gradually making it louder and bolder, and inviting all of us to join her. It was contagious, and its effect on the room, measurable. In just a few minutes the energy of the space would have shifted and we would move on to the rest of the practice still in the same physical room but from an entirely different inner place.

I have been putting Ka Wah’s and Fernando’s advice to good use. I have made it my mission to laugh boldly and loudly as part of a daily meditation. Lately, while leading a virtual team I also prepared for it by intentionally coming from a place of joy. I observed what laughter was doing, and today, 12 weeks later, a new global business is being born.

Laughing works. It creates a connection, brings down geographical and personal barriers, and propels people into getting things done.

As a leader, ask yourself: from which inner place am I addressing my team and how is it impacting the atmosphere in the workplace? I invite you to literally do what I did next time you have a meeting with your team. And if you do, drop me a note, I would love to see what 5 minutes of laughter meditation and intentional joy did for you and your people.

 

Leadership through the eyes of Tessa Marwick, Paul Westerman, and cats

Tessa Marwick, Alexander Technique – Awareness
Using just a chair in front of a large window overlooking another of Amsterdam’s many canals, Tessa Marwick taught me how to sit and stand using my body efficiently. I had a tendency to close my eyes to focus on the movement of the body. The work would only be complete when I could sit and stand efficiently while simultaneously tracking what was happening around me. I had the job of being aware of myself, of others, and of the environment, all at the same time.

Open your eyes and become aware of what is around you! Develop an interest in what is happening outside while simultaneously moving with flow! Tessa would say.

What do you have to become aware of as a leader? Being a leader today is no easy feat. Especially if you are in charge of a dynamic, global organization. You will find yourself in need of three key traits: self-awareness, other-awareness, and systems-awareness.

Self-awareness will mean having an understanding of how your emotions and behavior impact others. Being self-aware will help you create a safe workplace for others. Other-awareness will mean having an understanding of how others’ emotions and behavior impact you. Systems-awareness will help you keep track of and leverage the power of the interaction between team, customer, users and desired business outcomes.

Paul Westerman, Tai Chi & Alexander Technique – Whatever happens, whatever you do, do so with a soft flexible neck.
I met Paul at a time when I was still a pianist and working on an incredibly difficult piano piece by composer Willem Jeths. I would tense my neck, which would make the piece even more difficult to play. My job, Paul said, was getting out of my own way, so the music could play itself.

As a leader, could you perhaps be in your own way, preventing your team from ‘playing’ itself?

Could it be your job today to get out of your own way, so the team can organize itself?

Paul finished that session by showing me a photo of a cat fall and saying: whatever you do, do so with a soft neck. Whatever happens, be present with a soft flexible neck.

So, what about those cats? How can you as a leader provide your organization with a soft neck?

 

Falling like a cat in the era of market instability

In search of Organizational Agility? Combining Lean, Systems Thinking and Design Thinking could provide you with the 9 lives a leader needs to stay in business today.

Cats have a large body surface in proportion to their weight, helping them reduce pressure to their bodies when hitting the ground. What is weighing you down, and increasing pressure to your organization when experiencing setbacks today? Are you hitting the ground with excess weight? Have you considered becoming Lean(er)?

Cats spread their legs when falling, making their surface area even larger, and slowing their fall by increasing the air’s support on their bodies. What is detrimental about falling is how rapidly a body accelerates on its way down. A cat’s long legs allow cats to slow down, which reduces the seriousness of the impact. The more you are a systems thinker, the more variables you are aware of, effectively decelerating your way into the ground. What is supporting you? And, how long are your legs? How far do your design experiments reach? Did you know you can break down a project into core assumptions, tie them into hypotheses and design experiments so you can test the riskiest ones?

Cats are equipped with an aerial righting reflex, spinning themselves around if falling incorrectly, so their feet always face down when impacting the ground. Along the way, they keep a flexible back and neck, which is key to their survival. Is your team hitting the ground with their main shock absorbers? In a time of volatility, do you have a consistent Systems Thinking strategy that connects your team to customers, users and desired business outcomes?

See my vlog #3 Johan Cruijff – A Guide For Product Discovery where I tell how Lean, Systems Thinking and Design Thinking can help you today.

 

* * * *

Sonsoles Alonso – I help CxOs and Founders Build Highly Efficient Happy Teams in 6 Months or Less with the Right Hires, using Systemic Tools and Serious Games.
sonsoles@sonsolesalonso.com
www.sonsolesalonso.com

Are you in tech? I recently teamed up with top-rated instructor Mark Farragher for our online course ‘6 Tools To Improve Your Tech and Leadership Communication’.

Check also my 5-week online masterclass:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/break-free-from-the-assembly-line/

And my online class on Team Delegation and Leadership:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/team-delegation-and-leadership/

Would you like to read some other posts? My most successful one so far is The War Against Talent, with over 100000 views.

Did you say War for Talent?

The other day, Pablo, a data scientist with international experience, an impressive cv, and a passion and capacity for learning, posted on LinkedIn. He had had an awkward but unfortunately commonplace experience with a recruiter.

Many organizations and recruiters go around screaming terms like ‘skills gap’ and ‘fighting the war for talent’ from the rooftops, but for starters, they aren’t even capable of acquiring talent. They wouldn’t recognize talent even if it fell on their heads.

Today, it looks as if recruitment has effectively embattled itself in a war against talent.

 

The phone conversation

Here is the call between Pablo A. Rosado and the recruiter:

HR: Hello, I’m calling you from [company name] regarding your application for a data scientist position (…). Do you have experience with Hadoop, Spark, R, or Tableau?

Pablo: No, I don’t, but I would be happy to learn those tools, and I believe it would not take me long to get used to them.

HR: Then what do you know about data science?

Pablo: Well… Since I started my Ph.D. in 2010 I have been doing research in gravitational waves and radio astronomy, fields in which data science is crucial (…). I am fluent in mathematical modeling, Bayesian statistics, signal processing, analysis and visualization of big data sets, I have some experience using machine learning (…). I use Python (and libraries like Numpy, Scipy, Matplotlib, Scikit-learn…), Mathematica, Matlab/Octave, SQL, Fortran, Unix shell, Git (…). I have attended a dozen international schools and courses on data analysis applied to astrophysics. I have experience working in big, international collaborations including LIGO, which has recently been awarded important awards, including the Princess of Asturias, for the discovery of tiny signals buried in long, noisy time series, using sophisticated matched-filtering techniques (…).

HR: [Silence]

Pablo: Hello?

HR: So you don’t know Hive?

Pablo: … ( ‘-_-)

 

So, what went on in that conversation? – The translation

The recruiter is calling about a position in data science and is asking about Hadoop, Spark, R, and Tableau. These are software tools typically used by data scientists. Pablo happily admits he doesn’t have any experience with them, but then goes on to list a huge number of similar tools, some of which are much more complex than anything the recruiter was referring to.

Pablo also cheerfully mentions that he is an astrophysicist who has worked on several international collaborations, all of them requiring a deep understanding of data science. This is very relevant because academia is, in fact, the birthplace of data science.

But all of this goes completely over the head of the recruiter, who stubbornly continues going through his keyword list, triumphantly ending with Hive, a much simpler tool than anything our data scientist holds in his toolbox.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a time machine so we could see Pablo’s face when the recruiter asked about Hive… Wait, what?! Did you even listen to anything I just said??

 

There is a gap

Can you imagine Jamie Oliver not getting a job as a chef at the Cheesecake Factory because he has never made a cheesecake before? No. You’ll want to hire him because not only do you know that he will make great cheesecakes (or anything else, for that matter), but because you are also looking forward to seeing how his extensive experience with cooking will contribute to the unique cheesecakes he will make for you!

Yet, being overlooked is what happens all the time to many of today’s brilliant employees.

Contrary to what recruitment wants the world to believe, there is no skills gap, that is unless we speak about recruitment itself lacking the skill of understanding what is available and what is needed.

There are brilliant and capable people everywhere you look. Get real in your hiring, stop blaming imaginary talent shortages for your problems, and start talking to the amazing, living, breathing job-seekers around you right now.
– Liz Ryan, CEO Human Workplace

Moreover, now more than ever, in a volatile world of constantly changing variables and requirements, employers need the kind of employees who can confidently dive into messy business situations (a messed-up database migration, an overloaded tech-support function, or a perpetually slipping product launch) and sort it out. If you don’t want employees who are capable of solving these kinds of problems, you probably shouldn’t be leading a business in the first place, because business is all about solving problems.

 

How to talk to a recruiter: Be a Diane Lockhart 

If you find yourself in Pablo’s shoes, here is what you can do.

In The Good Fight’s episode Requiem for an Airdate, ballistics expert and Diane Lockhart’s love interest Kurt McVeigh has to give a talk about the future of ballistics. According to him, the subject of the talk is the impact of interferometers on 3D renderings. According to Diane, who is helping him prepare for the big day, the subject is 3D technology in ballistics. Watch here the dialogue between the two so you too can get ready for your next ‘talk’ to a recruiter.

 

Now do a narrative makeover just like Kurt McVeigh did. Watch him first on the stage below:

​Here are the steps for your own narrative makeover:

1. Reverse think. You want recruiters to understand you. Make it you who wants to understand recruiters. Why is a recruiter naming certain tools? What does that say about the job? What does it say about what the recruiter is looking for? If a recruiter insists on Hive, is that recruiter seeing you? Would you want to put your future in that person’s hands anyway?
2. Help your recruiter talk to his or her customer by becoming proficient at putting yourself in other’s shoes, in all directions
3. Don’t talk to a recruiter the way you talk to your buddies. You can tell your buddies that you don’t know a certain tool because they know you, but when you are talking to a recruiter, don’t happily admit what you don’t know until you understand what the recruiter needs
4. Use keywords, by all means, you want to be found. Just make sure you adjust them to the position or at least industry you are interested in

Practice, practice, practice. And if none of that ends up landing you your dream position, at least you will have learned a new way of communicating that could help you not only professionally, but in all of your social interactions.

It can be very helpful to talk to a career advisor. Larry Cornett can help you get ready for your own war against recruiters! He has helped many people in situations similar to yours. Join his Facebook Group Brilliant Forge to find out more.

You can also consider moving away from traditional recruitment altogether and approaching your job hunting in a design thinking kind of way, having prototyping interviews with real people with real problems in real businesses of your interest. Drop me a note if you’d like to know more about that.

 

Recruiters, this is how you talk to candidates!

1. Understand the purpose of the tools/keywords you are working with, and put them into context. What do they do? How do they serve the need of your customer? Could the tools in your candidate’s toolbox serve your customer’s need?
2. Stay curious and mindful. You have others’ future in your hands. Handle with care
3. Be a facilitator between offer and demand, continuously translating back and forth between what both candidate and client tell you. Be a Diane Lockhart too!
4. Don’t hire for skills, hire for attitude. Skills can always be taught. Or you hire the likes of the Pablos, who teach themselves, the only thing being needed is for you to give them a problem to solve
5. And since we are at it, revitalizing our current market would enormously benefit from enterprises hiring employees with different experiences from different industries

If you want to renew and re-energize an industry, don’t hire people from that industry.
– Arkadi Kuhlmann, CEO ING Direct USA

 

* * * *

Sonsoles Alonso – I help CxOs and Founders Build Highly Efficient Happy Teams in 6 Months or Less with the Right Hires, using Systemic Tools and Serious Games.
sonsoles@sonsolesalonso.com
www.sonsolesalonso.com

Check also my 5-week online masterclass:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/break-free-from-the-assembly-line/

And my online class on Team Delegation and Leadership:
https://sonsolesalonso.com/team-delegation-and-leadership/