According to Tom Peters: “All white collar work is project work.”[i] The project life puts a person in the middle or outer ring of Charles Handy/Hutchins work model. Stephen Covey and other work gurus put it bluntly: “Your job description may change from day to day; in fact, your ‘job’ may be simply a series of projects involving people from other departments, even outside contractors.”[ii]
The lifelong Brand U project career path is evolving inside and outside organizations. We may be professionals, specialists, or craftspeople. What characterizes Brand U’s is we have portable and marketable skills. A software engineer learns new software languages and goes where the market is. A lawyer with special skills, such as environmental law, may move around the country or even the world working on environmental litigation cases. Career success depends on developing core competencies and then displaying them in projects. These projects preferably are on your customer’s or employer’s critical growth and profit path.
[i] Peters, Tom, “The Wow Project,” Fast Company, May, 1999, p. 118.
[ii] Covey, Stephen, “How to Succeed in Today’s Workplace,” Parade, September 2, 1997.