You don’t have to be a genius or a visionary or even a college graduate to be successful. You just need a framework and a dream.
Michael Dell – Founder of Dell Computers
As the above quote says, Working It: Disruption Rules (COVID edition) offers a unique framework and lens for your Future of Work.
Expressed another way, Working It offers a structure for understanding and a framework for looking at your work, career, and job in COVID time. Working It is not the total answer. Hopefully, it offers glimpses of what’s occurring around you whether you work for someone or yourself or are exploring options.
One of the powerful analytical tools in management theory is the systems approach that explains complex relationships in simple terms. Working It: Disruption Rules presents a systems approach to work. Elements of a system can be parts of a machine, actors in a play, or people at work.
In this book, our 7P work system, framework, or architecture consists of Paradigms, People, Principles, Practices, Products, Processes, and Projects®. Why did I use the 7P’s structure? It’s lucky seven. Yes, I know that’s a shallow answer. It’s mnemonic. It explains many work COVID work disruptions and how your career may develop.
In the COVID edition of the Working It, we’re emphasizing 3 additional P’s: passion, purpose, and profit. Why? Passion is not only the desire to do (execute) the work, but goes beyond the required and desired – to move into the innovation zone. Purpose is the desire to be one with your work, to have a personal connection with the value and calling of your work. And of course, profit or a performance metric is required to ensure your journey is in the right direction, speed, and destination. Companies and startups are not philanthropies as many would like to believe.
Work Lesson Earned: We hope Working It can provide you, the reader, with a way to assess your work based on the 7P attributes: Paradigms, People, Principles, Practices, Products, Processes, and Projects®. As well, we hope to provide risk context, guidance, direction, tools and tips for dealing with COVID work disruption. Finally, we hope the 7P’s become part of your life story and work narrative.