Business Not as Usual

Last night’s loud acclaim and festive sense of hopefulness on Obama’s electoral victory punctuates, what for many of us, is a visceral awareness of a paradigm shift: something fundamental has changed in our world.

Among the economic challenges is a brewing storm--- tempered momentarily by the general downturn in markets, with its predictable downsizings and austerity budgets. Beginning in the late 90’s, workforce onramps for the mature worker have disappeared. The result has been a writing down of corporate knowledge assets coupled with a shifting of knowledge-bearers’ responsibilities. Both to use and to grow what we know, both self-reliance and mutual collaboration within networked communities of practice are essential. What's changed is that this will occur only through individual initiative!

This shift parallels a movement from hierarchical organizations to flattened, flexible, and changing groups, oriented to quickly adaptable project solutions. It parallels the championing of the “Protean Self”- which is elegant code for changing workplace rules of engagement from reliance upon the corporate psychological contract to self-reliance. It is the psychological equivalent of outsourcing. It is, in fact, INSOURCING: a movement from security in external business structures to internal, psychological capabilities.

However, this shift to heightened demand for individual resources is felt differently by different generations. Gen X, Gen Y, and their juniors have been raised in a world where expectations of multiple career shifts has become the predictable norm rather than a linear ascent to positions of increasing responsibility. Are they tougher? No, their training has been different: and we hear the generational discontent in criticism of Gen Y’s “gimme” attitudes. They are in it for themselves, as we have been too, but differently.

Insourcing requires a different approach to skills building than most of us are used to. Because it directly flows from one’s own solid sense of identity, and is regulated by differing states of self-regard, “Insourcing Development” requires not simply action, but heightened psychological self-awareness, with a maximization of one’s competencies and a recognition of one’s less developed traits. Insourcing Development requires a coaching perspective that shifts from “how to” (which assumes the stability of a corporate base) to “how to know”--- the cultivation of a continuous and personal SWOT assessment, with strategic attentions both internal and external.

This reorientation of psychological perspective is not only essential for economic survival under the changed paradigm, but also pragmatic for maintaining one’s knowledge competencies and assets in prime form. It is the singular route to productive personal growth. Competent and incremental consultation is the key: because the playing field is nothing less than a lifetime of professional experience! Ours' is a time for necessary transformation: and Insourcing Development is the path.