The door to my life’s work opened when my record producer suddenly died.

I will never regret letting go of that career to help others find their ideal career. But the demands of Inspired Work grew and music, the primary language of my life, slipped away.

I thought about it all of the time. I used to fly a lot and would close my eyes only to think of how much I missed that part of my life. A year before this story began, a client that produced one of the biggest chunks of revenue asked that I take her to a psychic. Then, she asked that I join her. I drove here there myself. The guy looked a bit like Jabba the Hut. He was also bald except for on long braid coming directly out of his skull. She grabbed my arm and directed, “You go first.”

As I sat down, he looked at me and said, “You’re a musician.” I responded, “You’re the psychic.” My nasty little pushback ended with the next words. “If I am wrong about this, I will also be wrong with everything that follows. You are one of those few people who doesn’t listen to people’s words, you listen to the music in their voice.” I felt all of the air come out of my mouth followed by deep anger. Up until that moment, it was my secret.

Right now, we are days away from launching workskunk. Getting here has been a profound and often difficult journey. I believe that ending underemployment will solve our country’s deepest source of turmoil. Consequently, our core services will be available without charge.

Like everyone else, the pandemic changed most of our plans. Since April last year, we have been working in our caves. We have received support from all over the world. But the day-to-day experience has been developing a platform that is unique, that provides solutions, and retains the profound feel that has accompanied all of our programs.

Every time another obstacle showed up, we treated it with trust, and time and time again, what often felt like a miracle showed up. I have a deep-seated hatred of stock music or playing in bars. In June, I found myself sitting in front of Yamaha’s Montage 8. It is the most groundbreaking technology in music. Like so many of us, I find it easier to lose my life to the mission rather than protect the parts of life that make mine so very unique.

From all that we can find, workskunk will be the first human development platform with original music. We purchased libraries of stock music. When we threw it out, I realized that using that music would make us sound like everyone else. Apparently, God wanted no part of that and insisted I invest the time to do music well.

My reaction to being immersed in music again reminds me of a scene from my favorite career movie, Joe vs. the Volcano. He is near death on top of a raft made from luxury luggage. Meg Ryan is asleep. He looks up and the most magnificent full moon rises over the ocean. Joe struggles to his feet and gasps,

“I never knew how big.”

The post Anyone Sacrificing Their Life for a Mission? appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

The most important piece of information is that human beings are able to think about something other than themselves for a maximum of 15-seconds.

The findings made pitch-selling obsolete. But, how does this impact our day-to-day living?

For several years many of us have been proving that being concerned with our own needs and expectations rather than helping others has not helped any of us.

If you are the exception, please speak up.

Over 12,000,000 spam e-mails are sent out for every sale that is made. By not having the respectfulness to find out what we need, continual pitching only shuts us down.

If you have achieved terrific results from continual pitching, please speak up.

We have been yelling at each other for a number of years and all that has accomplished is to make our country an ugly place. When I was a little kid, Lady Bird Johnson (One of the First Lady’s) was on a kick to beautify and clean-up America.

My grade school teacher screeched at us, “When you see trash by the side of the road, what do you think of?”

A kid in the back of the room responded, “Home.”

There is the rub. When trash becomes a way of life, all of us suffer.

My redemption has emerged from being of service. I don’t do it because it is right. I do it because service is the one thing that makes me feel great.

There were times in my life where friends referred to me as the “king of one-liners and put-downs.” It didn’t make me feel better. For one moment, I believed I was better, only to discover that what I had said made me far worse.

Do we want our lives to improve?

Go ask people what they want and need.

If you want our lives to improve,

Give it to them.

The post If You Can Only Think About Me For 15-Seconds, How Will All of Us Move Forward? appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

One of the few things I know for sure is that when we believe there isn’t enough for all of us, we turn on each other. The purpose of democracy is to provide relevance to every citizen. The purpose of democracy is to provide relevance to every citizen. For many of us, that relevance begins with our work.

As the world undergoes the most extensive restructuring of work in 300 years, not one political leader has told the American people how to remain relevant in this new world of work.

Over 50 years ago, advertising companies introduced focus groups that gave politicians the messages we most wanted to hear. When was the last time you heard a politician tell us what to do? The last President that did this inspired young people to give back to the world with the Peace Corps. He told us we were out of shape and brought physical education into our schools.

Today, instead of guidance, we hear promises. We have also come to know most of these promises will not flourish. More profoundly, when we are afraid and uncomfortable with change, promises encourage people to wait, all at a time when action is the only way forward.

Before the pandemic, we celebrated a 3.8% unemployment rate. But, about half of our nation’s workers characterized themselves as “underemployed.”

Who are these people?

They are the mothers that hold 2-3 cheap jobs to keep a roof over their family. They are the mothers getting home at 2 in the morning exhausted. But, before they go to bed, they make lunch for their children.

Underemployment is deeply influenced by the quality of our schools. Most continue to prepare our children for the Industrial Revolution. Young adults have invested in graduate degrees only to find themselves serving coffee and picking people for Uber. We have yet to find one school that requires sales training, presentation skills, the ability to build a customized support system that matches their vision, mission, or purpose. Yes, learning these life skills requires courage. In an ideal world, you would be consistently telling them why personal change is worth the effort.

Our world changes so quickly that today’s college graduates will change careers, not jobs, four to six times. Within this frenzy, we need to be building the ability to graciously and fluidly connect with the right people. Without these skills, no one will know they are here.

Of course, many of us are frightened we will not change in time. People cannot change if they are isolated. Millions of our citizens need to work, but without help, they look to the future and lose confidence there is a place for them. Of course, we have turmoil.

Our nation is in deep trouble because of our neglect in guiding all-American workers. But, we are also in jeopardy on a global scale. China, Germany, Japan, Canada, and South Korea have sophisticated strategies to build rather than ignore the strength of their talent. We belly-ache about technology taking away rote and mind-numbing jobs. These countries use technology to free the mind for new and essential work. German automakers are well-known examples of investing in cutting-edge technology and training their workers to move into new roles. Like many of the other nations that are ahead of us, Germany developed partnerships with employers and educational institutions to keep their workers employed and competitive.

We would probably call that socialism. Actually, it is good business.

At the very least, being given freedom from rote and monotonous work allows us to return to using work as a platform for our lives, abundance, and meaning. Today, we can live wherever we want to. I no longer have to grab a flight to New York or Europe to do business. I just turn on my computer.

Technology also offers us the opportunity to design careers and businesses that we love. I have been facilitating that outcome for 30 years. Letting go of mediocrity and developing work that matches our career DNA is one of the greatest opportunities in life.

One of the most important lessons I have learned from my work is that when we find our true purpose, there is always a solution to make that work sustainable.

So, while other countries are showing their workers the way, we shower our people with bad ideas. One candidate implied that technology companies had exploited and victimized.

We are about to launch a new company designed to help end underemployment without financial barriers. As a social entrepreneur, I believe that making our solutions available to everyone who works that right and the best thing to do with my life. But, the scope of this problem is so big that doing it alone would feel like trying to put out a forest fire with a tablespoon.

We need your guidance.

We need a consistent voice of why changing ourselves is so very important for our economy, health, joy, fulfillment, and families.

You know the words by heart, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Our country needs an awakening.

There are millions of problems that need to be solved.

There are millions of people that want to help.

What could happen to the spirit of our country if we become a nation of mentors?

Hard to visualize?

We live in a country that exists because of imagination.

The post Dear Mr. President, What About Our Work? appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

– Mahatma Gandhi

I have lived a long and winding road with forgiveness. For years, I could not find nor could I articulate a form of forgiveness that worked for me. As a human development professional, I’m supposed to know that. Right? Instead, I told the truth, “I don’t have a clue what forgiveness is.”

My candor often triggered others to view my outlook as a spiritual crisis. Our entire brand is based on the truth. To become disloyal to the truth would destroy our brand. Over the years, therapy, spiritual development, and common-sense led to one simple turning point last year. One of our participants was dealing with hair-raising behavior at his company. He asked if he could bring something up. There was a look in his eye that precedes those moments where I am put on the spot. He said, “You seem to be a happy and well-balanced guy. What would you do to forgive these people? What is forgiveness?”

For the very first time, I had my answer:

“Forgiveness is getting a wound and not giving it to someone else.”

• Forgiveness is having a relationship end that unexpectedly shatters your heart. But, you do not foist that wound onto the loving spouse that comes into your life.
• Forgiveness is getting directly stung by America’s current culture of outrage. Instead of hurling insults back, we move on. Sometimes, in the best of circumstances, we do not take the words personally.
• Forgiveness is the recognition that the more attention we give to poison, the more poisonous we become.

The emotional and physical violence flowing through our country is heartbreaking. Throwing poison back and forth weakens all of us. When I was a little boy, I went to an evangelical church school. Our teacher Mrs. Brown’s every word had to be screeched in an attempt to make a point. She started screening about our First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson. Mrs. Johnson had launched an initiative to clean up America by ending littering. At one point, she yelled out, “When you see trash by the side of the road, what does it remind you of?”

A kid in the back of the room called out, “Home.”

Of course, he got spanked for the comment but I found it Einstein brilliant. Most of us have all types of aspirations to be wealthy, perfect physical shape, debt-free, and happy. But as we give more and more energy to the outrage, we lose the capacity to solve the problem.

I was adopted by crazy people. Two years ago, I met my birth father for the first time. His wife was there as well. We spent the day getting to know each other. I took a flight back to Los Angeles and my partner was there to pick me up. As we drove home to the beach, I shared a great deal about what had been a surreal and lovely experience. But, then he asked about their political affiliation and I didn’t know what it was. In fact, it didn’t matter.

This was a turning point in how I relate to what is happening around us. The three of us spent the day learning as much as possible about each other. Throughout the day, we were using the characteristics that used to live above our politics, including respect, kindness, transparency, gratitude, awareness, and peace.

Real forgiveness is for adults. Thank God we have so many children that are doing a better job than the adults. They get it. When we continue to insult and throw terrible words back and forth; when we always need to have the last word, when we want to have others feel our pain by imposing it on others, we lose the country that I believe almost all of us want to have.

There are wounds inside all of us that may never go away. But, when we want a world that is better than what happened before, we keep it and what I am discovering is such behavior does heal. More importantly, the behavior changes the world around us as well.

We will not be going back to normal. In fact, I don’t want normal!

Everywhere that we look, we find evidence of how mediocre normal really is.

We need an awakening. We have an enormous about of people who need to work but are continuing to search for obsolete rather than progressive jobs. We have a school system that continues to prepare our children for the Industrial Revolution. Rapidly expanding technology is introducing billions of new problems that only humans can fix.

When we recognize just how precious time really is, we become far more responsible in how we invest our time. Technology can either be a horrific problem or it can be giving us the freedom to do the work we want, to work where we want, to launch new careers on a dime, and to build better lives.

Or, we can do nothing. We can put progress on-hold until we feel better.

This time, we cannot delay change. How we change will determine the quality of our lives. We need to have people who not only want to change but are willing to do whatever it takes. For those of us who have settled for rote and monotonous work, the world needs you.

I cannot count the number of people who say they are on board with change and optimism, only to see their names on Facebook preaching and insulting and casting aspersions to anyone who isn’t agreeable.

Real forgiveness? Don’t jump in. Don’t take that bait. Recognize that time is precious.

Loving others is better.

Real forgiveness requires courage.

The post What is Forgiveness Really? appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

Before the pandemic, about half of America’s workers characterized themselves as under-employed. Most are hard-working and conscientious but with each passing year, their work becomes more difficult and less valuable. As an election year sweeps past us, we have yet to find one member of either dominant party providing true leadership on the challenge of underemployment. They make promises when the nation’s workers need guidance, understanding, and encouragement. On that front, Germany, China, Japan, South Korea, and Canada are way ahead of us in making sure their citizens have the current skills necessary to continue building their lives as well as their country’s economy.

Over here, we dismiss their best practices as socialism.

That brings up the need for all of us to take deep responsibility in having a relationship with our work that works. Without that, times will be tougher than before.

Many business owners have even greater difficulty with change because to do so requires a stack of additional challenges. I gave a keynote to a group of petroleum entrepreneurs in Canada. At the time, the global energy market was under siege and the Q & A centered around their challenges. I brought up the fact that petroleum will come back in fits but overall, it will decline as consumers will lose interest. I added that if they didn’t change the world, their children would.

Ouch!

I have promised good news.

We spend an enormous amount of time in our culture studying dysfunction, bad news, and pain. But, there is an entirely new tribe of business leaders that is reshaping how we view work. Today’s social entrepreneur insists on growing businesses by making a solution to a world problem profitable.

That day in Canada, I posed a question:

“What is Al Gore up to these days?”

For one, he is making tons of money. In 2019 his net worth doubled from $200Million to $400Million. This happened because several venture capitalists from Goldman Sachs and Silicon Valley’s legendary Kleiner Perkins that have been working with Vice President Gore in making green energy more profitable than petroleum, natural gas, and fracking.

All of this began by realizing the only way to create vast and sustainable solutions to the world’s biggest problems, we have to make the solution itself wildly profitable. Today, the start-ups that Gore and his partners invested in had to get through one of the most vigorous vetting processes that require pristine business plans, fully competent management teams, and strongly engaged oversite.

Peter Diamandis, the pied piper of social entrepreneurs, says, “If you want to become a billionaire, help a billion people.” Peter’s brilliance as well as the smarts that are common to our new board insists that it is no longer enough to just make money. The new icons change the world by helping others. In Los Angeles, Diamandis is the co-founder of X-Prize. The organization began when Richard Branson made an announcement offering a truckload of money to the first engineering team that could come up with a feasible way to provide access to commercial space travel.

A close friend of Branson, Peter saw an opportunity to bring this funding model into solving problems where sustainability has proven elusive. After launching X-Prize, Diamandis and his team have been bringing in billionaires and companies to fund solutions to our biggest problems. Just a few examples include the 4ocean, the machines that are now cleaning plastic from our oceans. They recently funded portable CatScan and MRI devices, that are saving thousands of lives in third world countries by being able to get a diagnosis rather than taking a critically ill patient through hours of difficult travel.

Why am I so excited about this segment?

For one, they are my new tribe and most of them have jobs.

We launched Inspired Work in 1990. Over the years thousands of people have used our program to launch new careers, start their first business or go back to work with a solution to a big problem. Of the thousands of changes that have occurred with our participants, the most common thread is meaning. One of the truths about life is the only meaning we can use is the meaning we define for ourselves, which is beautiful and unique each and every time.

Our new company workskunk will help solve underemployment by making the best possible programs available without charge. Inspired Work will still be here, but that audience has differing needs and expectations. But there is urgency and meaning to solving the problem of underemployment. When people look ahead and cannot find a place where they will make a good living, of course, we will find turmoil.

My office is in the center of Silicon Beach. I am looking at organizations like HBO, Cornerstone on Demand, Interscope, and Sony Music. While editing this article, we also watched a family walk through the neighborhood. One parent was pushing a shopping cart filled with two kids. The other was pushing a shopping cart with their belongings. This is what I mean by urgency.

I hope that America is still the most abundant country in the world. But, it feels like our country is going through one of the most untoward periods of adolescence in the world. The movement of social entrepreneurism is based on the recognition that running a business to just make money, that’s for people who still don’t care. But, we also insist on making the kind of money that pushes innovation past the old decaying formulas.

We are in the midst of a huge restructuring and task-based jobs are going the way of the mainframe computer. If you are one of the many millions of people impacted by this change, stop waiting. Learn how to change as quickly and as humanly as possible. Then, go do it.

We might have to become more skilled in drawing attention to ourselves. Many of us run from the possibility of getting hurt feelings, but the alternative is starvation. In many cases, the prospect of staying in jobs that are in decline is spiritual starvation.

I get to work with social entrepreneurs. Some of them are devoting their lives to curing cancer and other horrific diseases. One of my clients pulled me into his lab and turned back to say, “Welcome to my temple of hope.” I don’t know about you, but that is far more compelling than being in an environment that is there solely for shareholder value. Other clients are engaged in bringing cost-free higher education to everyone that has a computer or tablet. Others are focused on net-zero reality. What I find time and time again, is that finding the work that matters to us is the first and most important into this new future.

What I hope to convey here is that it is time for many of you to find your way in from the cold and to come up with a solution for work that has greater value than simply paying the bills. It isn’t enough.

I used to be nice about this subject called work. But, when the pandemic hit, many of those jobs that slid down the rabbit hole and will not be coming back. If that is impacting you then this is the time to change, to find your way into a new life, and to develop the faith as well as the courage to take action.

To summarize:

If it is time to change, look for a target that provides for your family, that nourishes your soul, and that brings meaning and purpose to your life.

Do that and one day you will look in the mirror and see redemption.

The post The Best News About Work – Ever appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

As I listen to their kindness, commitment, empathy, care, watchfulness, and contribution, I realize this is what most of us need to move forward.

Calling each other stupid isn’t cutting it. Always believing in scarcity is what it is:

Not enough for all of us.

A couple of years ago, I met my birth father for the very first time. I spent the day with him and his lovely wife. Then, I flew home. After settling in, one of my partner’s first words were, “What are their political views?”

I looked at him just a little surprised and said, “I don’t know.”

We talked about the values that exist above politics. At that moment, I realized how much I craved that kind of world. It is one where we respect each other’s beliefs, values, and outlooks. Of course, some of you are already feeling cynicism and contempt over this message. But, the real purpose of cynicism and contempt is to kill off change.

At the very least, I had to let go of cynicism and contempt and replace those filters with humility. It isn’t the brand of humility that requires falling to the ground and berating myself; it is the commitment of openness and receptivity to growth.

Much of my adult life was spent getting rid of the white-male-pissed-off God of my childhood. Today, when someone prays, I know he or she is praying to my entity.

During my first book tour, an evangelical radio station kept bringing me back for more interviews. One morning, one of them asked me to describe my spiritual philosophy. I respond, “My outlook is that I cannot differentiate my ass from a hole in the ground.”

Einstein used to stand in the front of a classroom, and he drew a circle on the chalkboard. Inside it, he wrote the word “known.” Outside the circle, he wrote the word “unknown.” Then, he drew a much larger circle with the same terms and pointed out that every time our circle grows, we become more aware of all that we don’t know.

When we protect our circle of “known” no matter how small it might beT, we will never know just how big we are.

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

Schedule 15-Minutes to Discuss Your Workplace or Career with David (Here)

(C) Copyright, 2020, Inspired Work, Inc. – (All Rights Reserved)

The post The World Above Politics appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

Connectivity is a series of life skills that are essential in today’s workplace.

Without Connectivity, people and opportunities sail right past us.

Connectivity represents the Ability to fluidly and graciously connect with other people.

Connectivity includes the Ability to:

• Draw Healthy Attention to Our Value
• Give Others High-Quality Attention
• Ask the Right People for Help

Why is this so important?

As the rate of change has increased, being able to connect represents the difference between being happy and successful with one’s career rather than becoming a member of the underemployed.

Fortunately, Connectivity is learnable.

Learning these skills requires a bit of courage and discomfort. Consequently, these vital life skills are not taught in our schools. Some parents tell their kids not to do it or delay bringing up the topic as long as possible. Sadly, without these skills, the world doesn’t even know we are here.

As advancing technology pushes accelerating change, those of us who skillfully connect to the world around us find the most exciting business and career opportunities. There are plenty of them. But, disconnectedness drives many of us to work in obsolete jobs painfully.

A colleague and I made a presentation to a community organization that sponsors a prominent and successful charter school. The group gives a “student of the month” award. That morning it was to a junior high school student for her exemplary grades. The crowd applauded, and she refused to get up. Amid enthusiastic and positive praise, she was too afraid to walk to the podium and accept the award.

UCLA’s prominent behavioral scientist Bob Maurer tells us, “The most painful thing we can do to someone else, is to love them for their potential.”

For over 300 years, our educational culture has served the industrial revolution. We didn’t teach our kids how to draw attention to themselves; we pushed them to fit in. Instead of learning how to ask for the right kind of help, we taught kids to hold up their degrees as evidence they knew what they were doing. Now, degrees are obsolete as soon as the ink dries.

As for families, Alice Aspen March, a scholar that has devoted her life to illuminating attention, tells us of her research,

“The average American family communications seven minutes per day. Four of those minutes are consumed by correcting (arguing). That same family will watch TV for over three hours and at least an hour with screen time.”

Let’s take the young women who refused to stand up and look at her possible future. Her terrific grades get her into law school. She graduates expecting that law firms will line up to hire her. After all, her mother worked as an associate for years and made a great living.

However, technology has taken over those tasks that mind-numbing repetitive work. Legal Zoom offers the same results for a fraction of the cost. The one difference between those associates and the partners sitting in the corner office is that one of those groups learned how to bring in business and connect with leaders that gave them entry into an abundant future.

Before the pandemic, about half of our countries workers were underemployed. They held multiple jobs to make ends meet, worked in environments way below their educational level, and worried about a future that didn’t seem to have a place.

It is the single most significant source of the turmoil we see today.

Isn’t it ironic that we dismiss the very skills we need to succeed with two words:

“Soft Skills.”

Isn’t it more honest to call them courage skills?

Let’s be clear. Courage has nothing to do with fearlessness.

Courage is taking the necessary action whether or not we are afraid.

Kids don’t do what we tell them to do. They either follow or rebel against our example.

Perhaps this makes courage the most valuable skill of all.

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

Schedule 15-Minutes to Discuss Your Workplace or Career with David (Here)

(C) Copyright, 2020, Inspired Work, Inc. – (All Rights Reserved)

The post Give Our Children the Skills They Need appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

The pandemic’s impact on higher education demonstrates an educational system out of touch with the needs of a modern world.

A growing number of students and parents are voicing that if we move education from campuses to virtual settings, that a discount ought to come with it. This frustration is the tip of an iceberg reflective of growing anxiety with families and students on whether or not they are getting maximum value from their investment.

The academic world could be shielding itself from real change by hanging on to its elitism. Where is that taking us? This morning Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli are being sentenced for giving $500,000 in bribes to get their daughters into USC. Right after the scandal broke their daughter, Olivia Jade, famously went onto her YouTube Channel and posted videos with messages such as, “I don’t really care about school” and “I’m so excited. USC is a big party school.”

While Olivia Jade seems to have difficulty expressing gratitude for her parents, we find a growing number of bright young people that have no interest in going to a university. Others go but don’t show up for class. Why? They have learned how to hack their education online, finding what they need and move on. In the technology world, vastly improved filtering, will lead to customized educations. Academia has very good reasons to be afraid.

Our educational systems were designed to fit the needs of the Industrial Revolution. Now they prepare our kids for a world that no longer exists. In the architecture of learning, universities were the most elite destinations, reserved for those with money and high grades.

Today, many academic leaders shield their organizations from the need to reinvent the whole thing by clinging to elitism.

Here are just a few of the tidal waves they must deal with:

Active Learning

The rate of change has reached the point where active learning is becoming more important than degrees. Many employers will only consider candidates that are continuously learning. In fact, the more a candidate loves learning, the more valuable they become. Active learners stay on top of change. They bring in valuable information. They are the last people to get laid off.

Today, many degrees are obsolete on graduation day. Higher education needs to jettison all forms of elitism in order to have a future. Because, it is hard for any of us to change if we are better than everyone.

By the way, if one of us treats education as another chore, than perhaps its time to question our relationship towards work. We find that it is far easier to find the work that we love because we will then study what we love.

Demonetize Information

Active learning increases ones value, but in most modern forms, it is free.

Google has more information in its virtual walls than all of our country’s major universities combined. As technology makes huge improvements to filtering, more people will be able to learn exactly what they want and need in hours rather than years, all without charge.

Life Skills

Perhaps the most pressing problem of all with our entire educational system is that we are not teaching young people connectivity, that ability to connect quickly and fluidly with people that can help, inform, guide, and encourage us. We had jobs for life. Then, we had jobs for nine years. Now, the average college graduate will change careers four to six times.

The essential life skills of today are not new Some of the skills were dismissed as “soft skills.”

We call it connectivity.

When we launched Inspired Work in 1990, our participants transform their entire relationship towards work. In other words, they used their time with us to define what they wanted to do with their lives. The outcome wasn’t a half-assed vision. It was the mission, vision, and purpose that would most motivate them.

With that motivation, our participants learned the skills that would make their new vision as successful as possible.

Connectivity includes:

Sales

Not the irritating sales skills of making a pitch and overcoming objections. The skills include being able to help someone effectively express their needs and expectations to the sales person.

Influence

When we know what is important to someone and we help them get that, we are influencing others. When we present a solution to a group of people, we learn what they want before the presentation.

Presentation Skills

Anyone who is able to make a decent presentation have raise their overall earning capacity by 60%. The National Speakers Association conducted a survey that indicated most people would prefer actual death to making a presentation. How do we overcome that? We teach them.

Building Support Systems

Many people don’t pursue their dreams because they believe the right people will not hep them. And yet, once we do define what we want, our success is almost purely based on getting the right people to help us.

Developing this skill is the single most important entry into today’s rapidly changing workplace.

The Perfect Storm

Our past presidents were quite comfortable telling us what to do.

We have replaced that model with focus-group politics that define what we want to hear and then make promises.

Before the pandemic, about about of our country’s workers characterized themselves as “underemployed.” These are the people holding three jobs to stay afloat, serving coffee with a doctoral degree in their back pocket, or those of us hiding onto obsolete and miserable jobs hoping the human resources death angel doesn’t turn the corner.

This is not a partisan issue, it is a leadership problem. Our dominant political parties might have different tones but none of them are lead America’s workers to change, to relearn and unlearn. The strangeness of this deficit is the work that is emerging as task work dies, is more meaningful, exciting, and connected to the world around us.

Germany, Japan, New Zealand, China, and Canada have implemented extensive and successful strategies to keep their workers ahead of change. They are pushing towards the future while we argue about the past.

If education was meeting the needs of the day, would we be debating our son’s and daughter’s health?

To me, bringing our young people back to school was a move of desperation for our universities to try to go back to “normal,” even if that includes partying so hard that other people have to tell us what happened.

A New Mindset

If I kids in or getting ready to go to school, I would demand new mindset that could restore integrity to our schools.

Don’t prepare our children for work that might not exist. Give our young people the tools and education that leads to a new form of confidence:

The awareness they can deal with anything the world can dish out to them.

How about making that the purpose of education?

I am daring the chancellors, presidents and principals of our schools to step forward and announce they are building a platform that gives us the tools to do work that makes this world better, that engages us, and the meets the needs of a vastly different landscape.

Here in Los Angeles, Rick Caruso, our regions most successful real estate developer, has served as the Chair of USC for years.

How ironic.

Because if our hallowed universities don’t wake up, many of our campuses will be turning into unexpectedly pleasant urban hosing sites.

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

Schedule 15-Minutes to Discuss Your Workplace or Career with David (Here)

(C) Copyright, 2020, Inspired Work, Inc. – (All Rights Reserved)

The post The Great Tipping Point in Education? It’s Here. appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

Over the next few weeks, we are running a series of articles highlighting some of the remarkable people that have not only changed their work, they have transformed every aspect of how they make a living.

We help people find their way to the truth. Anyone who comes through our programs emerges with clarity of their unique purpose and an understanding in how to become successful doing that. In some cases, the discovery helps them succeed in their existing work. Others make significant career changes into new jobs. Others launch businesses for the first time.

We treat work as a relationship, one that consumes most of our waking hours. Just as in romance, the success of that relationship is based on finding the work we love and developing the life skills that sustain our success.

The intent in sharing these stories is to provide insight in just how far with a bit of courage and humility can have life-changing and successful change in relatively short periods of time.

Some of the stories are from clients and participants that have permitted us to tell their stories without disclosing names. Others are comfortable with revealing their identities.

This particular story is one that I will never forget.

Several months after we launched Inspired Work, a group of human resource executives came to the program. They were from a financial institution that was starting to implode. After the experience, they offered the program to anyone who wanted more than a “transition.” The sent the employees who wanted to elevate this change in their lives as a turning point.

One young man walked in the door and I was immediately struck with how other participants responded to him. His story was a bit breathtaking. He grew up with a family of immigrant farmers. He was the first person from that family to graduate from college. In fact, his performance was so strong that he received a scholarship to Harvard for his MBA.

By his mid-thirties, he was the CFO of a big financial institution. In less than ten years he had risen to the youngest C-level executive in the organization. Now, we sat in front of us without a job.

We do not tell people what to do with their lives. For many of us, that is where our career troubles began. We help people define what their heart, mind, and soul most wants with such detail, taking action can take place immediately.

We ask questions, and as our participants write out the answers, a comprehensive picture emerges. We don’t pressure people to share their responses. However, most of them become quite enthused with their discoveries.

The CFO raised his hand and began sharing a surprising story.

“I grew up in the fields of Central California. All of my family members worked on farms. It was a difficult life, but I loved it.”

He looked down for a moment and back-up. It became clear he was telling one crucial truth for the first time in his life.

“All that I ever wanted to do was to grow things. For me, the experience of being outdoors, planting seeds, nurturing their growth, and doing that with my family, that was magic.”

I asked, “Why did you move so far away from the work you most loved?”

He gave an ironic smile. “I always excelled in school. When I left for Harvard. they were proud and joyous. Our entire community talked about what I had accomplished. As I got carried along from their enthusiasm, I didn’t have the courage to tell them that I was unhappy about work for a long time.”

As gently as possible, I asked,

“Since the day you left home. how much have you learned about business?”

He began an inventory of his knowledge and skills. He understood how to grow a business, raise funds, and make informed decisions about the strengths and shortcomings of business plans. He had facilitated large commercial real estate transactions.

I waved my hand to take a break.

“I’m getting the sense that you feel you either have to turn your back on business in order to return to the farm.”

He nodded.

“Are you planning on going back without those gifts? The truth is that you have grown into a person very different than the boy who left the fields. How could you take that and make a triumphant return to all that you love?”

The next morning, he walked into the room, and it was clear he had set himself free.

The moment I asked the participants to describe what happened and what they wanted to accomplish, his hand shot up.

We ask to hear about everyone’s progress so that we are in the best position possible to help as the second day unfolds. His hand shot up.

He announced, “I’m buying a farm.”

We are not big on ritualized excitement. But, the group began to applaud and it could have been the one moment that he experienced just how much people want us to be happy.

I asked, “What are you going to do with your family?”

He smiled broadly, “I’m making them part of the business.”

A few years later, he called me out of the blue. I can recall his enthusiasm and the music in his voice as if the call took place today.

He developed a farm in Ventura County that brings the most beautiful produce for the finest restaurants on the western seaboard. He wanted me to know that his breakthrough became a turning point for his entire family. In fact, all of them have equity in the business.

He added, “Most every day, I get here early. But, I pick that time for myself. I get to watch the sun come up over the hills. As our fields come into view I realize that God has watched over all of us. That sense of magic has never grown old.”

What is the lesson for us? When we open our eyes and commit to the work we were born to do, life falls into place. I have worked with thousands of people like them. Each one found their way into work that is as detailed and exquisite as their DNA.

What have I learned?

Everyone has imprint within that is as detailed and as moving as our thumbprint. When we develop the initiative to find that, the courage to grow that, a big portion of our lives come together as well.

We live in a place in time where I knowledge grows more swiftly than at any other point in our history. This is the time to stop settling for work that doesn’t suit us, especially if it is based on mind-numbing tasks.

Technology offers all of us the freedom to deliver work that is essential, that matters, and that solves one of the billions of problems that have results because of accelerating change.

The single most important lesson from this journey is my truth. Each and every one of you who read this article, you have a unique purpose. If you are living in that place, I don’t have to say another word. We are living in challenging times. Human nature is such that when our financial survival is at stake, we lower our standards. But, the world in which that might have worked is gone.

One of my clients is a former chief human resource executives from a variety of large organizations. He developed a vital and unique business that manages human capital during mergers and acquisitions. In his first year of business, he called to tell me his CPA had just informed him that he made more in the first year of business than his best year with a job. Both of us were so moved that we shed tears together.

He just finished his second year with more growth. I acknowledged him for having a variety of options and picking the one that offered the greatest fulfillment. He laughed, “Options! I didn’t have options. By the time we finished the questioning process the only work that made sense was this one, the one that I love and that makes the best use of my skills.”

If you or someone that you love has been struggling with the big changes and the turmoil roiling through our country, keep our eyes on positive outcomes. Task work is turning into powder. Whatever is left will turn out to be cheaper, shorter and even less satisfying.

But, we have progressed at a high rate of speed into new work that demands more of us, that often makes the world a better place to live, work that is far more engaging and meaningful.

For my friends and readers, this is the most important statement in the article:

The new world of work is offering us freedom. 

Some are already thinking, “I wasn’t looking for freedom. I want my job back.”

For years, our home has always had a couple of dachshunds. The first one that came into our house had been in a cage for about a month. We placed her in a crate that was quite similar in size to the cage. When we got home, we opened the door and invited her out. Eventually, she began moving around in a rectangle that fit the dimensions of her old home. She was terrified. Then, she looked up and realized she was in a whole new world.

This new reality raises the most important question to answer:

How do you want to use your freedom?

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

Schedule 15-Minutes to Discuss Your Workplace or Career with David (Here)

(C) Copyright, 2020, Inspired Work, Inc. – (All Rights Reserved)

The post How Did One CFO Become a Wealthy Farmer? appeared first on Inspired Work Services.

It is impossible to count the number of conversations where someone tells me they wished they saw the writing on the wall more quickly.

It’s just basic human nature to hang-on, hoping that things will get better. BUT, the timing of whether to go or stay is quite simple.

Answer two versions of one question:

“Is my organization shrinking or growing?”

“Is my industry shrinking or growing?”

If it is shrinking, get out. I really mean it!

There are a few circumstances where a downturn is brought about by temporary challenges, but in most cases, shrinkage means watching more and more colleagues getting laid off. Then, we are asked to take on their work. You know the drill, “You should be happy to have a job.” Morale gets dark because most everyone left behind is frightened of the future.

Creative and adaptive workers don’t put up with it. They look at the lowered expectations and growing challenges. They call their networks and move on to a brighter future. The rest consume much of the energy that could have been invested in a better transition.

Shortly after founding Inspired Work, one of California’s most significant employers began falling apart. One of the company’s human resource executives attended an Inspired Work Program. She was impacted so profoundly that within weeks, hundreds of their employees were using the program to elevate the painful event into a decisive turning point. Many of them made surprising career changes, pursuing what they would love rather than searching for a job, any job, perhaps even like the one they hated.

The Chief Human Resources Officer called a meeting. I had barely settled into the chair when she fired the first questions, “What do you feel is our biggest problem?”

I had an uncomfortable answer.

“Your biggest problem has already come and gone. While you’ve been busy deciding who stays or leaves, your creative and adaptive talent moved on. The changes didn’t paralyze them. They observed what was happening, dusted off their resumes, and called members of their professional support systems.”

Today, as we enter 20 years into a new century, we celebrate the lowest unemployment rate in many years. But, the reality is that about half of our country’s workers characterize themselves as “underemployed.” Half of our country’s workers wonder if they will ever return to the profession they worked in before the recession. Others look to the future and cannot find how they will make a living. Many work more extended hours holding down 2-3 jobs with the worries if they miss one month, they will become members of the working poor that inhabit the periphery of every city in our great country.

Parents seem to be the most worried of all. Some actually warn their kids not to expect to have as much abundance as they had. The actual truth is quite different and every parent ought to be studying and becoming informed about how to thrive in a world that gives us freedom from tasks.

How do we apply this stream of thought into tangible action?

A Suggested New Mindset

Do What You Love

Any form of repetitive task work is going away. The employment promise of the industrial revolution was by taking a job, usually some form of task work, we would be rewarded with predictability and survival. It is time to let go of this mindset entirely and make way for the new one. Just what is that mindset? The world is losing interest in people who insist on describing their work in terms of activity versus value (results). We are no longer impressed by how many quotas someone can fulfill in a day because there is software that will do it for us. No, we want to hear what you are going to do with freedom from being shackled to a work station.

Technology is finally giving us the freedom to do the work that we love. In fact, finding work that we love is the single most reliable way to motivate the degree of personal change it takes to be competitive. Sure, growth and personal change include discomfort, fear, and the need to ask others for help. This is good news because the most successful people in the world are asking for help all day and every day. Wouldn’t this be a good time to learn?

Here is an example: October 2008 became an event that virtually every business owner can describe, in detail, what they were doing and how they felt after learning the economy was imploding. By the time we hit bottom at Inspired Work, loving this work of ours was was the only thing that drove us to stick with it. If you are not doing work that you love and find meaningful, this is the time and place to find it.

Develop Connectivity Skills

The time between jobs and businesses continues to speed-up. Becoming skilled at building unique support systems, finding the right mentors, and being able to call on your own community represents more than just staying employed. It is essential to thriving and growing. And yet, our school systems continue to pump out students who are never required to take sales training, influence development, presentation skills, and an understanding of how to build customized support systems.

After helping countless people get onto this skill development path, I can tell you with absolute truth, we’ve reached a place where developing these skills is urgent.

Active Learning is Far More Important Than Any Degree

First, it is wise to stop treating education as a chore. If you do the work that you love, you will probably study what you love. The rate of change has reached a place where Kevin Kelly, one of our most accurate and visionary authors, describes as “becoming.” In other words, we are no longer learning about fixed goals in the future. The need to learn has reached the stage where we are always becoming. For those of us who embrace that mind-bending change, growth is turning out to be far more intoxicating than the era where we got a degree and moved on.

Yep, that might sound daunting. But before the cynicism and contempt eats the idea and throws it away, try it on!

Don’t Allow Technology to Rule You, Use it to Leverage Your Value

How many people have disappeared? Oh, they might still be in their bodies but they are walking into us at the market, on the street, and even during a job interview. Last week, a cashier stopped checking my groceries and began texting in front of me!

I am not a guru on any of these topics. For example, I have reached such a celebrated status with Candy Crush that King Entertainment reaches out to me for program suggestions. But, I will not be lying on my death bed telling my loved ones that I wished I could have mastered at least eleven hundred new levels.

When we use technology to connect with others, when we go online to build relationships with mentors, clients, prospects, sources of intelligence, and friendship, we are putting technology to work.

The Miracle of Social Entrepreneurism

From my perspective, social entrepreneurism is the most exciting and rapidly growing trend in 100 years! These are individuals and organizations that devote their time to solving a world problem. They also recognize that turning that solution into a wildly profitable venture is the most reliable way to succeed and achieve sustainability.

In this space, we find entrepreneurs curing cancer, making high-quality education available to everyone, making green energy more profitable than petroleum, and creating new solutions for problems many of us believed we would live with until we passed on.

One of the reasons social entrepreneurism is so exciting is that it is growing more quickly than any other sector in the world. Go where the growth is. Some of us are getting tired of the overused phrase, “lean into it.” Find the solutions that excite us the most and grow into it. Find mentors to help understand the landscape. Become the kind of active learner that gathers and absorbs the new work that excites you so much that you forget the old work that once had a hold on you.

In Summary

I believe that at the core of our being, there is a need to feel that our lives matter. After helping thousands of people find the lives they were meant to have, I am a walking, talking, living and breathing testimony that all of us have what it takes to make a difference based on what is meaningful to us. No one has the right to tell you what to do with your life or how to do it. The real unique you are in there, and only you can define what that ought to look like in a world that is abundant with choices.

A few days ago, I got a letter from a participant that did our program in the mid-90s. He wanted me to know that he made a career change immediately after taking the program. In the note he said,

“When I think of how I could have spent the last 21 years showing up to work that could not hold my interest, I realize how much my life changed, simply by becoming open to the possibilities.”

All of us have such a place.

It can be in the company of a brilliant scientist opening his arms and calling back to me, “Welcome to my temple of hope.” I see such a place in the kids that win Master Chef Junior, writing cookbooks and sharing their love affair with food. It shows up in the participant who leaves corporate America to become an ordained minister, and while so many shook their heads, asking, “Why”? I laughed, “Why not?” I see it in the breadwinner who realizes the corporate job is less stable than what he really wants. He opens that business and makes more money in the first year than the last two combined. It is in a complete story where a middle-aged banking executive has his only employer crumble underneath him at 55 years old. We were there when he committed the rest of his life to serving his true love, the world of art. When he passed away, the obituary told us of the organization he built that serves students everywhere, it speaks of the money he raised for some of our most respected institutions. It ends with the note, “John was previously in the banking industry.”

All of us have such a place.

More than anything, I am in love with the children that are growing into adults right now. Because from everything I can see, they are smarter than us. They have clear morality. They are more than devoted to making our world better, they live in reality they need to do that. When an adult puts them down, I can’t stand it. I usually turn around and ask, “What kind of stupid stuff were you doing when you were that age?” Really, if you want to know, please feel free to contact us, and we will send you a strict NDA just to describe the stupid stuff I did at that age. We need to nurture their mission, vision, and purpose.

Because they have it and to settle for anything else, muffles all reason.

Where did we begin this narrative? If you have to smother your light to work where you work, leave. If the business is shrinking and every day gets a bit more complicated, leave. And, when you do, open the place where your heart, mind, and soul has to go. If you are afraid that might turn your life upside down, perhaps you have a life that ought to be turned upside down.

Find what you were born to do.

Look for the problem you were designed to solve.

This represents one of the three extraordinary gifts life offers to all of us.

Take the initiative to go there and you will find the world really does want to help you.

Brought to you by David Harder, President – Inspired Work, Inc.

Schedule 15-Minutes to Discuss Your Workplace or Career with David (Here)

(C) Copyright, 2019, Inspired Work, Inc. – (All Rights Reserved)

The post Just When is it Time to Let Go of the Old World of Work? appeared first on Inspired Work Services.