I hope you check out this month’s Monday Developments, a magazine published by InterAction, which is a large coalition of U.S.-based international NGOs.  I have an article in this issue called, “How Young NGO Professionals Can Develop a Career Strategy:  Practical Steps for Making a Plan That Works for You.”

The article walks you through how developing your career is like strategic planning for organizations.  It also is a great way to find out about what’s going on in the Young Professionals Forum at InsideNGO, where I work.  The article is in the May 2010 issue, which was just published and should be mailed out very soon if you are a subscriber.  Otherwise, you might consider subscribing.

If you really took a look at your organization’s mission, you would probably find that enough urgent but not important tasks keep slipping into your days, then weeks, that you start to wonder what you actually have accomplished that month.

Is this because you are doing too much?

You will become overwhelmed and burned out if you continue at that pace.

We like to help and be super heroes but we can’t be effective if we spread ourselves too thin.

Carve out time to do the important – that which will move your organization’s mission forward.  Carve out time to eat a healthy lunch, go for coffee with a colleague.  You need to stay human while you do your human services work.

The Young Professionals Forum I run at my organization (InsideNGO) hosted a great workshop on Friday about Career Building for Young Professionals.

The trainer, Maureen MacCarthy, Principal Consultant at MGS Consulting, led us through the high-energy, participatory event with tons of networking opportunities.  It reminded me that while the advances in technologies that bring us webinars and other virtual events save travel time and costs, in-person events are critical for building your network and connecting with people.

Our YP Forum is different from other similar groups because everyone at our events works in the international NGO sector and shares similar experiences, challenges, and your organizations have probably partnered on projects together.

But the majority of the tips Maureen gave us apply to everyone.  I want to share 4 of the most useful ones.

The first is Be What You Want to Become.  Let’s say you’re a Program Assistant and want to become a Program Manager.  Start acting like a Program Manager.  Tell trusted colleagues/mentors that you want to be a Program Manager and to coach you on what that looks like at your organization.  Practice with a friend introducing yourself as a Program Manager.  Be who you want to become.

The second:  Get to know your organization’s culture and what people talk about when they’re not talking about work, especially the leaders.  Understand others on a more personal level so you can more easily be understood when you may present a new idea or try to get buy-in for your project.  Maybe people like to chat about movies, what’s in the news, or their children.  Get to know others to understand them better and use that knowledge to become fluent in your organization’s culture so you can know how to talk about your idea in a language they can understand.

Third, get to know your field.  For example, organizations in the international NGO sector are funded by similar donors and government agencies.  We as young professionals know we must remain adaptable and build transferrable skills because the donors might decide to fund reproductive health projects instead of HIV/AIDS projects.  PEPFAR is changing phases and you have to know how to do the work.  In general, the world is moving faster, there’s the economic downturn, and pressures and changes in budgets.  Be aware of the trends in your field because the complexity of what your organization’s leaders are dealing with is something you should be aware of so you can adapt.

And fourth, one of the best tactics for growing your career is networking:  meeting new people and passing out your business card.  You might be on Facebook but be sure to also create a profile for yourself on LinkedIn because businesses and recruiters do use LinkedIn to find outstanding employees that fit their culture, know their industry, and can do the work.

I am a nerd and read just about every leadership, self help, and professional development book out there.

I had to put down Drive and The Happiness Project to read Seth Godin’s pre-release copy of Linchpin:  Are You Indispensable?

Seth’s writing changes a lot of people from all generations but Linchpin should be on all college graduate and young professional reading lists.

I feel scared to write this post and review, quite frankly, because his book gives away secrets and keys to the kingdom that will shake and shatter organizations and industries if you put his advice into practice.

I did not feel this scared with Tribes nor Purple Cow or any of his other books.

This is a human book, not a business book.

Your Sunday School class could read it.

We Gen Y people are at the beginning of our careers and lives as adults.  Now is the time to experiment, try new things, and determine what we want to commit our energy and passion to.  We are artists, not just workers.

On Friday I went to his talk in NYC about Linchpin.  The opening music was live bluegrass by the band the Ebony Hillbillies.  Then he talked.  There were an intimate but respectful 500 people in the auditorium.  It felt like the 1920s when people attended subversive truth-telling talks.

I was a history major and again I’m a nerd and during his talk I felt like I was living in the early 1900s when there were speakeasies and jazz and people doing what they want despite systems and factories.  People weren’t completely indoctrinated in consumer culture yet.  It was the time when American art – jazz – was established.

Seth writes a lot about being an artist in this book.  Not a painter but an artist.  Not a cook but a chef.  Not an assistant but a linchpin.

Here are some of my favorite lines from the book:

Art, at least as I define it, is the intentional act of using your humanity to create a change in another person.

It’s easy to buy a cookbook but really hard to find a chef book.

History is now being written by the artists…the future belongs to chefs, not cooks.

The future of your organization depends on motivated human beings selflessly contributing unasked-for gifts of emotional labor.

The linchpin is able to invent a future, fall in love with it, live in it, and then abandon it on a moment’s notice.

I hope you will invest the $17 in yourself by buying this book to be inspired to create art.  We really need you.

The pictures are my fan girl self meeting Seth on Friday and how he signed my book.

I caught two movies this weekend that reminded me why it’s so hard to play to your strengths.

A Reformed Arrogant Drummer

Drumline was on reruns on MTV, and it’s actually a really good movie so I watched it again.  This time I had a new lens to watch it through thanks to Dave Rendall’s Freak Factor blog.

Nick Cannon plays Devon, a cocky, superstar drummer in one of those great college bands who gets a scholarship to A&T in Atlanta.  He wows the crowd with his amazing drum solos and entertainment power.  It turns out that he can’t read sheet music so his arch rival calls him out and gets him kicked out of the band.

It also doesn’t help that he’s arrogant and doesn’t want to be a team player.  He is better than the whole drumline.

After a fight with Sean, his rival band member, Sean admits Devon is the best but gets him to focus on being more of a team player:

Sean:  “You’re the best, Devon! But when we’re on the field, nobody hears you! They hear the band.”

Devon becomes convinced he needs to change.  He teaches himself sheet music and focuses on becoming a team member of the drumline.  This proves to the band director that he has developed his character and he lets him back into the band, (spoiler alert) just in time to win the final band championships.

The band director and school system certainly socialized Devon into working with a team, but what will happen to his confidence in his ability to come up with new sounds independently?  No longer a freak, how will he be able to stand out again?

A Reformed Womanizer

The other movie I watched was Nine (2009) about an Italian film director named Guido who couldn’t come up with a new script for his film because of his personal problems with all of the women in his life.  It turned out his other movies were successful because they were about all of the personal problems he faced in his life.

(Spoiler alert):  Without giving too much away, Nine resolved by Guido making a movie about apologizing to all of the women in his life for how he’s treated them.

The movie implies Guido was a good storyteller and film director because of the practiced he had in telling good lies to all of the women in his life.  Now that Guido is morally better after he stops womanizing, what will happen to his storytelling?  Can you change for the better as a person without losing your unique talents?  I think so, but thought it was an interesting question.   When should you allow yourself to be socialized and when should you not change?

Hollywood Makes it Hard

Enjoyable Hollywood movies make it hard to stand out because so many plots focus on the drama of society morally reforming a confident outsider.  What’s interesting to me is that there would be no movie without this outside, or freak, character.  Think of all of those nerd makeover movies.  That’s who the movie is about.  No freak, no movie.  But it’s up to you to decide if you will become more like them or more like yourself.

Courtesy Photo

Like traditional societies, associations, advocacy groups, memberships, and unions, there is strength in the shear number of people Brazen Careerist has organized on your behalf that want to grow careers using social media.

On Wednesday evening, Brazen Careerist was gracious enough to let me produce their first webinar to launch the Networks feature on their site.  I set up the technology but also fielded questions from the audience to feed to Penelope & Ryan.  It wasn’t your mother’s webinar, and it was a lot of fun.  What a creative and thoughtful community Brazen has.

The webinar was for those who started groups in Brazen’s site.  For example, I had started the Associations group to find other young professionals who work at associations.  Brazen had just made the decision to change Groups to Networks and the webinar showed us how to be better Network leaders.  (If you look at my group, you can tell I need advice).

During the webinar many people wanted to know why they should invest time in Brazen instead of LinkedIn.  Penelope thoughtfully responded that Brazen is a network of bloggers and that blogging can help you land jobs because it publishes your ideas when you don’t have the experience to land a job right after college or grad school.

Participants responded, But blog writing is scary.  My ideas?  Out there?  Isn’t execution and experience better?  How do I know this is safe?

No, it’s not safe.  Like anything new, it is risky.  Brazen Careerist is genius because it helps you manage your social media activity risk.

This table shows you why social media activities like blogging are scary to you and explains the difference between traditional career networking and social media career networking.

Brazen Careerist manages risk for you.

Your Social Media Career Networking Risks:

• Someone might disagree with my ideas
• I don’t have enough experience, and my ideas will be dumb, no one will hire me
• What if my boss finds out and fires me
• Blogging needs to be so niche, limiting myself to one topic will hurt me in the log run

How Brazen Careerist Manages Your Risks:

• Network to show yourself, your boss, and others that blogging is a new career tool that normal people use
• Advice at your fingertips from other smart people
• Teaches you how to express your ideas to your intended audience and industry in a professional, thought-provoking manner
• Has created a talent market of tech-savvy, entrepreneurial people – think strength in numbers rather than competing for the same jobs

Questions for fellow Network Leaders:

How can we leverage our Brazen networks to decrease our social media risk even more?

What could Brazen Careerist develop that would make us thought-leaders on the well-executed personal brand?

What type of education/training would help you be a better Network leader?

How can Brazen Careerist stand apart from LinkedIn as a career management tool for Gen Y?

Are we on Brazen an association?  Union?  Advocacy group?  Society?

If we wanted 1 Thing in the world to change, what would it be and how would we do it?

Photo Credit:

Great discussion yesterday with Seth Godin, Holly Ross, and Beth Kanter about nonprofits, social media, and innovation.

Beth and Holly have great posts – read them before you read this because their sums were so good I’m going to write about something else.

I want to talk to the young professionals of our community.

I thought yesterday’s discussion would revolve around tactics to get other people to change – like how to prove a new technology to others in your org.

Really it was about how you can change – into a person who proves new technologies to others in your org.

I know of a technique that can help you do this.  You will think it is weird and unnecessary but you have to do it.  It’s called personal branding.  It’s what we do now.

Personal branding forces you to figure out what you’re about and define that for others.

Some tools for this are starting a blog about your industry, commenting on other blogs about your industry, and learning as much as you possibly can about the problems in your industry.  For nonprofits it might be fund raising in an economic downturn, delivering food to Somalia, or getting people to come to your event.

Blog writing will force you to come up with what you really think about an issue.  It will help you gain your own clarity and insight, which can be empowering.   Keep it about business and ideas and not about your cat or work place annoyances.

On the right of this page you area reading are most of my favorite blogs.  Get yourself set up with Google Reader to have their updates come to you instead of wasting time going to them.  You can even read them on your iPhone.

After a few months you will have enough knowledge to start solving real problems in your industry and connections with other people who can make things happen.

Then it’s just up to you to get things done.

If you already have a blog and are out there making things happen, please post your link below so I and others can connect with you.

Update:  Great post on personal branding predictions for 2010 to check out.

Chris Guillebeau brought together around 30 members of his small army of remarkable people in DC at Busboys & Poets last week for a meetup.

Chris has the rare ability to make meaning for us world-changers while evading the guru trap by weaving strong ties among his readership.

Speaking of a small army, Seth Godin often talks about his new rule of 10 in new marketing – nowadays, all you need is 10 people to get something good going around your cause or project.

Chris built this in DC and introduced us to each other.  I met several remarkable people, like Jeff, Thursday, Vik,  Sheila, and Chase- only to name a few.

What’s cool is that they are all in the DC area and we actually got to know each other in person over quesadillas and beers at my favorite restaurant in DC.

Most of the people I met work in the nonprofit sector, which is not surprising given our city.  They work on various causes from the environment to equal access that are important and they are passionate about.

What I learned about Meetups  and the New Network Building in DC

1. Blogger community area meetups are a great way to meet remarkable people outside your normal circle. Start reading a blog that interests you and attend a speaking event where the blogger will be speaking to meet not just the blogger but others in their community.
2. Meetups and events are not always about the blogger or organizers. Chris graciously gave me a 10 minute interview but he mostly talked to everyone at his meetup in groups for only a few minutes and didn’t even get to speak with some people, although he tried.  Most of the time I talked to other people who wanted to meet Chris, building not just his network but also our own.  There were some amazing people there I was lucky to get to know.
3. Connect on Twitter after the event. It’s a great way to keep in touch with the new people you meet.

I do learning & networking events for a living, so the above 3 items are quite new and worth mentioning.

Discussion with Chris

Below is my just under 9-minute discussion with Chris at the restaurant where he entertains my questions about how his work started in international development in Western Africa and spread from there.

Chris volunteered with Mercy Ships on the coast of West Africa for 4 years, went to grad school in international studies, and started The Art of Non-Conformity during grad school, which has now grown into a meaningful writing career with his upcoming book of the same title, due out next year.

If you work in international development or nonprofits, he is a good person to know.

Stuff we talk about:

• What he did leading up to The Art of Non-Conformity
• Convergence – how his writing brings together the various experiences he’s had in his life so far
• He also discusses with me a need for nonprofits to work more closely together and how we could join Dan Pallotta in his call for a Change the World Conference

Two of my favorite teachers are Seth Godin and Chris Brogan. Seth is an expert in marketing and Chris is an expert in Communications – two of my favorite business functions that at a nonprofit we all get to do in some form or another.

I have their books stacked up with Uncharitable by Dan Pallotta that I am reading now and fantasize like a nerd about how a conversation with those three would go.

I think it would help win an important battle in nonprofit operations PR.  We need nonprofit trust agents to educate themselves in new media and technology to spread the story that a nonprofit’s overhead is not a measure of its effectiveness or credibility.  Nancy Lublin has already gotten us started.  We need to talk about how innovations in mobile and internet technology create opportunities to transform nonprofit operations.  Operations needs more seats at program planning tables.

Trust Agents are people who humanize the web, understand the systems, and how to make their own game, connect, and build fluid relationships.  Does this sound like your CFO?

New Marketing allows us to know our audience, make things that they want, and tell them about it in places and ways they anticipate and want and to get out of their way.  Online marketing is about messages that spread between people, not one-way announcements or ads directed at people to interrupt them and gain their attention to hear a message they weren’t interested in hearing anyway.  New marketing does not ask, “How can we use this new marketing stuff?” but “How can we be an organization that people want to connect with in this new, transparent way?”  Does your HR director know about new marketing?

Maybe we can address this during the upcoming interview with Seth and NTEN.