Gone are the days when any one job defined who we are.

 

According to Charles Handy (who wrote about all this a half-life ago), a portfolio career is one in which we customise our own unique career from various elements or compartments; like sections in a folder. So someone might be a non-exec director, a trainer, a finance manager and a school governor … all at the same time.

 

Real life is stranger than fiction, and in the course of my coaching work, I have come across some even more unusual examples:

• one professional combines six months of change-management in Europe with six-months of scriptwriting in the US
• a business owner in the UK spends the equivalent of one day per week working with a charity in Africa
• a cultural expert blends an academic career in Canada with occasional consultancy assignments all over the world

Interestingly, these people are not just in pursuit of a new business model. They have arrived at their portfolio-career structure via larger views of the world: e.g. one where diversity is valued, or a worldview that blends creativity with traditional management.

 

Borrowing a model from the writings of Ken Wilbur, we might express this as follows:

The Portfolio Career, as an answer to:

The world of work is changing: and not just in obvious ways. Everyone writes about globalisation and flexibility; but subtler changes are also colouring the landscape:

• across every age-group, there is more and more demand for work that has meaning. A portfolio career is often seen as a way of balancing the needs of meaning and the needs of financial reward.
• People increasingly live and work in different countries. A portfolio career makes it possible to show up in another country between Tuesday and Thursday (or every second week) and still live in another culture or climate
• Many professionals are looking for something “in-between” the extremes of ultra-consuming career and complete retirement
• An increasing number of “cultural creatives” are seriously searching for transformation of the workplace itself. This is sometimes expressed in leadership circles as a world in which people can somehow bring their “whole soul to work”; or where we can feel more “engaged”.

In practice there are many realities: in itself a characteristic of the 21 st century economy. But the portfolio-dream is not without its pitfalls. Resorting once again to Wilbur’s quadrants, here are some:

The pitfalls and traps of portfolio-life

It was summed up by one 54-year old when he said “I belong neither to one world nor the other” Portfolio-careers have a habit of being a holding area, where people live in two worlds for a time, often moving more fully into one or the other space after a few years.

 

And so what? Even if the portfolio-structure is a temporary experimental space, why should this denigrate its value? Indeed these creative spaces are precisely what have always allowed this generation to create new music, art, sports, leisure … so why not work?

Having already cut ties with traditional roles, those who are pursuing portfolio-careers are well-positioned to learn and develop. Indeed, many of them have designated one of their portfolios for that very purpose; for example by zoning out a day of the week, to pursue something like an MBA.

 

Enthusiastic learners often dive into their favourite subject areas: which again tend to fall into the quadrants we have already described:

Learning and Development areas:

Examples:

For learners, learning is all consuming; and particularly so when we are in our favourite quadrants! This of course is also where disappointment has its origins, for example:

1. “I have an excellent MBA, so why do I seem to be unemployable?”
2. “More and more I realise I am not cut out for the commercial stuff. The very thought of building any kind of system is a heart-sink”
3. “I am at my best working collaboratively with people who share the same values. But this is really hard to find!”
4. “My partner and I have spent all out equity on courses, so we are both having to knuckle down now and earn some money. The fun is over for a while.”
5. “I want to find roles that have meaning, not be another cog on a wheel to make some widgets I don’t care about”.

While individual values and circumstances vary, there are one or two distinctions that portfolio-career professionals have found really useful.

 

(i) Identity v. Role

 

Roles come and go, sometimes overlapping with each other. But a professional identity is enduring, and provides an anchorage in times of change.

 

An identity can be based on a value: “creativity”, for example. I know one lady who is doing some customer-service work with a company that makes funky products, and at the same time writing a book as well as putting together a professional circle of creative people. In this way, there is a common thread that runs across the fabric of all the portfolios; which not only creates some meaning to the diversity of the roles, but actually lends us some credibility, too.

 

Or this identity might be a cause, or world-vision: perhaps a society where diversity is valued, for example. This may be a catalyst for connecting with others who share this vision, we may be engaged in academic research (perhaps for a Ph. D), doing some diversity training in organisations to pay the bills, and indeed using these organisations links to test the validity of the concepts. Again, the common thread of vision helps to bind these activities together, it lends credibility and it nourishes us on the days when we may be struggling to keep the fabric of our complex lives together.

 

(ii) a CV versus a Biography

 

More and more, I find myself working with people for whom this distinction is of immense practical importance: not only to how they are perceived, but by how they perceive themselves.

 

A CV is for job-seekers. No matter what the format, the most important thing it says is that this person is looking for a job. This job may be interim, or part-time, it may well be very senior, but whatever the level or the format, what those three pages most clearly say is “I am looking for a job”.

 

A biography is for speakers, writers, authors, event hosts, entertainers, artists, thought-leaders, politicians etc. These people are not looking for a “job” – well not in this portfolio, anyway –they are looking to build an identity, a presence, or to become part of a group who are doing so.

 

It is important not to mix the two of these up! You may need both. So, if you are dealing with a company who are looking for a non-exec director, 2 days per month, which format is appropriate?

Like independents generally, there are three forms of support that no serious portfolio-player should be without:

1. admin: every hour spent on administration is wasted, even for those who are good at it. It would have been better spent on development: in any quadrant.
2. some form of business-development coaching or mentoring or training. No matter what form your learning takes, there is no point in your expertise being the world’s best kept secret. It seems tragic that tends of thousands are spent on MBA’s, yet nothing is invested to develop the reputation of the holder.
3. advisory board, mastermind group … some form of peer-support from fellow-experts, where experience can be shared and learning passed on. Like business-development coaching, some groups are better at this than others, but isolation is never healthy.

We cannot leave this subject without some thoughts about retirement.

 

There are some wonderful examples of businesses being built (often later in life) which then get sold and whereby the proceeds provide a nice retirement for the owners. But for every one of those, there are at least five where the dream does not materialise.

 

As a business-coach and mentor, I often find myself torn between the dream of the coachee and the duties of realism. Building a business for sale is an arduous and risky process, and as someone who has had a privileged involvement in some very successful sales, I have yet to meet one person who said it had been easy.

 

There are several solid reasons why you might want to invest in property instead:

1. you will have to build a management team that will last throughout the sales process, and you will have to recruit, train, pay, replace and nurture them throughout the process. How much will that cost?
2. you will have to demonstrate that the business-acquisition does not depend on you personally, which means that you will have to find and hire someone who can do this, or build a system that you can prove does it automatically.
3. there will be an earn-out period of several years, through which you may well have to keep your new owners happy
4. you will spend more time with accountants and lawyers that you have ever bargained for in your life
5. you will meet a lot of people telling you to do it, whom it will turn out have a lot less experience than they claim, and are probably hoping to sell you their services along the way

It’s still a wonderful adventure, and a great achievement, but hey, you have been warned!

 

With all of that said, it is important for those contemplating a portfolio career not to forget about retirement-planning. Beware of that enthusiasm that says you will never retire, and those who point to Uncle Jim who worked in his corner-shop until he dropped.

 

We are not of Uncle Jim’s generation, and our network (through whom we probably get our business) will be long-outsourced and retired before then. I see a lot of portfolio-career people who are ignoring their retirement needs; but this does not have to be you!

Further information

Success 121 has devised a self-assessment comprising “50 Vital Questions for Independents”, which is equally valid for professionals looking at a portfolio-career. Click here to request your complementary copy. For further resources, see www.success121.com

© John Niland, Success 121, June 2006. May be reproduced on condition that the “Further Information” section above is included.