Published 3 years too early!
A bellwether among business books on how to thrive in our new work cultures: “The Gig Mindset Advantage”
The book, published in early 2021, is recognized today as an early warning for organizations seeking change and innovation, and who are concerned about keeping their best workers during our current post-pandemic era of working-from-home and rethinking of purpose.
It also inspires workers, concerned about their own personal futures, with case studies and practical ideas.
The pandemic moved the earth from under companies’ feet! It changed the power game towards the workers themselves. But the answers are not obvious, and differ depending on many criteria.
We are in the era of what I call a Bold New Breed. Gig mindsetters are leading a new game, with new attitudes and new behaviors.
We know the traditional ways of working are on the way out, and it is expected that by 2027 a majority of the American workforce will be freelance workers.
Gig mindsetters’ ways of thinking and behaving are already aligned to these new ways of working:
- Autonomy
- Fast learning
- Detecting and solving of problems
- Working across borders
- Experimenting
- Scanning the horizon
You can see summaries of the chapters in the book here. including a list of behaviors compared to traditional ways of thinking and behaving.
After the book came out, I was asked to keynote two events at well-known European institutions looking to inspire their graduates on the way to new work lives.
• I spoke to the alumni network at the London Business School.
• I also keynoted the graduation ceremony at the Executive MBA program at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership.
Attendees in both cases were working people looking for guidance about their new work lives. What’s next? How to apply what I’ve learned? Based on feedback, I believe I inspired some of them!
Around the same time, the Harvard Business Review published my article “How Workers with a Gig Mindset Can Help Your Company Thrive” in their organizational learning series. It included my thinking about deviance and positive deviance: perception of behaviors vary radically between traditional views of work and gig mindsetters! More on that later.
