Pressures to downsize, rightsize, and resize have shredded many organizations. Global opportunities and challenges kept organizations churning even amidst periods of the highest growth. Nearly three decades of whitewater have atomized labor markets and the organizations that depend on them. The “Brand Called You” phenomenon sprang from the 1980s and now thrives in physical space as well as cyberspace. Employees learned under imposed duress and now actively leverage this truth: They are on their own. Furthermore, they are what they do or can do, not where, for whom, or even under what title they did it. The opportunity and threat of “going it alone” down the river or, perhaps more accurately, of going from temporary kayaking group to temporary kayaking group means that you are your own brand, your own certified promise of what you can do. The certification comes from your track record and from your fellow travellers. Others organizing a trip need to know what they can and cannot count on from you.^[3]

So-called “free agents” account for about 30 percent of the American workforce.^[4] In 2007, 33% of workers in Japan, supposedly a bastion of ocean liner security and lifetime employment, qualified as “nonregular” workers. The size and prominence of Manpower, Inc. bears witness to the temporary nature of employment: 4,400 offices in 73 countries and territories; $17.6 billion in revenue in 2006 (85 percent outside the United States); 400,000 customers worldwide, including all the Fortune 100 and 98 percent of the Fortune 500 companies; 30,000 staff; and 4.4 million placements in 2006. (Pause and take that in: 4.4 million placements in one year! Manpower leads a small nation of temp workers.)^[5] And Manpower is just one of the companies providing this service.

Daniel Pink, author of Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself, says the changing workplace looks increasingly like present day Hollywood—and not just because of the intensity of the drama. “Large permanent organizations with fixed rosters of individuals are giving way to small, flexible networks with ever-changing collections of talent.”^[6] How strong is your “Brand You?” If you didn’t have your corporation and title on your business card, what would you have? To star in your own film you need flexible networks. What can you do to strengthen your brand?

People don’t have jobs anymore. They have portfolios of projects. This differs from mid- to late-twentieth century, when a worker peg fit more neatly into a position, and the “organization man” held sway. Working successfully on projects requires strong emotional intelligence and adept use of stakeholder mapping. Master a project management software (ideally in combination with a transparent groupware). Go to a workshop on teams, decision-making, and running meetings.^[7] Learn responsibility charting, a method of pairing key project steps with stakeholder analysis and then employing its language to categorize decision-making roles. These techniques enable you to put a far sharper edge on “who is doing what when” than can standard job descriptions.^[8] Less formal and up-to-date role definition places more importance on you defining them.

Above all, recognize that each project amounts to a run down the river. Temporary teams assemble with a wide range of possible interdependence, as discussed in Chapter 8, “Building Flocks: Teaming for Today’s Run.” This means that everything—everything—is at least potentially a negotiation. Negotiation and its sister skill persuasion should figure prominently in your tool box, aka, your survival kit. Attend a negotiation workshop or two or three.^[9] Finally, practice, practice, practice, at work, at home, and in the world at large.

In kayaking, you need to practice an offside roll. If you typically roll on the right side, you need to do some practice rolling on the left and vice versa. Then, should you find yourself in a situation where you cannot make your onside roll, you have another option. For example, you might be stuck in a hydraulic (pinned in the current like a piece of wood in the backwash at the bottom of a waterfall) in a way that makes it impossible to set up on your onside. At this point, experienced kayakers will switch hands while they are underwater and try a roll on the other side. It will sometimes do the trick. Practicing offside also increases skill level, confidence, and the ability to meet unexpected challenges.

In work, you might cultivate a set of other skills so that you have a fallback career if your first one takes a turn for the worse or ceases to be engaging. When Kathleen Flinn’s corporate job dumped her unceremoniously into the brink, she leveraged her passion for cooking and writing to start afresh. Play in other areas may keep your primary career more interesting, or it could become the primary career. Try something completely different. Bruce McEwen, author of The End of Stress as We Know It, says the key to beating stress is to plunge into short-term projects that are different from your typical work.^[10] Discussing the current understanding of stress, he delineates the physiological consequences of stress and the rise of stressors—simply stated, while we have more access to the basics that so occupied (preoccupied) our ancestors, our permanent whitewater generates ever more stressors. Successfully addressing stress turns on “plunging into a short-lived program that bears little resemblance to one’s life but by gradually and permanently building in new habits based on an understanding of how brain and body work.”^[11]

In the process we wire and rewire our brains and our bodies. We increase our behavioral, psychological, and emotional repertoire for dealing with the range of contemplated and unimagined challenges that a permanent whitewater environment can hurl at us. Or, as McEwen says, “remember the evidence that by repeated thoughts and actions we can alter not only the functioning but also the structure of the neural networks in our brains.”^[12] Training and skill development help us increase our sense of control and build a set of diverse skills that might come in handy downstream.

In whitewater, security comes from maneuverability. The boat has no keel and no rudder. Stability comes from the ability to move quickly, change direction, and stay afloat. Paddlers learn strokes such as the sweep and draw to turn their boats quickly, and learn to brace themselves to respond to turbulence. Your feet do not rest on a solid deck.

When you leave the crew of the ocean liner, you have to give up the illusion of control and the desire for stability. You no longer look out for the occasional iceberg. You pick your way around rocks and through waves. The more maneuverable you can make your thinking and the more varied your skills, the greater your stability.

As you work, you should develop skills for the challenges you will likely face in the future. Consider Harry Houdini, the master escape artist. He devised his own tricks, but he knew that he could not control all the risks, hence he kept perfecting his skills. He not only practiced breaking out of handcuffs and straitjackets, but he also prepared himself for hostile environments. For example, when he prepared for some winter escapes in a river, he took successively colder baths each day to condition his body to the shock of cold water, and he worked on improving his ability to hold his breath. He didn’t know exactly how he would use this unusual set of skills, but it certainly seemed like they might prove useful given his line of work.

Once, this conditioning came in particularly handy. He was lowered through the hole in an icy river and he escaped from his bonds quickly. Yet, he could not find the hole in the ice. People on the shore waited. The minutes passed. Where was he? Had he perished? He was still alive, stealing breaths from the air pockets under the ice as he searched for the exit. He found the hole and emerged safely. His conditioning in anticipation of known and unknown challenges had saved him. Surviving under the ice is not a skill that everyone will need, but something akin to it belongs in your portfolio. Consider what you might face downriver. Consider what you actually have in your portfolio of skills. Look at the river ahead with a clear eye and, if necessary, start filling up the bathtub with ice.

Our distant ancestors emerged from the oceans with bodies largely composed of salt water. In effect, they carried their environment with them. We now adapt ourselves to live on all seven continents, on mountains, under the sea, and above the sky. Part of this adaptation comes from the relatively forgiving nature of our physiology, but much of it comes from our ability to create familiar environmental pockets through shells such as tents, planes, submarines, ocean liners, kayaks, and spacecraft. We continue to evolve the main engine of that adaptability, namely our brain.^[13] In our lives, we also create psychological and emotional shells to build our sense of security—degrees, career paths, and titles.

Organizational change often entails altering these shells. You might need to adopt new equipment with more flexibility and maneuverability, equipment better suited to this environment. Like a hermit crab, you sometimes have to change your shell. Do you occupy the right shell for a permanent whitewater environment?

A good defense can be the best offense in meeting change. While a life jacket and helmet are important on the river, paddling skills can keep you from needing to use your life jacket or paddling past the point of no return. A skilled and alert driver could make an airbag unnecessary. A skilled trapeze artist will never have to test the net (although it is nice to know it is there). In organizations, the value of your own skills affords you true security. If your current organization values your skills, then you will continue to have a position there. If other organizations value your skills, then you will have opportunities to find work with them. In addition to specific skills, you need the broader skills in managing change as described in this book. Above all, you need the mindset to keep identifying and developing key skills.

Sweeping and Turning

In the sweep stroke, the kayaker moves the paddle from front to rear with a sweep out to the side, turning the bow of the boat in the opposite direction. This is just one of many steering strokes that you can apply in forward and reverse directions to turn quickly to correct course in the midst of turbulent water. In organizational and market whitewater, the more you can increase your maneuverability, the more easily you can get out of harm’s way or seize temporary opportunities. Part of keeping yourself safe is to learn to maneuver more quickly and more effectively.

At work, maneuverability is vital to continued success. Build people skills that are transferable to other jobs. Think carefully about investing time in learning company-specific or technology-specific skills, since both will likely change. Occasionally, you will need to invest in learning something very idiosyncratic and localized—but be aware of how this might reduce your future flexibility. Think about how each assignment prepares you for a new role at your current company or at a new one. Ensure that you concentrate on developing flexible and transferable skill sets so that you create and re-create the power to sweep and turn throughout your career.

Much of the business self-development literature focuses on the importance of ongoing development, of refining existing skills and developing new ones.^[14] Keep learning. Practice your offside roll. Make a commitment to ongoing personal and professional development.

Even while your safety depends primarily on your own actions, you are not entirely alone on the river. You might still look to others for safety. To think like a paddler is to avoid taking a strictly “Me, Inc.” view of the world. You paddle with others and depend on them for the work you do and for safety. One can argue that in many ways you depend more on others now than ever before even as you depend on yourself more than ever before. Welcome to another paradox of permanent whitewater. (We’ll consider this “safety in numbers” a bit more in Chapter 8 on teaming.)

Collegial cooperation can significantly increase the odds for successful navigation of dangerous turns in the river. Even in the Rolodex age, networks were critical.^[15] In the greater turbulence and faster pace of the MySpace and BlackBerry era, the power of a personal network only becomes more important. Networks such as LinkedIn span organizations and keep you connected with friends and professional colleagues in other organizations. These networks, as well as less digital ones—for example, networks around church or school or local community—can offer valuable resources and connections when the ocean liner breaks apart. Their members can help to keep hard times at bay and come to your rescue when hard times arrive. They provide leads and certify your abilities.

What do these network members look for? First and foremost, reliability counts. Peers especially pay attention to whether you do what you say you will do. Decades of research on corporate high potentials has documented this seemingly obvious point. And if that mattered 20, 30, or 40 years ago in a more structured and stable time, then it matters even more in our whitewater times. Time is short and the river demanding. “Anyone know someone who can help with...?”

Networks matter more than ever, but when push comes to shove, you are responsible for your own safety. You will need to rely first and foremost on your own skills and equipment for your survival. Make sure your own life jacket is zipped up, your helmet is tight, and your spray skirt secure.

As noted in Chapter 2, “Working the Eddies: Pace Yourself to Preserve Your Sanity,” pacing is vital to building in breaks in a relentless and unpredictable environment. You also need to watch your health. Get yourself a decent health plan—it’s worth the money. Get regular checkups. Utilize specialists. Subscribe to a medical newsletter (Harvard has one; Mayo has one) or visit WebMD regularly. Pay particular attention to articles about lifestyle—exercise, relaxation, and food. Food matters—in the short run and for the long haul. If world-class athletes regularly refine their routines, diets, medical care, and psychological practices, then why not you? They play their game intermittently. You play yours everyday.

We need to get tough. Medical evidence suggests that rising allergy rates in the United States might be because kids don’t play in the dirt enough. They are not exposed to an environment that allows the immune system to get stronger. Researchers have even found that working in the dirt can help alleviate depression because microorganisms in dirt appear to activate serotonin production.^[16] So if someone tells you “go pound dirt” or even to “eat dirt,” thank them for the advice—and take it. You need to put yourself in situations that will test and develop your immune system...literally and metaphorically.