The Agile Career

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted to be speaking with Marti Konstant. She is a workplace futurist and the bestselling author of Activate Your Agile Career. She has an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and is a former technology executive who has worked in Silicon Valley. As a top career influencer, she has been featured in media outlets such as NBC Chicago, Forbes, and The Muse, and has worked in companies like Samsung, Dow Jones, and Apple. Marti is an expert in applying agility principles to workforce development. Marti, this is a brilliant concept. I actually spent Thanksgiving weekend reading your book. It was fun and it was practical. Thank you for writing it.

Marti Konstant: Thank you for reading it. And I can feel the enthusiasm in your voice, Anita.

Anita Brick: So let's start so we have a working definition. At a basic level and very concisely, how do you define an agile career?

Marti Konstant: I'm going to give you my definition. An agile career, career agility, is a self-reflective, incremental career path guided by response to change, evolving job roles, and designed to optimize creativity, growth, and happiness. Ten years ago, when I typed in “what is career agility?” it didn't exist on Google. I created this definition patterned off of agile practices and software developers and research. Google now ranks my definition of career agility as the number one response.

Anita Brick: That's wonderful. Here's an alum. And her question is: “While I like the idea of having an agile career, the whole idea feels complex and complicated. Where can a person start without making a commitment to what seems like a lifelong career practice?”

Marti Konstant: Agile as a practice across organizations, across software development, across everything means breaking things down into testable items, figuring out what works. And in the parlance of agile, creating a sprint to finish that aspect of the test and then making adjustments and moving along.

You might ask me, well, how do we make this practical? So an A/B testing approach might be something to consider that can be accomplished through side education, a side gig, which I call a parallel pursuit, to better understand what you want to do. This is not risky if you're doing it on the side and you're not quitting your job, just to test something out.

Anita Brick: Got it. So that really brings us to a question from an MBA student on A/B testing. When you use this, and if I'm going to use this in my career, how do I know that I have the right A and B inputs?

Marti Konstant: You know what your A is and you might not know what your B or C is yet because you're trying to figure that out. And the reason you're looking for a B or a C is because there's just something about A that feels like it needs a boost, it needs more growth, it needs something. So you are the person that sets up the test. Do I like this one better than this one?

So say you're in marketing and you're in marketing analytics. I've been doing this for a while. I'm a quantitative genius at all of this, and I'm really helping people make better decisions. But it's not bringing me joy. And you might be looking out there going, well, there might be something in strategy. You might start doing some research on how artificial intelligence is going to impact the profession and where those roles are going. You might say, does this fit me? Am I curious about this? You might take a seminar, a webinar. Again, it's agile. It could be as short as a 90-minute webinar to get you up to speed on testing the waters, to see if you would pursue that any further. To pursue your B.

Anita Brick: The A is what you're doing now.

Marti Konstant: Right.

Anita Brick: The B is really up to you, and you can learn more about it by education, whether it's a webinar or reading, whatever it happens to be. So the B is something that you can experiment, pop out. There's no right answer to B at this point. The A is given and the B is really up to you.

Marti Konstant: It's up to you. You are the expert in this.

Anita Brick: Okay. Got it. This goes to something that you emphasize quite a bit in the book. An alum asked this question and he said: “Hi, Marti. You talk about optimizing one's personal brand. How do you advise others to create that optimization on a personal brand that’s evolving. I am in the midst of a career change.”

Marti Konstant: Your personal brand does evolve and basically answers the questions who are you? What are you good at? What are you known for? What do you care about? Those things do change, but there are certain elements that never change. Say curiosity is part of your brand. That's not going to change. So there are certain elements that are evergreen, and there are other things about your brand in how you manifest your brand that will change. Manifestation can happen in the form of career-brand phrases that you use about yourself. An example might be if you're in customer experience and you want to express what you do and not say it in a way that's boring, you might create a memorable statement that always ends with, I'm the person in the room that always asks the extra question.

Anita Brick: So you look for the things that are consistent pillars, and then as you make changes, you tweak them. But your foundation or your purpose or the things that are consistent remain, and making those small tweaks as you evolve are totally fine, because the basis and the foundation there is consistent. And that's what people want in a brand.

Let's talk about someone who is in a situation. It's a leadership development program. Each rotation can last three months, six months, sometimes even longer. And this an alum–must be a very recent alum–because she's just moving into her second rotation. She said: “I'm in the midst of a leadership development program akin to one of your tour of duty projects, which is the way you describe these projects.” As you said, you get very excited about them and you have that energy to drive through. She went on to say, “My first rotation was very successful. The second is definitely not. How do you advise individuals when a tour of duty created a setback rather than success?”

Marti Konstant: You mentioned that there's time constraints, so let's just say that this person is halfway through their rotation and they've got six more weeks or they have eight more weeks. These rotations are important and the next piece of it may be phenomenal and you may be able to refer back to even some of the setbacks of the previous one that will help you be better at the next one.

Anita Brick: Thank you for that. The question, though, is that each rotation impacts your overall rating and your ability to land a full time job when you finish the rotation. Given that, would you change your answer or would you stick to what you said?

Marti Konstant: I would modify it somewhat. This applies to anything that isn't working. You have it in your power to tweak and increment along the way, and you also have it in your power to work with advisors and mentors and people that can help you navigate through this.

Because sometimes when we’re in a job role and it's going south, sometimes the things that we do to help with the course correction make it into a beautiful, meaningful result.

Anita Brick:Okay, so let me stop you for a second. Give me an example, because this sounds very nice, but a little bit maybe not in touch with how things are in a lot of companies. The alum who brought this up said things are not going well. How do you have the ability to tweak when you're not in a very leverageable position?

Marti Konstant: Well, I think we've all been in situations like that. Right. Do you have an example of someone that you know who is able to come from a really disadvantaged place and able to build and tweak their way into a better place?

Marti Konstant: I can speak for myself. I was in a situation where there was a management change. One of those people in marketing that was working way too many hours, got a new VP and the HR person was doing some wonky, wonky things. It was really uncomfortable and I had lost the boss that was my mentor and my advocate. He's gone. And this person that stepped in was really nice but he didn't get marketing, right? So I was leading marketing, I started talking well who else can I talk to in the organization? I started talking to a couple VP levels to gain insights.

And so one of the VPs told me, well, Marti, sometimes you come across as too colloquial. You come across as too narrow and everything's marketing and marketing is everything, and you're not seeing the big picture. Well, no one had taken the time to give me that feedback. Certainly not my new boss. And so I was able to take some conversations like that. There's always a conversation to be had, and there's always another human being either inside or outside the organization that can help you come up with ideas to tweak.

So I did come up with ideas. I came up with some new ideas about how to pitch budgets, about how to break through the personality problem that I was having with the HR person. I was just like, so confused. And it was a really dark, bleak time for me. And my star was not very high at all at this time. I turned it around with the new leadership, and I have a lot of stories like that with people.

Anita Brick: Those are great. The feedback piece there was missing–feedback being an essential component in having career agility. There was another alum who asked the question: “How do I help others feel comfortable to give me constructive feedback. I asked for feedback and it's lukewarm at best.”

Marti Konstant: I've also had that issue myself to get the kind of feedback that you need, especially from someone that's in your department. I think you're talking about people that you're managing. Is that correct?

Anita Brick: Not necessarily. They didn't really say it could be somebody who reports to them. It could be leadership. Maybe that person is intimidating, that part we don't know. But what are some things that you can do to make another person feel comfortable sharing critical feedback when that's really what you need. They're giving feedback, but it's just kind of not all that helpful because it's kind of lukewarm.

Marti Konstant: I'm a big fan of asking for things in the context of other people, so if I'm going to ask someone for feedback, I'm going to use a networking strategy where I say, you know, your research results and this component was pretty impressive and did A, B, and C. I'd really like to better understand this in the context of an issue that I'm having. So you're complimenting them. It's about them.

If you're just going to someone going, oh, I've got a problem, it's not the same as building a relationship where you're somewhat on the same level. Huge fan of addressing the things that they're interested in because clearly you're asking for feedback because you respect them, you admire them, maybe you even fear them. They've got the goods and something that you don't have. You know, the hardest thing is going to somebody that you're not comfortable with asking for feedback. I don't know if I would entirely recommend that but I'm sure it's been done.

Anita Brick: Well, it depends how you want to hear it. If you're going to ask for feedback, you want to make sure that you don't argue with them and that you take it in whether you agree with it or not. Going to someone that scares you can be a little bit daunting, and sometimes it's worth it, and sometimes it's not.

So an MBA student–to pivot just a little bit–you talk about role expansion within your current company. And he said: “I can see the role expansion within my company very clearly, but I haven't been able to convince leadership. How would you advise an individual to demonstrate the value I can add, while reducing the actual and perceived risks?”

Marti Konstant: Well, there's several parts of the model. One of them is take on a personal side project that demonstrates your awesome capabilities. Another side project way of looking at it is to do a volunteer project in a related association, or something that demonstrates it fully, and you've got like a fully baked case study to storytell your way and impress your way through it.

The best way, find out the biggest problem that someone has that's related to your area of interest, and go and help them solve it.

Anita Brick: That's a good idea.

Marti Konstant: You got to treat everything like a network of figuring out, okay, this person's reticent, this person's best like understand who they are, what they do, what their sphere of influence is.

Anita Brick: How do you do that without coming across as arrogant or intrusive?

Marti Konstant: Curiosity.

Anita Brick: If I came to you or you came to me and you said, I know that you're struggling with supply chain right now, let's just say you're super interested in supply chain. How do you approach me so that I don't feel even worse than I did before our conversation?

Marti Konstant: I wouldn't attend to the problem statement just yet. I would start with a relationship-building technique where you establish a time to talk with them about their work. And say, I'm really curious about your work. I want to understand more about it. Paint some of the picture of the cool stuff that they've done, get to know them a little bit, and then get to a problem statement. It could be a second conversation.

Anita Brick: And then how do you go from problem statement to being helpful to them without making them feel that you're intruding?

Marti Konstant: In this case, you wouldn't be reporting to them, right?

Anita Brick: No. If it's in a different area.

Marti Konstant: A lot of this depends. It depends on the nature of your relationship with your boss. If a boss isn't helping someone grow, that's a problem. And not all bosses are like that. So if there is a boss that can help you navigate that, that would be one way. It's a very tender dance.

I'm convinced we have the potential of finding people and finding those pathways to get those conversations and to make our way through that navigation. If, in fact, you find a total block and this is like an unhappy circumstance. Then we're talking a totally different situation.

Anita Brick: Right, then you can't expand the role. Do you have time for a couple more questions?

Marti Konstant: Sure.

Anita Brick: Okay. So you talk about the idea of multi-preneur. This Booth student says: “In the book, you talk about the idea of multi-preneur. How can I be one? And more importantly, how do you advise someone to navigate the potential conflicts of interest with a side gig?

Marti Konstant: That's an interesting question. When I was coming up some time ago, it was kind of a nerve wracking thing to have a side gig, because you almost didn't want your employer to know. It's all about the messaging around it. If your side gig is, say, totally different, you could couch it in the context of cross-pollination of ideas, innovation. Innovation happens when the smashing of two different types of things and just say, I'm really exploring this innovation component, if your boss is asking you, for instance. I think this pattern piece is really an important part as it relates to this part of the industry. Rationalizing it that way, it's all about your messaging.

Anita Brick: And of course, starting with company policy.

Marti Konstant: Yes.

Anita Brick: If there is kind of an overlap, is there a strategy that you would use? Are there tactics that you would use to make that more palatable to a current employer?

Marti Konstant: I spend a lot of time on messaging, and it's how you present that idea that you're working on. It's got to be positioned in it, and if it is indeed a conflict, then why are you doing it?

Anita Brick: Good point.

Marti Konstant: Right? I would question that.

Anita Brick: Absolutely. And so I think if you're doing a side gig, you have to be really honest with yourself. Should this be an internal side gig? Because I see people do that too. They create a project internally that helps them bridge to a new type of role, a new function, and they do it within their company. So the rewards of that stay in the company. And that's another way to approach this.

Marti Konstant: And this is an observation that I've had about the company LinkedIn, when Reid Hoffman was at the helm. He's who I referred to in the book. I expect you to learn as much as you can and to grow in your role and to work into the next one, these 2 to 3 years, towards the duties. The marketing example you could go into like several areas of marketing. Keep on going. You could go up, you could go sideways. What was important to him is that the company was innovative, and the more they got new ideas from people that were coming in, he even encouraged people to go out and do speaking engagements for conferences and come back with all of that information and share it with the rest of the organization.

So if all organizations took that mentality and that culture of Carol Dweck, growth mindset. Yeah. And Bev Kay, you know, help them grow or watch them go, we'd all be fine and we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Anita Brick: Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, if you are taking a strategic view of your career and you want to make sure that you do have career agility, we haven't talked about this at all. But part of it is the selection of your employer in the first place.

Marti Konstant: Exactly.

Anita Brick: Yeah. Ultimately, when you create career agility and you have an agile career, there are many different things that you can do to do that. You need to stay current. You need to be learning. You need to be curious, have an open mind. Kind of the growth mindset, all of those things.

What are three things that you would advise someone who wants to effectively create career agility? Not just for today, but for the long term.

Marti Konstant: It's actually two batches of three, but the first three would be, you know, know yourself, understand yourself. That's branding. Notice the signals and the trends and be prepared to act. And so that's three things. There's planning in there that's assumed.

But it's really know yourself. Notice the signals and trends and act on them. The rallying cry from me to everyone is when you see change happening, don't do nothing. Good change, bad change, whatever. Make certain that you are noticing it and you've got a plan to interact and flow with it and adapt to it, or alter it, or adjust to it.

Anita Brick: I mean, that's super important. You said you had a second.

Marti Konstant: Yeah, I have a second batch.

Anita Brick: Go for it.

Marti Konstant: I did a keynote on how to bring your future to your present by Designing a Resilient Workplace. I had the acronym Challenge Your DNA. So challenge your assumptions about what you think is true. Disrupt the current model. Because models are changing career models, everything is changing. Next thing on the N in DNA is notice the signals and trends, which is the same as I said before, and then act. So the different and this one is the challenging of the assumptions and the disruption of the model. You know, we might think that disrupt is a little crazy, like, oh, I'm getting tired of this disrupt thing. But organizations and people who don't disrupt the models go out of business.

Anita Brick: This is true. All you have to do is look at the past five years and you see the changes.

So I like this. So it is really about knowing yourself, being able to challenge even the assumptions you have about yourself and what you're capable of.

Marti Konstant: Yes.

Anita Brick: And then keep current, keep curious and make sure you have consistent action and don't wait for things to happen to you. Proceed.

Marti Konstant: That is the future-proof recipe. You will be future proof. You will never really be in a situation where you're not valuable, because how you've crafted your skills and your attitude, you're going to be valuable.

Anita Brick: Got it. And your story.

Well, I'm so glad that you wrote the book. It is very thought provoking and also very practical, so thank you for that. Keep doing the work that you're doing because it's very, very important. And I appreciate and I'm sure those listening appreciate the time that you gave us today and the insights that you shared.

Marti Konstant: Well, and thank you for pulling alumni and students on this because this felt more real-life.

Anita Brick: Great. I appreciate that, you know, being from Booth yourself, that we all come up with good questions because we have inquisitive minds.

Marti Konstant: I'll leave it on this. When I saw your questions, I said, this is a total Booth questionnaire. I just started laughing because I get a lot of questions for podcasts, and they're kind of basic. And I just said, this is a total Booth questionnaire. Some of these questions are challenging.

Anita Brick: That's good. Well, thanks again, Marti and really appreciate that you made the time.

Marti Konstant: Okay. Take care. Thank you, Anita. And I hope people enjoy the session.

Anita Brick: Thanks. And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.