I am asked often to provide advice on managing a portfolio career by people seeking to escape their corporate pasts. I have just read a book that I will happily recommend to anyone seeking to pursue a range of new interests. That book is Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff.
Le Cunff describes the process of her departure from a dream career at Google after a health event and how she began to explore the elements of.a new life in neuroscience. The book outlines a number of practical tools to aid the process of discovery and experimentation that sit at the heart of a portfolio career.
My Curiosity, the expatriate, has returned
Bright eyed she can be seen strolling
on this side of life again
Marie Luise Kaschnitz, My Curiosity (tr Lisel Mueller)
Le Cunff describes an Experimental Mindset as a combination of high ambition and high curiosity ( a classic two by two matrix). Le Cunff encourages stimulating curiosity with note taking on observations and then analysing those observations for patterns that generate questions and hypotheses as to the next steps. Those hypotheses become the foundations for commitments to actions over an extended period, which she calls PACTs. The PACT is a way to test your new interests in action and learn in the process. The PACT leads to the ability to experiment through trial and error over time to identify the positives, negatives and next steps. Those next steps are evaluated using Preserve, Pivot or Pause as choices.
Finally, Le Cunff describes the power of sharing your intention in networks and building communities to support your new goals. This last section of the book describes Working Out Loud perfectly without using that term.
I can heavily endorse Le Cunff’s book as I have been using my own variations of the approaches since 2013. Those practices have helped me discover new capabilities and passions. I have built opportunities and networks in which to put them to practice. Lastly, I have experienced the continuous learning and growth that comes from the experiemental mindset. My examples include:
- A PACT to blog daily which was the genesis of this blog and allowed a forum to explore a range of diverse interests
- Working Out Loud on what I was learning which dramatically expanded my networks and led to the connections with Change Agents Worldwide to take those connections globally and even the annual Working Out Loud weeks
- My work in Digital Health which began from network connections and grew from curiosity and a focus on doing work together with interesting people
- Drinking 100 cups of coffee with diverse people to learn more about a subject or extend networks in an area of interest
- Various writing projects which I have structured as PACTs
- My new project of engaging AI practitioners to hear their stories of the front lines of AI adoption, a much engaging and current way to learn best practices and far more insightful than listening to consultants or reading history.
- My position on the Board of Bank First which was the result of a weak ties connection recommending me to a head hunter recruiting for the board. The former colleague knew of my interests in health care, education, digital and transformation from my working out loud.
If you are considering a portfolio career or in the process of building one, I can strongly recommend Tiny Experiments as a platform for your experimentation. Even better, if you do some research and wrap the practices described in the book in a range of other conversations we have had on this blog around Working Out Loud, the power of networks and the Start-up of You.
The graves of our misgivings we build to the end
As we end unfinished
Gary Soto, Towards It