Is Your Job on the Endangered Professions List?

WARNING!  Your job may be on the endangered professions list.

Hello Internal Support Services pros, this post is especially for you.

Your long-held monopoly on specialist knowledge about your discipline and service offering is crumbling under the weight of easy access to information and a myriad of experts who are more than willing to work-around you.

I am talking to you in IT, HR, Finance, Facilities Management, Internal Communications, Marketing and PR.

Endangered Professions Warning! Internal support services are facing a value and identity crisis. The axis of power has shifted and, at first glance, it is not in your favour. You are under daily pressure to prove your usefulness and contribute genuine value to the business. Failure to navigate these choppy waters will chart your course to irrelevance and ultimate extinction.

In the face of these changing times, which tribe will you join?

• The Luddites?

• The Ostriches?

• The Opportunists?

No need to answer right now.Take a break from scrambling your defenses and propping up protectionist policies to ponder this.

Are You Thinking Enough About Your Contribution Value?

In my lively conversation on WB-40 podcast with hosts Matt Ballantine and Chris Weston, we explore how internal services can offer unique value in changing times.

This is your invitation to peep over the fortress wall of your own profession.  Go on, pop your head above the battlements. It is your chance to take a stand against the slow decline from endangered to extinct.

Click to tune into our twisty-turny conversation about Creative HR; and the internal support services chances of survival.

Our chat is jam-packed with brainpokes and ideas to help you position yourself and your internal service role to contribute value and make a positive impact.

"If you can’t be a change maker,you absolutely positively must be change embracer. "

Here is what you will learn from my podcast conversation with Matt and Chris:

• The main threats to your discipline, where are they coming from and what preventative action you can take to remove your job from the endangered professions list.

• How your single discipline specialist knowledge is no longer enough to guarantee your survival and success (and why you need to step out of the echo chamber of your own discipline despite your fear and the real prospect of discomfort).

• Why you need to collaborate with other internal support services pros to beat the common enemy.

• Why if you can’t be a change maker, you absolutely positively must be change embracer. You don’t have to create the new rules. But you must be willing and able to adapt and navigate successfully a world where rules are constantly being broken and rewritten.

• Why you need to throw off the (no longer) safe ‘blankie’ of best practise and get creative. Oh and that includes retiring those flabby, wheezy, decrepit processes that cause friction throughout the organisation.

• A few ideas about how to find your unique value proposition and take a step towards removing your job from the endangered professions list. I choose Creative HR. What will you chose?

• Why you need to be mindful of the dangers of hiring for ‘fit’ and why hiring for contribution, difference and alignment of purpose makes more sense for the fluid job roles of today. We take a quick ramble through the rugged terrain of recruiting and discuss ditching some default hiring practices. We name the outdated, the plain ridiculous and share some fresh approaches to hiring worth giving a try.

Need more tips? I recommend you drop the drawbridge between your discipline and those of your internal support services colleagues. Step across the divide and go cross-discipline adventuring.You may be surprised to find solutions to common challenges, and maybe even salvation and survival. This is the time for building bridges, not walls.Before I sign off, let’s go back to the question I asked you at the start of this post.In these changing times, to which tribe do you belong?

• The Luddites?

• The Ostriches?

• The Opportunists?

Ultimately, the decision is yours to make and live with.

What themes in this podcast conversation resonated with you?

What are you doing to Snatch Your Endangered Profession from the Jaws of Extinction?

Share your tactics in the comments.