Sarabeth Berk: More than my title

We talk to Sarabeth Berk about hybrid identities as the future for skillsets and workplace roles.

00:35 Insights & Takeaways
10:00 Interview

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Book on Amazon: here
Author website: here

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Transcript

Marcus Kirsch: 0:15

Welcome to the wicked podcast where we read business books you don't have time for. I'm Marcus Kirsch.

Troy Norcross: 0:21

And I'm Troy Norcross,

Marcus Kirsch: 0:23

and we are your co hosts for the wicked podcast,

Troy Norcross: 0:26

we take from the 1000s of business books out there and test the author's ideas by comparing them to real world challenges. With over 40 years or projects between us, we've got quite a bit to compare against. We give you the condensed takeaways followed by an interview with the author's

Marcus Kirsch: 0:41

we know you want actions, not theories and his actions that we want to help shape, because that's what the wicked podcast is all about helping you to become a wicked company.

Troy Norcross: 0:58

Wow, Marcus, I am exhausted. I mean, I was flying all of last night, I've now actually relocated to someplace. Oh, you don't want me to talk about that? Do you? I'm somewhere sunny and warm. I'm in Portugal.

Marcus Kirsch: 1:13

You better stop it there. You You try to?

Troy Norcross: 1:17

I know, I know. I

Marcus Kirsch: 1:19

know. Brexit. Good stuff. So well, who knows? I might follow you there.

Troy Norcross: 1:25

There will always be a place for you. There'll always be a microphone ready for us to do a podcast here in Portugal.

Marcus Kirsch: 1:31

Hey, yeah, I think when I go back to the last podcast, where are you there? I'm in London.

Troy Norcross: 1:38

And who are we talking to you today?

Marcus Kirsch: 1:40

Today we talk to Sarah Beth Burke and her book more than a title, which more than my title, excuse me. So which is actually about something very heartfelt for me with smart hybrid professionals. And so that was a very, very interesting to short conversation, as usual. So but before I go a bit deeper into my views on that, sort of what what kind of insights and actions would you propose to companies after talking to him?

Troy Norcross: 2:10

Well, I think the first one was, was a pretty good point in the whole conversation, when I said, you we need as enterprises to really rethink how we write job descriptions, and how we post for new candidates. So how do we actually put in hybrid qualities? How do we kind of write the job description to attract the right kinds of people, and not just as you were talking about, you know, do the Mr. Ford thing of, I need somebody to put lug nuts on a car, and it's a single task. And that's all they do. And as much as we need the ability for people to express their hybridity, like she says, For another good, another amazing word. We need our employers, we need the enterprise signed to write better job descriptions. The other thing was, and this is very relevant to me, because she mentioned Professor Scott Galloway. And Prof. g just had a strategy sprint, and I was able to participate in that strategy, Sprint, and it was great. But she was talking about how universities need to completely transform the way they are doing education, and what skills they're bringing people into the world with. And I think that's another big important thing is, don't just look at people who are going to be coming as having a degree, but look at all of their experiences. What was their side hustle while they were getting a degree? What were the other skills that they were doing, university class president, etc, etc. And looking at the whole person and not just looking at a single set of skills? Those are my my two takeaways.

Marcus Kirsch: 3:44

Yeah, and I remember in particular, and I mentioned it during the interview, like I remember trying to rip it off the internet, one of Scott Galloway sort of both, it was both both an add as much as it was sort of a good guidance or point to to to young people. We're going into college, just before the break. So we perfectly placed as usual, he's, he's so slick. And Scott, if you listen to that, please come on our show. And he said, you know, if there's one thing you want to do as a student, or becoming student or in between, learn another skill, like something that's not directly related to what you're doing, because this hybridity or polymathic aspect, will be absolutely invaluable in the future because that's what everyone's looking for. Everyone's looking for, not just problem solvers, but people can learn different things or sit on different chairs at the same time, which is sort of been the malady of my life and organisations often not understanding that so I think for me, the thing I would maybe tell organisations to do. So the one thing I would tell organisations to do is that recognise the flexibility of people. I think I've been in so many projects where we would ask people who can we have an A team? What skills do they have? What are they? Or their designers that doesn't listen doesn't that and organisations are utterly bad at being able to describe what people can actually do. When we finally had two people in the room started working with them, we had so many surprises, often have to switch people around. And at other times being totally surprised about saying, right, here's this guy who's only done design. Now he has to write a business case, never done this in his life. And he was so eager to do it, because he had a pension for it. And he kind of was interested in it. And he got so quickly and so well, where I was sitting back going, why organisations not more tapping into that, you know, they keep on saying we want to hire better talent, talented, flexible talent that can grow. And then you squeeze people into these tiny boxes. And because they're measured in the same way, they never see who the people really are, they never get to the real identity of people, because all they see is a skill set. And a very limited as such, so they don't even understand the value they have. So often, when I come into transformation programmes, I say, you already have half the capabilities in your company, I promise you that you just don't know how to look for it. So I would say to companies, widen that, widen that out, because otherwise you end up with situations that are really costly for you, for example, I was working with one of the bigger consultancies, I'm not gonna name the name. But basically, they said, oh, we're going to have 20 developers here that are doing that. And in about four weeks time, we have to find them all and hire new ones. And I was like, why do you need to possibly do this? Or they need to work on something else? And they're not trained for that? If I developers, why wouldn't they? Just because they have that on their CV? Do you think you're gonna do a really bad job at it, they're still developers, they're going to get into it in a week, and are going to be fine. That's what I've done. As a developer, I've worked as a developer, something new new framework, whatever you there in a week or two. So imagine the costs they had to demo for by hiring and firing spending X amount of time and days finding 20 new people with very different skill sets, that then holds a project to time or delays. Because if you don't find the right enough people at the time, you know, and then all of that whole process, you don't need that, because there's plenty of people are flexible enough. The same at some other big organisation where the managing director, she told me, I can't unlock people in there not, the system is not flexible enough to do so. Because they're telling me those people aren't that, well, I can do that with them. And it's all nonsense, because people are complex. So I would say to organisations, have a look at who you're there, reassessed them in a different view with a more open mind. And and dig a bit deeper. And you will see you have a lot of more value sitting there than you think you don't have to go out on the market and try to hire talent that is not interested in even working for you, because you're not quite there yet. You're already having it sitting there. And I think that is from a financial or business value perspective, I think a massive oversight in a lot of organisations. And I think that's my big takeaway on this one.

Troy Norcross: 7:59

Well, I think I've got a pina colada sort of waiting for me in the room. So

Marcus Kirsch: 8:03

yeah, sure you do. Yes. Yeah. I

Troy Norcross: 8:05

think it's time that we should go to the interview. What

Marcus Kirsch: 8:07

do you think about my cold coffee? Let's go to the interview. Hello, everyone. We have therabreath perky today. Welcome Sarah Beth. And thank you for making time for us.

Sarabeth Berk: 8:21

Hi, gentlemen. It's great to be here. I'm so thrilled.

Marcus Kirsch: 8:25

So let's start at the top as we usually do, and tell us a little bit, who you are, and why you wrote the book, please.

Sarabeth Berk: 8:32

Of course. Well, I mean, the crux of the book is an identity crisis. I didn't know how to answer that question. What do you do? And I was trying to move on from just being a teacher, I was ready to expand my career and, you know, transform and change education and learning, but I was stuck in a box. And I knew I was so much more than just being a teacher. So how do you get seen for your value and all the different skills that you bring to the table was sort of my predicament because I was great at design and facilitation. I loved innovation, and I couldn't figure it out. So I ended up back in grad school, and was just in that messy place of trying to figure out my next career move. And that led me into a research project where I started studying my professional identity, because I was curious about how people are more than their job titles. I didn't know what a job title meant anymore. If you are a professor or an entrepreneur or a salesperson or a leadership Coach, what the heck does that mean? And I interviewed people thinking they had figured it out, and they knew themselves. And what I found more and more was that a lot of people can't define who they are. And a title is just an arbitrary point of meaning. And ultimately, I discovered this epiphany where, when you bring two different parts together, you'd be you create a whole new composite, it's a whole new entity. And that word is Hybrid, there's hybrid products, there's hybrid businesses, but there can also be hybrid people. And that just revolutionised the way I thought about myself that I have a hybrid in my work, I can own that and actually use that as the way that I introduce myself and talk about myself and market myself and find jobs that actually fit my hybridity. Like, that's crazy. And that really was the radical idea. And when I started sharing that with people, it just lit them up. And it resonated. And I realised I need to write this, I need to share this. And this is probably something much bigger happening in society that we just haven't really been sharing. So that's why I wrote the book is to give people tools, and honestly empower them to realise you're not alone. This is a common issue, and we just need to start sharing about it.

Marcus Kirsch: 10:49

Yeah, definitely, I think the book rang with my whole life, really, because I think of a hybrid for my life. I started with design and got blood into technology. And I had to explain myself so many times, and had so many different cities, and I still have multiple cities like out there. That sounds like a nightmare. It's not getting any better. So I really, really need your help. But in order to talk a little bit more about the theory behind the book, so you talk about hybrids. So can you tell us a little bit more about three aspects that you identified with this singularity multiplicity and hybridity? A little bit more? Yeah, of

Sarabeth Berk: 11:26

course. Yeah. When you think about the landscape of workers, there are different types of professionals. And most often, we talk about experts and generalists. And that's very binary, it's like you're either one or the other. But what if you're both. And so what I realised is there's a deeper framework about having one identity multiplied, and these are hybrid identities. So what I mean is, people that are seen as an expert are seen as having a really deep knowledge in one thing, so that means they are in singularity, a single identity. And that can be like doctors and neuroscientists, and engineers. And then there's a whole range of people that have multiple identities, they have done different jobs over time, or they've changed careers, or they've gained other skill sets, or they just have breadth and depth in so many different areas. They're multidisciplinary. And there's a lot of words from this group, like polymath and multitalented and gig workers, and freelancers, people that are just sort of a montage of different identities. So that's the multiplicity. So then the last category is somewhere in between where maybe you have multiple areas of expertise, or maybe you have a lot of general knowledge, or you just have these different core identities you've gained over time, or are just true to you. And you're not just an expert of specialists. And that's the hybrid. Literally, the differentiating word is integration, instead of separation, you are working in the intersections of multiple identities at once. So that simultaneity is your true value, because you're doing a whole new thing in that mixture of your identities that no one can define No one's ever done before. And that's why the hybrid framework is so important to be able to distinguish we have people in all three buckets, and this hybrid bucket is acceptable and needed and necessary.

Troy Norcross: 13:14

So simultaneity hybridity, you're absolutely embracing the American we can merge any two words together and come up with something new, which drives a lot of my British friends totally over the edge. So you get adding new words to it. I'm absolutely loving it. absolutely loving it.

Unknown: 13:31

I'd love for it.

Troy Norcross: 13:33

So the question I've got for you is, I started off on 4000 acres of farmland in the middle of Missouri. Wow. My next job was programming flight simulators for military aircraft and McDonnell Douglas and St. Louis, which is now Boeing. From there, I went into telecoms travelled all over the world in telecoms. For the last three years, I've been in blockchain. And it was a little stint in the middle when I did healthcare. Now in most of those cases, I was software, software, Product Management kind of going along a career path. But my vertical changed, from agriculture, to aerospace, to telecoms, to health care, to now blockchain. And so how do you take change in industry or hybrid industries and not just hybrid job functionalities or different ways you can add value?

Sarabeth Berk: 14:25

Yeah, I love that. Wow, you have such a rate. There's, that's incredible. I would love to ask you maybe later how you define what you do. That's, that's such a common name actually get

Troy Norcross: 14:36

to that I actually have an answer for that.

Sarabeth Berk: 14:38

Okay. Well, pausing on that part, then I would say there's a couple buckets, right. There's your content area knowledge, your subject matter expertise. So that could be in a discipline domain and industry. So going in that vertical, it can also be skills. So sometimes I meet people that are really good at marketing and sales and coding and, you know, event planning, but that's industry agnostic. So for some people, they might know a different domain and be expert in that with multiple skills. Sometimes it's more cross disciplinary. It's it's, there's no one size fits all the hybridity is however you define it because your career path is unique to you. And the nonlinear person is more of a traditional job. seeker an employee anymore, nobody is really going step by step by step in an order. So what you described is pretty common, maybe like on the extreme side of bouncing, but I need a lot of people that are just like, I have collected these different aspects of myself, I'm good at this, this, this and this, but I sound like a soup of identities. I don't know what that thread is who I am, really and truly, and so that's the work I do with people is drawing Venn diagrams and saying, Well, what are the truest most core primary identities in that whole diverse range of accumulated? And then we really come up with this hybrid identification, hybrid title, if you will.

Marcus Kirsch: 16:02

Cool. I think there's something you know, I like to I like to go back one when we look at it, because I've been struggling so much with this. Having done you know, art in between, as well. And you know, art was probably the only thing for me where I could bring in whatever I like, yeah, and it all it all would have been okay. Whereas most other practices or professionals, I've been through, always looked at certain ways to approach and do things always like, Oh, that's not why you're doing it that way, like that? Well, because I'm trying to get a result, you know, but there was odd, often very, very limited that and then and I like to blame Henry Ford on that with the whole D skilling and trying to create mass production, that's actually doable, that we're still suffering for meaning that, you know, by definition, in organisations, we're still squeezed into these really narrow, narrow descriptions of skill sets that we're supposed to have and everything else we're not supposed to even bring in or talk about or take care of, even so we could. And, you know, not not just to bring in another one of my anecdotes on, I was applying for Sony PlayStation at some point. And I had to use a toy camera, I think on top. And I had done camera based interactive at the time. So I was a coder and a designer at the time, and they had coders and designers. And when I applied there, I just found question mark all their head, they could not figure out who I am. And therefore, I didn't really exist for them. And I said, like, you're getting two for the price of one, you realise it could not figure this out, they could not figure it out. It didn't go anywhere. It's really bizarre. And so in that sense, and I've seen this again and again, by job description, and expectations, and why people hire organisations seem to hire what they think has a value, how, that's fine. And my question is, how can we revalue these hybrid people, you know, to to create extra value to cross value? Why would they be important to companies now, what's what's, what's your view on that?

Sarabeth Berk: 18:11

I have a lot of layers to that. Because hybrids work in the space in between, so it's always gonna be grey and blurry. And organisations typically like structure. But there's a couple of things. First, is there's an education component and awareness component that workers themselves need to understand this idea of hybridity and that they can own that and represent that. So they have to learn their own hybridity to market and talk about themselves. On the flip side, organisations also need to understand that this idea of being a hybrid worker exists, and they need to understand there's also different ways they need to recruit and train and manage and retain hybrid talent. So there's two sides of that pie that need education right now, because this is still a largely not well understood concept yet, but it's here, and it's the future. And then the other part of this that I was thinking of is, there's hybrid jobs, and then there's hybrid people and workers. So some jobs are now being written where they're talking about cross functional talent, or needing that multidisciplinary skill set or someone that works internal, external, or the front and back end. So when you see these juxtapositions or, you know, like differing needs in a role, companies are actually hiring for a hybrid position and they just don't know to use that term yet. So it's starting to creep up and into the language of hiring. So when you see those those clues, you realise like that's a hybrid position. And then for the person themselves, they need to really do some self awareness. And this is really where I start on the hybrid journey is you have to get clear on what are your professional identities, and then you have to do the work of looking at the intersections of them to you can clearly describe and articulate. Here's what I bring to the table. I'm the coder. And I'm the scientist, and I'm the designer. And that might not make sense to you. But when those are all working together, and I'm pulling from those three different areas, I am this incredible, like design sparkplug that can really help evaluate and work between these different teams and build ideas from analytical and creative perspectives. So you have to make yourself make sense and give examples so that the organisation can understand you. So there's a lot of moving pieces in this new hybrid puzzle. But I mean, it's, it's the world's reshaping in front of our eyes. So it's sort of like we're all going to either adapt and catch up or you're going to be left behind. And one of my favourite reports is from burning glass. They did this in 2019, and evaluation of hybrid jobs, and the evolution of what's happening. And they're saying hybrid jobs are less likely to be automated, because it's this very complex, yet specialised form of talent. And more and more companies are hiring for that, because they need that. And so this is just a new landscape, we are in literally at the precipice about to watch how it unfolds.

Marcus Kirsch: 21:16

I think that's a really, really important point you made there, because I think I agree on that, with looking at how, let's say classic jobs, or classic tasks within jobs are more and more getting automated, I'm not worried about that, because I've been seeing between the silos, and I can always feel that because that something can you can easily fill. And one of the reasons I bring for that is because a lot of new challenges we have in businesses are so called wicked problems, which are highly complex, and they keep moving. So you need to really bring a lot of different things together in order to tackle those in a sustainable risk level. And, and it's interesting to see, I had a really interesting conversation with with Dr. Paul from IBM, he's the head of VP of design with IBM, and they hired like two 4000 designers, to the IBM to be really design driven company. And one of the main things he said is like designers need to learn more about business, because this is a learn about design. So he made the case for Well, you know, it's you know, what the businessman, we know how this works, right? new things have to shape up to the old things, not the other way around. But he said, so there's really no need for that. But what he basically described was, we now need different types of designers that understand business better, or processes in business, or business values, and business casing and all this stuff. Because if they don't, they're not going to get a seat at the board, they're not going to get a voice. Because the organisation will not recognise the value. And I found that a lot in transformation as well. So working in services online and building service design departments and capabilities, you need a particular type of services, if the service is only two months sitting in their own silo, they're pretty useless, because you'll only see their own tools, they only have to own you'd only have their own value set, they will not be empathetic, oddly enough service designer to other people in the room. And there's an amazing amount of service designers who have seemingly very little empathy for these kind of things, oddly enough, but the ones that work really well and really bring value to the project are the ones that can think outside of that, that have knowledge in other areas that no other legal or finance works or business and you know, top level leadership, those kind of things. That really works. And for me, that is a perfect sample of one of those hybrid positions you need to get in and knowledge you need to get in in order, especially I think, a change in transformation, because there's so many overlaps that you will tumble into anyway. Having having having, having had a look at that. Have you? What's your view on how universities and colleges sort of shape up because I've seen here and there some articles around in application?

Troy Norcross: 24:02

Before before you go to the universities? Can I'm going to jump in and put back on the on the job description. So

Marcus Kirsch: 24:07

you can go on please. Yes.

Troy Norcross: 24:09

Okay, so I'm sitting here, and I've got like three other things kind of running around in my head. And sometimes we coordinate fairly well between each other and sometimes we don't.

Marcus Kirsch: 24:17

Okay, once you get me started, I know, I know, I know.

Troy Norcross: 24:22

So here's the job description. I've written a job description. The job description is for a service designer with programming background. I hand the job description over to my HR department, my HR department looks at the job description and says, No, you can't have both, you're going to have to choose one or the other. Those kinds of people don't exist. I go back and I say okay, maybe what I need to do is to write a job description that talks about the problem I'm trying to solve and the skills that I need without putting any titles on it at all. I send that back to the HR department. The HR department says no, there's no way we can hire for Because it doesn't have a job description that we can actually kind of put to recruiter and get anywhere. And I finally get one, and we're going to get it through the system. And it winds up on legals desk. And legal says, this job description is so vague, we can't actually do any hiring because it might be considered to be discrimination. It's to Wooley, you know, you need to have 17 things that everybody can be evaluated against, do you actually have the degree the MBA? Do you have the right number of years of experience? Can we actually find the reason why we didn't interview you? And this is totally new. So and what we try to do on the wicked podcast is give our enterprise listeners examples on what they need to do. So how do you change not just the identity side? what you're working on? brilliantly? How do you change the enterprise side, so they can get a better grasp on doing it and not fall afoul of those people don't exist, or legal doesn't allow it, etc?

Sarabeth Berk: 25:59

Yeah, I again, this is reshaping mindsets. And it's cultural shift as well, internally that companies need to realise the value of hybrid talent in addition to specialists and generalists and administrators, and however, they're defining their hierarchies and structures. But it is sort of that epiphany that needs to happen internally in the culture. One example, I saw this amazing job post recently, by jump associates, I think they're more of like a design agency innovation organisation. And right away the title. So they had a title for this role. It was called innovation strategist. And the first line of the job description said, Are you a hybrid thinker, so they literally called out hybridity. But then the meat of the job description talked about, we're looking with someone who has an MBA, but also understands anthropology, and has, you know, this background and, you know, engineering or whatever, they literally called out different domains and identities. Within the post, I thought it was fascinating. They were so bold, and really embracing this idea that there can be people that exists like that anymore. It's not as far fetched as it once might have seemed, because people go back for degrees, and they change careers, and they want to change domains and industries. So I think it's how do we push back right to your HR and to your legal person with examples and evidence of, I'm not out of my mind trying to hire a person like this. That's multifaceted. Actually, other organisations are doing it, and here's why they're doing it and doing it well. And they're getting the talent that we actually need. So they're competing with us because people want to go work for them instead. Yeah, I'd really encourage just trying to work and have, you know, some conversations or even trainings about the future is hybrid. And here's what it looks like.

Troy Norcross: 27:49

Did you happen to do a blog post on that brilliant job listing?

Sarabeth Berk: 27:53

Yeah, I have one about the job description. So

Unknown: 27:56

check that out.

Troy Norcross: 27:56

So we'll, we'll put a link to that in the show notes. Okay. And that's it for me, Marcus, back over to you in the university thread? Sorry. No,

Marcus Kirsch: 28:03

thank you. Well, you had it here and there as well. And you know, I think it all goes to education and so on, you know, now remember. So I could have, I could have left my my BA graphic design back in Hamburg and start working in a company or actually, a friend of mine asked me to start a company with him, No, would have been a designer for all the rest of my life, which I still identify with, to some extent, or very, very little really. And so I went to London, to find an MA does something a bit differently. And the MA, and we're college was quite a mixture of people actually, it was a very hybrid course between artists, designers, architects, coders, scientists, so it was quite a mad match of people, which, you know, made it really hard to, to explain to people what we're actually doing there. But it's quite interesting. However, when I now look and go a bit back to the question, I think Troy went there a little bit. And I think you went a little bit as well, when you talk about, well, maybe if you will have different careers, they learned different things. So just just two trends there. One was what I originally was mentioning, which is, you know, our universities changing, maybe even to the extent where they don't just expect people to have different interests, but also maybe to say, Well, if you want to do software engineering, and as a secondary, you want to do law. Do you have to do you have to study the whole of law or something, you know, because maybe you just want to have some appetiser or enough to add relevancy to it, that that would add to the software engineering. The other parts also that that's as well been happening over the last couple of years here and there. You can hear that some of the big companies stopped requiring college degrees for people to work there because they found and I think McKinsey or someone went there and said, you know, about 60 to 70% of what you know about your job, you'll learn at your job, you're not gonna you're gonna get basics out of your college at about it and each specialisation is becoming a bit irrelevant, really, to some extent, you know, so what's, what's your view on those kind of tendencies?

Sarabeth Berk: 30:05

Um, well, you're speaking to someone who used to work in higher ed and I am a great performer, I just want to kind of blow it all up and start over. And I listened a lot. This guy named Scott Galloway, who's a professor at NYU, and just,

Troy Norcross: 30:19

I just finished the professor Scott Galloway strategy sprint, I just finished the two weeks. It was intense. And I didn't mean to rap, but go on.

Sarabeth Berk: 30:28

He's pretty phenomenal the way his brain works. I love his podcast and his newsletter. And I do think there's sort of this. He calls it the conceptual delusion that universities are going through that they can maintain what they've been doing, and just kind of figure out the COVID. And then they'll survive somehow. And the truth is, they've got to figure out their relevance. And that's been going on for years. And so where I'm going with this is when I speak with people about this idea of hybridity, I'm talking to people that are honestly like recent grads from college all the way up to people in their 50s that are going through second, third, fourth career transitions, because it has that much substance to it at all stages of your career. Heather magallon, I'll throw that name out, she does future work strategy and wrote the adaptation advantage and talks about, you don't just finish college or finish your learning cycle, and then go into career for 50 years and then retire, that that models over, you go into college, you work for a period of time you re skill, you get a different job, you rescale again, it's sort of these loops. And so I believe, also what I noticed in higher education is the career counselling, Career Services centres are all being redesigned, because they realise they're not serving, not only just getting being job ready and getting your first job out of college, they're just really not prepared for the way hiring and all these processes are working anymore. So I've talked a lot with career counsellors, and I asked a lot of undergrads, what is the first kind of questions people are asking you to prepare for when you're out of university and they go, people tell me find my passion, find my purpose, and do what I love and go figure out a company that's hiring for that I was like, but the third leg of that stool and work is your identity. Do people ever ask you who are you? Have you defined that? And they go, Well, I'm a student. I was like, No, you can't sell yourself as a student. What have you just gained? And to your point, Marcus, it's this idea of like, what was your major? What was your minor? What were your extracurriculars? Were you a leader of student government, or you know how to side gig, suddenly you have five or six identities right there, that as a student is like your pre professional identity is how I'm talking about that with them. And they still have hybridity to represent and own their multifaceted pneus in their early 20s. So I think that is a new concept. I'm hoping higher ed will pick up and I can work with them more on developing because it's really about the relevance. And it's really about from day one, beginning of your career, knowing who you are, regardless of what certifications and things you're studying. There's this recipe to yourself, that is part of what you're bringing to the world. So that's kind of my thoughts on that topic.

Marcus Kirsch: 33:08

No, it was great. And I think I remember I think it was three, four years ago when he did tonnes of advertising over on YouTube. Scott Galloway did this one thing I think just before the university breaks or school breaks will happen and he posted just one minute thing. And he said, What if you do one thing and one thing only learn an alternative skill set, add one to it, put it on your CV? So you know because that will set you up way better for the future than anything else? You know, do something that you don't think connects to what you're doing right at all or if you like it, you know, I think the person thing interesting.

Sarabeth Berk: 33:39

Experts for years have been using terms like call yourself an expert generalist or like Tim Ferriss has a video on being a specialised generalist. I think there's all these other monitors. I think they're just funky. Because at the end of the day, you're combining different skills. It's about hybridity, all this fancy jargon of being t shaped and pie shaped like I don't want to call myself a T shaped person that's like the weirdest idea. Like it makes sense in a diagram, but not when you're talking about yourself. So anyway,

Troy Norcross: 34:08

and then you said cone shaped and then what was the third one

Sarabeth Berk: 34:11

there's pie shaped there's a shape

Marcus Kirsch: 34:14

that don't know about this was like a health dietary problem that

Troy Norcross: 34:21

T shaped I'd never heard of pie shaped or cone shaped. Right away you go Never gonna get the shape point.

Sarabeth Berk: 34:30

x shaped a guy did a whole TEDx talk about that I talked to him. He's a wonderful By the way, but it's the notion of having, you know, a area of depth and an area of breath. And so that makes a tea. But then pi as in, you know, the numeric symbol of pi. When you have two areas of depth and then comb. You have many areas of depth and breadth. But then there's a broken calm, where the little tines of the comb are at different levels of depth. And I'm like, Can we stop this analogy?

Troy Norcross: 34:58

Fine, fine.

Marcus Kirsch: 35:00

It is it is tricky though, unlike, you know, the worst I was, I mean, it was probably called worse things at work at times. But you know, one of the things is to kind of, you know, jack of all trades, master of none kind of master of none is the worst thing you can ever hear. Because it means I, you know, a little bit everything, we don't know anything, really. And that takes you out. If you're not prepared for it, it takes you out of a lot of conversations, unfortunately, you know, because it's desert, but but, uh, talking maybe more, again, getting back to the organization's and, you know, we know things are shifting, and I think identity is, I think a really good terminology. Because back in the factories during the Industrial Revolution, we didn't have an identity, we didn't need one, we didn't expect to have one, right? We were drones there. But now that those most of those manufacturing aspects are automated, and we have robots, and they have communication devices. Now finally, leadership's asking us all now we have to be innovative. Now they have to bring all these different things and and no one know a lot of things. And then like, whenever asked me to never let me suddenly ask him for me, and I'm outside of my education, and your organisation doesn't even train in the right way. So yeah, how am I gonna get there? That's a big question, Mark. But, and because of that, I would say, because, you know, I've met so many people who are hybrids and have left industries have left organisations, there's a whole era around advertising. And you know, it's driving me mad, because we connect, because we're both these hybrid people. And we actually feel quite better around other hybrid people because they share our sorrows. But so how are they? Are there enough organisations than they are? Or maybe maybe, again, maybe go from? Maybe it's the hybrids that have to help that change and push that change on to organisations rather than the other way around? As we can? Is it? How is it easier as a hybrid to get into an organisation or find the right organisation that might be open enough or not? Are there any flags, any triggers any things that people told you like? You know, that I was really unhappy there, but there, I was quite happy because that was there are things that someone can look for? Yeah, let

Sarabeth Berk: 37:10

me back up a little bit before I get to criteria, which is to kind of say the same, like hybrids can exist kind of on their own out as independent workers, contractors, they can also exist within an organisation. It's not like there's just one use case where they appear. But the crux of this is your hybridity is your truest form of your professional self. It's where you really are all of your identities, and you can make it make sense. And that's really hard for people. So typically, what we fall back to, and what's happening the most is, people use really generic language about themselves. They just say, I'm a coach, author, speaker, writer and marketer, don't you want to work with me? And you're like, then who are you? And the titles we use are so vanilla, like everybody's a coach, and everyone's a consultant, everyone does marketing. It's like what differentiates you That is where we are right now we are in a very competitive job market, where you know, millions of people are looking for work. And if they're all using the same title of as I'm a programme director, I'm a strategist, then I don't really understand you. And so we have to use some of that familiar language, because that's just how we're coded. And we want to categorise, but your value in defining your hybridity makes you stand out. And it makes it easier to be like, Oh, I'm intrigued. Tell me more. So a couple examples. I've worked with people lately, this one gentleman came up with a new way of framing how he's really good with project management and working across people and just kind of making sense of internal systems. And he's like, I'm attention. methodologist is the new way. He's referring to himself. He sees these imbalances between, you know, it's if there's too much over there, there's too little here and people are upset there. People are being used here. And he's really good at research and methodology. And he's like, I'm balancing these sides of myself of re aligning people's needs and processes. So I'm the tension methodologist. And that just was like, a very different way to approach and introduce himself. Another woman is now a strategic highlighter, because she again, she's like, I go into companies. I'm good at problem solving. I hear that from everyone. My differentiator is I'm the best problem solver. I'm like, so is everyone else, why are you better? So she's like, I'm good at problem solving. And I'm good at building relationships. I'm like, so is everyone else, what makes you different. But this highlighter piece was a term that kept coming up and up, as we were looking at her intersections that she's very specific at how she highlights pieces of information, or something about someone's talent and she can put that together, where then people realise what she's been seeing. So that strategic highlighter was a nuance in her ability to build relationships, etc. So that's what I'm driving people to do is truly understand themselves and use new terminology, not in radical ways or trendy ways, like, people used to call me a design thinking guru. And I was like, please don't call me that anymore. Like, everyone just adds guru to things. That doesn't work, you've got to be true to yourself and authentic. But I think when a company sees this, so some of the criteria, right is, first, if you're hiring your recruiter, whatever, ask someone what are your different professional identities? Because a candidate should be able to list that and be clear and not sound too messy or confused themselves. So tell me about your different professional identities. And that's how you're hearing diversity and range of expertise. And then a recruiter could ask, Who are you when you're using those identities simultaneously, or connecting them in some way? Now that question is really hard. That was the root of a lot of the research is people expressing their intersections? And my way to sort of whittle that back was to talk about how do you feel when you're at your best? What are the projects that light you up? Because people know when they feel their best at their work. And then you have to add more consciousness to realise when I'm at my best in my work, that's when I'm turning on being the researcher and the designer and the artist and this all at the same time, and you just didn't see that. So I think there's, there's questions that can be asked in a recruiting or, you know, hiring process. And I think the candidate also needs to have that clarity. And then some other criteria and signals to your point are, when people are inventing new processes, you mentioned that Marcus, you do things differently. When you create a new process, that's because of your hybridity. You're like, Oh, I see efficiencies here and here, and you're borrowing from this other background, to create a new methodology. I'm seeing patterns, pattern recognition is a really common thing that hybrids do, because they're working in between different kinds of data or information. They're like, Oh, don't you see that because that's just how they've been, you know, educated. Um, and, and paradoxes or juxtaposition is another criteria or just signal of hybrids, that they have opposites in them. Two things that don't seem to go together. But somehow this person is both a musician, and a software developer, and a dance coach, and you're like, I don't get you, but they like have this magic thing. So that those are just a handful of tips

Unknown: 42:18

right there.

Troy Norcross: 42:22

Did you have a follow up, Marcus?

Marcus Kirsch: 42:25

Not on that one? No. Okay.

Troy Norcross: 42:27

I think it was really, it was a full, full answer. I thought it was I thought it was good. I think I'm gonna kind of go at this with a completely different direction. My sister in law about three years ago, asked me what my career aspirations were. And I said, I've abandoned having a career path or career goals. I now have revenue goals, I know how personal objectives that I'm trying to achieve. And so I'm not hung up on going from title a title B to Vice President of title t to director, title D, I'm much more about what's the impact that I can bring? And how much of the quality of life can I kind of maintain. And in order to do that, as a consultant, what Marcus I spend an enormous amount of energy and effort doing is getting a better understanding of the problems that we're trying to help the enterprises solve. And I think there's some real great opportunity for expressing my identity, in terms of how I would approach solving your problem. So whether I'm kind of saying, I just I'm going to be a designer, I'm going to be a designer and a programmer, and then responding to a job posting, you're spending part of that time as a candidate asking what's the real problems you're trying to solve? And then describing their identity on how they how they do that? And because this is unfortunately, we're almost out of time is going to be our last question. I will answer the other thing that I said at the beginning, I described myself and other people describe me as the VP of GSD. I'm the Vice President of getting shit done. And so my big USP is, I don't care. It may be messy, but it will indeed get done. And that's what people want is they want results. So anyway, back to the question, which was a sunrise again, can you tell me how that would work from an from a candidate perspective? To listen more?

Sarabeth Berk: 44:29

Yeah, no, I love the framing of what is the problem an organisation is hiring for why do they need this position, this person, this talent, and how can that person show up and to your point drive results? And I mean, that goes to who you all are right, wicked problems. And I love that it's the vuca idea, volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous. I live in that too. I think complexity theory and complexity, science is the way the world works. It's not linearity anymore. And I think that's what I'm encouraging people to unpack within themselves is their own complexity. That honestly is pretty unconscious to them. So the Venn diagram idea, which I think underlies any wicked problem is what are the different parts of the problem? How are they intersecting and intertwined, because it's in their interdependencies and variability and all that, that goes with us as people, like the research I did comes out of intersectionality work, which is in diversity studies, that identity is a huge spectrum of things age, class, ability, religion, gender, all of that. And those are social constructs, professional identity is one vein of many. So you're already intersected with all these different identities together. So you're already just like a hybrid person, but we don't say that. So I'm using this language and framework just within a professional capacity to help people realise they've got to unpack the layers of just this this land of their professional, you know, like, who they are. So I don't know if I'm exactly answer your question. Because it's a hard one. I mean, to show up as a complex worker, I think it takes a lot of self awareness. And that is a step people jump over, they jump right to you let me write a resume and a cover letter. But if you don't know how to even describe yourself, who are you on your resume, then you can never show up in an interview or even just in networking, to reflect I know who I am, because you get 10 seconds in that first impression to say, I'm Sarah Beth, I'm a creative disrupter. I use my artists, researcher designer identities to radically transform systems and people. Let me talk to you about how I can help you write

Troy Norcross: 46:33

rehearsed Pat,

Unknown: 46:35

maybe once or twice.

Sarabeth Berk: 46:38

So I think it's a lot of tools. And I think you're right, it's practice. And people have to nail that introduction. Who are you? What do you do boom. And I think that's part of this wicked world we're in is show up as your your wicked personality and persona.

Troy Norcross: 46:54

Great, Marcus, bring us home.

Marcus Kirsch: 46:57

Yeah, lovely. I think that's a great moment to stop here. Because it's always too many questions and not enough time. And we know all that. And so I'm just going to say, Thank you so, so much for your time and your insights. Amazing subject. And I hope we have few here again, at some point to talk more about it or the next book, and so on. Because I'm sure it's a complex, big, wicked problem, as you said, to find our identities. It feels like nearly like a bit of a revolution of sorts that needs to happen in order to really dive into that. So thank you. Thank you for having been here.

Troy Norcross: 47:30

Thank you for sharing your time with us this morning. On election day in America.

Sarabeth Berk: 47:35

You too are amazing. I just love how your brains work. And I love this topic of uncovering wicked books and ideas. So thanks for having me.

Troy Norcross: 47:44

You've been listening to the wicked podcast with co host Marcus Kirsch and me Troy Norcross,

Marcus Kirsch: 47:50

please subscribe on podomatic iTunes or Spotify. You can find all relevant links in the show notes. Please tell us your thoughts in the comment section and let us know about any books for future episodes.

Troy Norcross: 48:03

You can also get in touch with us directly on Twitter on at wicked and beyond or at Troy underscore Norcross also learn more about the wicked company book and the wicked company project at wicked company calm