Former CEO; founding partner of Vitalwork, Inc.; innovative consultant in leadership development; authority on organizational change; and much more. Read Mike Cook’s bio.
A: I wrote THRIVE out of the experiences I’ve had with my consulting firm, Vitalwork. I wanted more people to be included in the conversations I've been having inside client organizations for more than 20 years. These conversations revolve around my passion for people to experience work as a place of fulfillment and satisfaction, rather than simply a place that meets a financial need. People find great relief and inspiration in these conversations. I figured others, with whom I don't have the opportunity to work directly, could benefit too. So, I wrote the book to carry forward these messages that I've been spreading inside of organizations.
Q: How would you define a “borderless world”?
A: The internet is defining it for us. In today’s reality, an email address is a universal passport. Knowledge work can be done from anywhere in the world at any time of the day. For present and future economic purposes we live in a world without borders.
Q: Explain your subtitle, Standing On Your Own Two Feet in a Borderless World.
A: I mean to call on everyone who is currently in or soon to be part of any workforce to be fully responsible for their own economic welfare. By this, I don’t mean that anyone has to be independent or alone in any sense. Full responsibility means that we willingly accept a reality in which we can expect no economic reward without understanding how we provide value for others.
Q: If the world is flat, according to Thomas Friedman, now what? How do your ideas start where Friedman’s left off?
A: Thomas Friedman was giving us all a satellite view of the pace of globalization. We need that and will continue to need that. THRIVE is my attempt to provide individuals a way to create a practical strategic response to this new reality. My hope is that the approach I am suggesting will prevent many from falling victim to a lack of strategy that leaves them in a position of anxiety-driven reaction.
Q: In THRIVE, you exhort us to shift our perspective on outsourcing. What do you mean by that?
A: If we accept outsourcing, displacement, whatever, as just another part of the economic landscape, we can develop a perspective that’s predicated on the inevitability of change. We begin to see the interplay of individuals and global economies in a whole new light. We can identify what is important in our own lives and the value we have to offer an interdependent world.
This assessment, by the way, works at the macro (global) level, and the micro (one department or one person to another) level. Part of what we do at Vitalwork involves helping workers see the interdependence within their organizations and assess the value they have to contribute. It’s the starting point for eventual engagement in work one believes is important.
Q: In THRIVE, you describe the fear that plagues workers—fear of losing their jobs to outsourcing. Isn’t this a legitimate fear?
A: People feel fear when they believe they have no choices, no options. If you’re depending on someone else to save you—if you’re depending on management or the government to come up with a solution, you’re vulnerable and perhaps you should be fearful. But if you’ve assumed personal responsibility for your own career, you know your limitations; you know what value you have to offer—you have options. You can see choices you just couldn’t see before. You make better choices than you may have made in the past. I devote a large portion of THRIVE to describing the tools, techniques and practices that engender greater levels of personal accountability and responsibility. The book is a good antidote to fear.
Q: What is it going to take to thrive in our outsourced economy?
A: My simplest response is that it’s going to take a willingness to be fully responsible for one’s own economic future and to appreciate and embrace interdependency as the pathway to fulfilling that declared responsibility. I know this will seem at first paradoxical, even contradictory. However, the surest way to express responsibility is to acknowledge and gracefully accept to basic fact that your economic future depends on being able to demonstrate value to others.
Q: Is the migration of jobs to cheaper locales inevitable? Is there any point in resisting it?
A: It is always going to be the nature of a capitalist system, especially one dominated by large public corporations, to continually seek less expensive ways to produce their product or service. To that extent it is inevitable. At the same time it is not necessarily a dire inevitability. The burden falls to each of us individually to understand the system and prepare ourselves to play a high stakes game rather than the “do good work and don’t make waves” game many of us have been playing.
Q: What’s your view of work-life balance, and how is it relevant to succeeding in the outsourced economy?
A: Why do we persist in talking about our lives like it can be broken into pieces? Nothing is more short-sighted than to talk about the time you spend at work as if it is not your life as much as any other way you spend your time. It makes us sound like victims when after all we are the ones who choose our places of work. Succeeding at living a balanced life comes as a result of being equally responsible to every one of your commitments.
Q: Why do you believe that the concept of dharma, or seeking one’s “highest nature,” is necessary for success in our borderless world?
A: I am not a Buddhist practitioner but I am drawn to the idea that there are spiritual principles which underlie our material reality. Living life as a practice of spiritual principles then makes great sense to me. In the book I speak to principles of being related that are every bit as spiritual or dharmic as any others you may believe. I believe that the way we can continually return to standing on our own two feet in the present uncertainty is to be able to find ourselves at peace in some way other than material success.
Q: How can an average employee become what you call “bulletproof” in a business climate characterized by upheaval and uncertainty?
A: First, be prepared financially. Keep at least four to six months living expenses in your savings at all times. Second, know your talents and what it is you do, no matter where you are employed, that adds unique value to your employer. Third, come to grips emotionally with the uncertainty of the present economic climate. Know that there is no one out to get you; there is just no one looking out for you.
Q: What relevance do virtues such as compassion, gratitude, and self-awareness have for a business person trying to gain the competitive edge?
A: A competitive edge in the future may have nothing to do with technology or intelligence. In a world where we will be called upon to serve and work with people we will never meet, being able to generate trust will be an authentic competitive edge. Being trusted comes from others seeing you as compassionate, willing to thank people for what they contribute, and being responsible for the way you are perceived by others.
