How to Make Knowledge Work Fun

Let’s say you’re out of work, or you’re thinking about shifting gears. I tell my clients it’s a waste of time wondering whether they should consider becoming a consultant, project leader, interim executive, or something else like one of these. In a knowledge-based economy, it’s a given that, sooner or later and like it or not, most of us will carry around self-made business cards. So I tell people not to worry about whether to become an independent service professional, but instead to focus their energies on figuring out how to make money once they are one.

The professional life of the independent knowledge worker occurs in four different modes: insanity, give-back, work, and fun.

• If you are serving people you don’t like to be with and are not getting paid, that is insanity.
• If you are serving people you enjoy being with but are not getting paid, that is give-back.
• If you are serving people you don’t like to be with but are getting paid, that is work.
• If you are serving people you enjoy being with and are getting paid, that is fun.

When clients and prospective clients are with you, they know when you are having fun and when you are working. The key to happy clients, and a happy you, is to stop working. (No, I’m not talking about retirement.)

So how do you stop working and start having fun?

First, find people you enjoy serving. A good place to start is a career self-assessment test like the Strong Interest Inventory or the Campbell Interest and Skill Survey. Any alumni career center, licensed psychologist, or outplacement firm can administer one or both. These instruments provide a statistical comparison between your values and the values of those with whom you’ll be spending time, in a variety of work settings. Think of these tests as identifiers of “simpatico” settings and people.

Next, find problems you enjoy solving. Once you have identified the types of people you’d love to serve, talk to some of them and find out what they need. What are they willing to pay to fill those needs?

Third, position yourself. How does your experience tally with your future clients’ needs? What kind of additional or experience do you need to acquire in order to position yourself?

Once you’ve figured out who you will serve, what problems you will solve, and how you fit, the answers start to flow — including what you will do and how much you will charge.

Oh, and a note to Boomers: once you stop working and start having fun, it’s amazing how irrelevant the question “how long until I retire?” becomes.

Larry Stybel is co-founder of the global career management firm Stybel Peabody Lincolnshire and Executive in Residence at the Sawyer School of Business at Suffolk University in Boston.