Barrie Hopson - And What Do You Do?: 10 Steps to Creating a Portfolio Career

And What Do You Do?

And What Do You Do?

10 Steps to Creating a
Portfolio Career

Barrie Hopson and Katie Ledger

A & C Black London

First published in Great Britain 2009
This electronic edition published 2010 by A & C Black Publishers Ltd

A & C Black Publishers Ltd, 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY
www.acblack.com

Copyright Barrie Hopson and Katie Ledger, 2009

The right of Barrie Hopson and Katie Ledger to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organisation acting or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by A & C Black Publishers Ltd or the authors.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Print ISBN: 9-781-4081-1630-2
Electronic ISBN: 9-781-4081-3430-6

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From Katie to:

David, and our angels Olivia and Max, who remind me daily of what is really important.

My wonderful mother for helping me to pursue my creatively chaotic portfolio career.

My dad for being my dad.

From Barrie to:

Rosie and Toby, my grandchildren, as it was written largely with their futures in mind.

CONTENTS

In the course of the 18 months or so that weve been working on this project, planning the writing, producing a synopsis, rewriting it a dozen times, interviewing people with portfolio careers, reading everything we could find on the subject (not much), finding an agent who would protect our sanity and our footwear, the one question that we have been asked the most is:

Why are you writing this book?

A Toni Morrison quotation came to mind:If theres a book you really want to read, but it hasnt been written yet, then you must write it.

Barrie is often asked why he never writes books on his own. His answer is constant: Where would be the fun, the bouncing off of ideas, the texts at midnight about a new insight, the continual learning about oneself and about the person that you are writing with?

EL Doctorow said that writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. Well the joy of writing with someone else is that there really are two of you. One of the thrills of writing this book has been that not only can our publisher fail to differentiate between which of us has written what but that we are also now confused.

In 1895, Jules Renard wrote: Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted. He obviously never had a co-author. One of us hates sentences that have more than 10 words and that end in exclamation marks! The other espouses concepts about grammar that precede the digital age and does not like dashes.

Both of us have had successful careers as communicators and for the first time in history its now possible to write a book thats more like a genuine conversation. Communication should always be two way. In the past, books were written, people hopefully read them, sometimes authors got a book review or two containing the reviewers opinions and you might get the occasional letter sent to you via your publisher.

Weve written this book around the project of exploring the concepts and practice of portfolio careers and weve blogged on this subject for more than a year. Weve floated ideas, got responses, found other people interested in the same project. Weve learned from them, borrowed some thoughts and words, and invited people to contribute to the book itself.

We continue to blog, essentially to encourage the portfolio careers conversation and we would love to hear your stories, ideas and developments so do contact us at www.portfoliocareers.net.

Our conversations to date include those with:

Charlotte Howard, our agent, who also came up with the final book title, and who negotiated a publishing contract with Lisa Carden from A&C Black, part of the Bloomsbury Group, who encouraged us right from our first meeting, and gave us such positive and constructive feedback.

The authors, bloggers and organisations who have contributed to the book: Steven DSouza, Seth Godin, Sir Ken Robinson, Penelope Trunk, Carole Stone, Oli Barrett, Tom Peters, David Brain, Marianne Cantwell, Carol White Llewellyn, Mike Scally, Andy Lopata, David Pilbeam, Hannah Morgan, Talentsmoothie and Slivers-of-time.

The 35 people with portfolio careers whom we interviewed in depth about how they live their lives, their highs and lows, their insights and questions, their humour and passion for the careers they are pursuing

That Crazy Deranged Fool, Hugh MacLeod, for allowing us to use his insightful and witty drawings and for being a great example of how to create a successful portfolio career. (Hughs bio and details appear at the back of the book.)

Steve Clayton, who helped Katie to embrace her inner geek and inspired a digital journey thats just beginning.

Kojo Boateng for his talent and creativity in designing our digital reality.

David McKee, the artist, illustrator and creator of Mr. Benn, for allowing us to use his wonderful illustrations for our chapter on multiple selves.

Silje Alberthe Kamille Friis, from Denmark, whose artwork also depicted this concept so beautifully.

Colin Pontefract for his psychometric advice, which contributed to the diagnostic instrument that enables people to assess their potential for a portfolio career.

Bernard Haldane, who died in 2002 at the age of 91, the pioneer of ideas about career development and the provider of educational tools that still are at the heart of most career programmes.

Peter Drucker, who long after his death inspires and continually amazes us with his insights and wisdom and from whom we quote copiously.

John Dammone, from Salvos Restaurant in Leeds, who provided the restaurant example for Step 7.

Richard Papworth-Smith for his Mind Map.

John White, for his superb designs for the four career patterns and the energy pot.

And the wonderfully generous, greatly talented encourager, Mike Pegg, who urged us to meet up as he thought we might get on

Last, but definitely not least, Charles Handy, who wrote and talked about portfolio careers long before many people considered them to be a possible career choice. Barrie recalls a conversation with Charles in 1990 when he talked animatedly about portfolio careers as being a major career pattern for the future.

We think that future has arrived.

Welcome to your brilliant new career!

Introduction:
There is another way