To Achieve Personal Independence You Need To Be An Information Leader

... as institutions are turned inside out by technology, globalization, and rising public and client expectations of every sort, the refugees are disappearing.

Every professional's job is now the front lines, and the skills of leadership must become central to everyone's conception of themselves as a professional.

In a knowledge-intensive world of ceaseless innovation and change, I assert, every professional must be a leader.

This is not a universally popular idea. Some people say, "leadership is fine for others, but I just want a job". I want to argue that it doesn't work that way.

The skills that the leader exercises in building a critical mass of opinion around emerging issues are the same skills that every professional needs to stay employed at all. In the old days the leadership-averse could hide out in bureaucracies.

Not anymore.

This is an outstanding essay that deserves all of the time it requires to be read in toto. Phil Agre highlights with accuracy and detail a six-step process to become an information age leader, an opinion maker.

His advice is so refreshing and in tune with my own views and experiences that I cannot recommend you to read enough.

But the real "cream" is hidden, in a little, short pararaph toward the end.
Phil Agre writes:

a) Use your connections to help people who deserve help.

b) Promote all ideas that you find valuable, whether they reinforce your issues or not.

c) Keep trying to understand your issues more deeply, and ask yourself whether the world is changing.

d) Don't be an ego freak.

e) Write down what you learn along the way.

This is a genuine manifesto of intelligence, method and strategy for any sincere change agent wanting to make a difference out there.

Couple that with the opportunities new media technologies are providing us and there you have it: ethical, open-minded, independent individuals as online producers of media that act as unique powerful mavens, connectors, salesmen and change agents of these fascinating times.

It feels so good to having been riding on this path without any clear such reference as this. And when it happens, when you read your own journey, so precisely described by someone else who does not even know you, the experience has the power to convert your past sacrifical journey into a granitic block of greater confidence and vision for where you are headed.

It's a wild, unexplored, scary and fascinating journey for those who can see through it.

But it is worth every millisecond of it.

start making WAVES !!