By John Nicholson

"The dice are loaded in favor of the Organization." — William H. Whyte, The Organization Man, 19561 "The dice are loaded in favor of the individual." — Daniel H. Pink, Free Agent Nation, 20012

Introduction

Welcome to the new world of work, land of the "knowledge worker." While this oft-used phrase cannot convey the many subtleties of the new workplace, it does identify its most exciting feature: knowledge and skills rule, and these resources are owned by the individual. With this ownership come opportunities for work that is more challenging, fun, and self-expressive³. "Skills," business guru Tom Peters proclaims, "are liberating as Hell!"⁴

Of course, skills only liberate individuals who can demonstrate them. In response to this need, the past decade has witnessed an explosion in skill certification offerings. Yet in an increasingly fast-paced and brain-based economy, individuals need more than one or two certifications. To stand out from the crowd - to be truly free - today's knowledge worker needs a lifetime skills portfolio. To see why, we begin with a story about a man and his granddaughter …

1956 vs. 2001: A Tale of Two Worlds of Work

July 17, 1956, 5:01 pm

As Bill Hanson waited for the elevator to reach the 8th floor, he reflected upon his career at U.S. Motors. Having joined the company after college fifteen years ago, he had steadily moved up the ladder from clerk to manager. Though generally content, Bill wondered if he would ever do something different. Something more challenging. Something more fun. As Bill joined the suit-clad men in the elevator, he considered his options and quickly grew discouraged. There was just no bridge from here to another type of work. His education had ended with his degree in business and he knew of few options for picking up new skills. Furthermore, Bill did not want to jeopardize the secure job, with steady raises and promotions, that U.S.M. had provided him. Bill decided it was best to remain loyal to his company.

July 17, 1996, 5:01 pm

Maria Hanson awaited the elevator on the 8th floor of Bank of North America and, like her grandfather 40 years earlier, she reflected upon her career. Maria had enjoyed her past three years as a bank teller, but was beginning to long for something new, more exciting, and more lucrative. She had been hearing about growing opportunities in information technology, and stopped to consider her options as she entered the elevator.

While it wouldn't be easy, the road from bank teller to an entry-level IT position such as help desk support was clearly visible. She had heard about plenty of training and continuing education options, and she knew people who had taken certification tests to demonstrate their new knowledge and skills to employers. Despite her limited background in IT, Maria was confident that she could pick up some key skills, prove them, and then move into this field.

July 15, 2001, 6:36 pm

As Maria walked towards the stairwell on the 3rd floor of IT America, she reflected upon her last five years. Within six months of her decision to plunge into IT, Maria became a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) and soon thereafter secured a tech support role at Bank of North America. Two years later, she followed a similar path to become an Oracle administrator at IT America. In this role, she worked on numerous projects and was gaining experience in Linux, Java, and Perl. She even took on several side projects with other companies to add to her income and further develop her Java skills. As she descended the stairs this evening, Maria thought about her future career. She was confident that she could continue to build new skills, but was frustrated with her options for certifying and re-certifying these skills. She had already spent countless hours and dollars getting her Microsoft and Oracle certifications. Both were now dated and neither had told her much about her skills. She was reluctant to go through the same process with Sun, a Linux certifier, and numerous other certification organizations in the future. Maria longed for an option better suited to the pace of her career.

The New World of Work: Free Agent Nation

"Paternalism ended decades ago, employee-ism is fading,
free agentry is how we'll work in the blur of tomorrow."
— Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer, Ernst & Young⁵

Though the above stories are caricatures, they demonstrate important trends in the world of work. We have moved from Bill's world of conformity, loyalty, and hierarchy to Maria's world of entrepreneurship, mobility, and fluidity. Power is shifting from the organization to the individual. And as the factors that have caused this shift - global competition, technological innovation, and deregulation - intensify, we can expect to see the individual gain more control in the future. More specifically, we are moving closer and closer to what author Daniel Pink calls 'Free Agent Nation' in a recent book by that name. While the near future is not likely to consist solely of independent workers, we are moving towards a world in which most people work like free agents. Or, as Pink puts it, "we're all going Hollywood."6 Mimicking the film industry, in today's economy talent assembles with talent to complete a project, and then quickly disperses and moves onto the next project. 'Project World' is what Tom Peters calls it - a place in which a career is "a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, … grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand."7 And as Maria demonstrates, such a world exists as much within organizations, and for employees, as it does for freelancers. While this rapidly changing, 'free agent' labor market gives individuals like Maria more control over their careers, it also means they need to constantly update their skills. The kind of security that Bill was scared to give up - working for one company for a lifetime - no longer exists. Yet security has not disappeared. "The kind of security you're looking for," argue Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer of Ernst & Young, "most likely lies in your own skill base and how you wield it in the open marketplace" (emphasis added).8

Skill Certifications and the Demand for Lifelong Learning

"The continuing professional education of adults is the
No. 1 gross industry in the next 30 years."
— Peter Drucker⁹

Recognizing that skills are the key differentiator in today's employment marketplace, more and more individuals like Maria are turning to skill certifications. Between 1997 and 2000, IT certification doubled from a $1.4 billion industry to a $2.8 billion industry, and it is expected to grow to over $4 billion by 2003.¹⁰ Among the major players in the certification industry are companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and Cisco, who offer tests focused on their line of products, and industry organizations like CompTIA and the Linux Professional Institute, who offer tests focused on their industry. While en masse these players cover a large range of skills, by themselves each is fairly narrow in scope.

A single certification from one of these players might satisfy someone like Maria circa 1996 - an entry-level employee who gains a new skill every few years. Yet in a rapidly changing, skills-based economy, as Tom Peters bluntly states, "we are RAPIDLY depreciating assets."11 To avoid 'depreciation,' individuals must become like Maria today - a lifelong learner, updating skills multiple times per year. "Just as in the newly democratized world of finance," observes Dan Pink, "in the newly liberated world of work, it's diversify or die."12 In a diversify-or-die, adapt-or-die employment market, a single certification from Microsoft or CompTIA will not allow individuals to keep up, let alone stand out. Many ambitious knowledge workers like Maria are thus forced to go with what certification expert Ed Tittel calls the 'mixing and matching' approach.13 To show their Windows skills, they get certified by Microsoft; to show their Java skills, they get certified by Sun; and so on.

Yet as Maria and more and more individuals are coming to realize, this type of 'mixing and matching' faces two main problems: (1) It makes it difficult to show what you know. Most certifications cost $100 - $200 and require travel to a testing center, often during work hours. For people updating skills frequently, keeping certifications current becomes too expensive and burdensome. (2) It does little to help you grow what you know. Five different certifications à la carte will often leave the test-taker with five different scores, and not much else. Yet as management theorist Peter Drucker argues, people today need "feedback analysis" that "rapidly shows where a person needs to improve skills or has to acquire new knowledge."¹⁴ Knowledge workers need to know their strengths and weaknesses, both within and among their skill areas, and they need this feedback in a consistent, standardized form.

In other words, individuals who are adapting to the free agent economy need a skills measurement tool that is itself more flexible, holistic, and evolutionary. Lifelong learners need a tool to help them 'show and grow' their key skills - all of them - conveniently and cost-effectively. Today's knowledge worker needs a lifetime skills portfolio.

Brainbench and the Lifetime Skills Portfolio

"Me Inc. requires a rich, diverse portfolio of skills."
— Tom Peters¹⁵

Enter Brainbench. Founded in 1998, Brainbench is the only organization in the world that empowers knowledge workers to create lifetime skills portfolios. With a rapidly growing collection of tests - to date over 325 - Brainbench offers individuals a one-stop shop for certifying and developing a diverse range of skills.

Over 3 million people have already discovered Brainbench. If Maria were one of them, showing what she knows would no longer be a challenge. She would find that all of her skills to date are covered in Brainbench's certification library, including product-specific tests like MS Windows 2000 Administration, skill-specific tests like Perl, and concept tests like Project Management. With little effort, Maria can hold all of her certifications (including those from 3rd parties) in a single transcript that can be easily shared with current and prospective employers. Maria can also feel confident that, for any new skill she adds, the Brainbench stamp of approval will be waiting for her. Brainbench's rapid, ISO-certified test development process allows it to quickly adapt to the skills marketplace. And since its tests are online, Maria can take them quickly, inexpensively, anytime, anywhere. Finally, with each new test, Maria obtains the kind of 'feedback analysis' Drucker discusses, feedback that will help her grow her skills. After taking the Java 2 test, she might discover that she is strong in 'threads' yet weak in 'applets.' She might also find that, whereas she scored better than 90% of U.S. test-takers in Linux Administration, she scored better than only 55% in Java 2. These two types of immediate feedback will help Maria focus her skills improvement efforts, both within Java and among her skills as a whole.

The following table shows in greater detail how Brainbench's offering enables individuals to develop lifetime skills portfolios:

Conclusion

In 1956, William Whyte's The Organization Man - a critical depiction of the static, conformist world of work in which Maria's grandfather lived - joined the best-seller list. As commentator Virginia Postrel points out, The Organization Man was one of a handful of books at the time that pleaded "for a world in which people would be free to realize their talents, to flourish on their own merits." As Maria and countless other free agents demonstrate, "those pleas have succeeded, at least in the world of work, to an extent unimagined by their authors."¹⁶

The labor market will continue to change in ways that we cannot imagine. Yet if current trends continue, in-so-doing it will create even greater opportunities for individuals to flourish. And more and more of these knowledge workers will realize that, in a dynamic, brain-based economy, the best opportunities come to those who adopt a lifetime skills portfolio.

About Brainbench

Brainbench is rapidly becoming the accepted skills measurement standard for knowledge workers worldwide. Brainbench pioneered online skill certification and is now used by over three million people, including employees of 96 of the Fortune 100. Brainbench certifications are offered in over 325 individual skills in areas ranging from information technology to finance to human resources to languages. Brainbench's Skills Certification System allows organizations to offer unlimited certification testing to their employees and have the results captured in a corporate skills database. Brainbench offers industry leading feedback that allows comparison between individuals and the rest of the company at both an overall and topic level. Corporate customers include EDS, Ernst & Young, IBM, Dell, and PeopleSoft. Major Investors include Manpower, Thomson Learning, Terra Lycos and Primus Venture Partners.

About the Author

John Nicholson directs Brainbench's Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Program, a project that utilizes and rewards the expertise of over 500 top-scoring test takers in over 30 skill areas. Prior to joining Brainbench, John worked at the Mercatus Center, a research think tank that applies economic analysis to organizational and societal problems. In his role there, he led a number of projects focused on current labor market trends. John received his B.A. from Brown University.

¹William H. Whyte, Jr., The Organization Man (Garden City: Doubleday Achor, 1956).

²Daniel H. Pink, Free Agent Nation: How America's New Independent Workers Are Transforming the Way We Live (New York: Warner Books, 2001) p. 314.

³Virginia I. Postrel, "The Work Ethic, Redefined," The Wall Street Journal, September 4, 1998.

⁴Tom Peters, The Brand You 50: Or Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an 'Employee' into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion! (New York: Knopf, 1999).

⁵Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer, Blur: The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy (New York: Warner Books, 1998) p. 240.

⁶Daniel Pink, Free Agent Nation, p. 17; see also Daniel Pink, "Land of the Free," Fast Company (May 2001).

⁷Tom Peters, "The Brand Called You," Fast Company (August 1997).

⁸Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer, Blur, p. 152.

⁹James Daly, "Sage Advice: An Interview with Peter Drucker," Business 2.0 (August 22, 2000); see also Peter F. Drucker, "Putting More Now Into Knowledge," Forbes (May 15, 2000).

¹⁰Anne-Sophie Dankens and Ellen H. Julian, The IT Certification Training and Testing Market, 1998-2003 (IDC, February 2000).

¹¹Tom Peters, The Circle of Innovation: You Can't Shrink Your Way to Greatness (New York: Knopf, 1997) p. 379.

¹²Daniel Pink, Free Agent Nation, p. 89. Pink's use of the word "diversify" extends beyond skills; he defines "diversification" in the labor market as "an independent worker spreading her risk across a portfolio of projects, clients, skills, and customers." (p. 93)

¹³Ed Tittel, "Road Map to Certification," Certification Magazine (May 2001); see aSlso Anne Martinez, Get Certified and Get Ahead, 3rd Ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000) pp. 315-321: "As part of a 1997 Gartner Group study sponsored by Prometric, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, and Sybase, more than 7,000 certification candidates were asked about professional designations they already held. Two thirds of respondents reported already holding one or more certifications prior to the one they were currently pursuing. Less than one third (31 percent) were earning their first certification. In contrast, when the same question was asked back in 1994, more than half of the respondents (56 percent) were in the process of earning their first certification. This data indicates a trend toward earning multiple certifications."

¹⁴Peter F. Drucker, Management Challenges for the 21st Century (New York: Harperbusiness, 1999), p. 165; see also Thomas Petzinger, Jr., The New Pioneers: The Men and Women Who Are Transforming the Workplace and Marketplace, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999) pp 34-35: "Every living thing, at bottom, learns in the identical way: through the elegantly simple and constantly recurring process of action, feedback, and synthesis. … When feedback causes a living thing to change behavior, that's learning, whether a bacterium gravitating toward a sugar gradiant or a child reckoning blocks. Learning, it's true, is full of spectatular nuance and complexity, but there's no getting away from that feedback cycle of action, reaction, and synthesis, not on any scale of life."

¹⁵Tom Peters, The Brand You 50.

¹⁶Virginia I. Postrel, "The New World of Work," Speech at Reason Weekend (March 1995); see also Virginia Postrel, "How Has 'The Organization Man' Aged?" The New York Times (January 17, 1999). For a broader discussion of the need for more dynamic, rather than static, approaches in business, politics, culture, and beyond, see Postrel's The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress (New York: Free Press, 1998).