Introduction

Modern professionals make the world go round. For hundreds of years professionals in a myriad professions have been providing all manner of services to clients who need the expertise and skills they themselves lack. Although this author is Australian, and what you will read has a distinct Australian flavour, this book is for the professionals of the world.

Why read this book?

As a professional building a successful career today, you are facing unprecedented challenges and opportunities as you service your clients and solve their problems. Changes in client demands, technology, competition and the regulatory environment have always loomed large, but the pace of change has accelerated markedly and shows no signs of slowing.

You face four interlinked challenges. In some cases, these are also potential opportunities. The first two have been building for some decades, while the second two are recent:

1. Complexity. Most professionals, in most sectors and in most countries, operate in an environment of ever-increasing complexity. This takes many forms including clients and their size, scale, business structures and transactions; governmental, regulatory and professional body rules and requirements; the demands of everchanging technology; and, in many industries, the long-term trend towards globalisation.
2. Increased client demands. Clients of professionals have become increasingly sophisticated, demanding and cost-conscious when seeking external services. At the same time, many organisations have in-sourced various types of professional services including but not only legal and accounting functions. In-house professionals not only are subject to increasing productivity demands from their employers but help their organisations to hire external professionals in the most cost-effective manner.
3. Remote work. Although working from home and other forms of remote work had been building slowly in the decades before 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic revolutionised where, when and how professionals go about their task of serving clients. Exactly how this is impacting the coaching, mentoring and professional development of younger professionals is still a work in progress.
4. Artificial intelligence. AI was first posited seriously in the 1950s, but it was the release of the ChatGPT platform by OpenAI in November 2022 that really focused the minds of most people, including any professional not living under a rock, about the potential of AI to dramatically reshape all manner of activities, including the world of work. As no less an authority than Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has observed, we are now living in the 'age of artificial intelligence'1, which will provide remarkable opportunities, as well as challenges, for all professionals and the human race at large.

If you are already a professional, or are thinking about becoming one, you presumably intend to have a long and successful career. To achieve this, you will want to respond to these four challenges. This book is the essential companion on your career journey. As well as being your go-to guide, it will help you think about and answer two vitally important questions2:

• How can I become my best possible professional?
• How can I add the most value in the age of artificial intelligence?

I won't attempt to define 'value', as it will be a personal thing and depend on your field. I encourage you to reflect regularly on the 'value' you are creating, and for whom. You will add value to individuals and organisations, starting with your clients. But you can also add value to your employer, your colleagues, professional and industry bodies and associations, universities and other educational institutions, governments and regulators, society at large and, of course, to yourself.

I have three modest goals for this book: First, you will fundamentally change how you think about your skills and how you will prioritise their development over the rest of your career or careers. Second, employed professionals and their employers around the world will do the same. And third, together we will start a global revolution in the management of employed professionals. You will have the knowledge, vocabulary and confidence to ask your employers to help you to develop most effectively. This will be in the employers' best interests as well as yours.

That's it.

What is this book about?

Part I ('State of Play') sets the professional service scene. It addresses some big-picture issues facing professionals now and in the years ahead. This includes what it means to be a professional in the age of AI, how technology is changing what professionals do, what clients want now and will want in the future, as well as what employers want and should be doing to achieve their goals.

To help you address the four challenges and the two questions set out in the previous section, Part II ('Playbook') introduces the 'Playbook to Unleash Your Potential and Futureproof Your Success', with its Five Factors:

1. Self-care. Even the hardest-working and most conscientious professionals are allowed to look after themselves!
2. Motivation. You are most likely to succeed if you are highly motivated. What motivates you?
3. Learning. Although you have one or more university degrees and professional qualifications, learning should never stop.
4. Capabilities. You will want to spend your precious time developing the capabilities that will best assist you in the age of AI.
5. Accelerants. These are seven proven ways to get ahead in professional life.

I want you to abandon the notion of 'hard skills' and 'soft skills'. I will introduce you to Prime Capabilities (what you do/have) and Enablers (how you apply them) and explain why this is about much more than changing names. More importantly, I will convince you why it is necessary to make this leap.

I have included questions for reflection, and templates and tools to help make my suggestions as clear and as easy to understand and implement as possible. Don't accept any of the suggestions as gospel. Poke, prod and challenge them. Discuss them with your colleagues. Add and subtract things and make them your own.

You'll notice I have called this framework a playbook. Why? Because ultimately I believe you should have fun at work.

This book will be of interest to different readers in different ways. Younger professionals and students may find Part I of greater interest than more senior professionals who have already been around the block a few times. All professionals should find the Five Factors in the Playbook in Part II of great assistance in shaping their personal and professional development. I encourage every reader to review all of the Five Factors, then prioritise their implementation in a way that is 'most personally meaningful to you'.

Who should read this book?

I suggest that all professionals at any age or stage of their careers will find value in The Professional, but it is directed primarily at 'employed professionals'?-?that is, professionals working for a firm or an organisation owned by other people. This includes but is not limited to lawyers, accountants, actuaries, bankers, financial advisers and planners, management consultants, coaches, mentors, architects, engineers, scientists, information technology workers and people working in human resources, advertising, market research and public relations.

The book may also be of interest to many other people including those employed in various parts of the medical, healthcare and veterinary professions. One very enjoyable strand of my second career is being a facilitator in the impressive Company Directors Course run by the Australian Institute of Company Directors. As directors are professionals they too should find this book compelling reading. I hold a number of non-executive directorships in my second career, and I will certainly encourage my fellow directors on various boards to read The Professional.

Relatively early in my career I spent about five years working as an in-house tax professional at Westpac Banking Corporation. I learned a lot about banking and financial transactions as well as how to service multiple clients within a single organisation. When I returned to public practice at what was then Price Waterhouse, most of my clients were themselves in-house tax professionals employed by large companies. Consequently, I have written this book not just for those in professional service firms but for in-house lawyers, accountants and other professionals employed inside corporations, government bodies, not-for-profits and other workplaces. This means that 'clients' in this book include people in an organisation who have services provided to them by in-house professionals within that organisation.

At the same time, professionals such as those working in the public service quite reasonably may not view the people they are serving as 'clients'. However, these professionals will still find this book helpful.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a fundamental reassessment of what constitutes a 'workplace', and this book will also be of interest to professionals working in a new, post-pandemic environment, perhaps from home or from cafés, and perhaps on a freelance basis for multiple...