We often hear that finding the work we are meant for will multiply our accomplishments and enable us to attain new levels of personal satisfaction. Yet, many who are planning their careers find that the job market has shifted to the advantage of employers, whether as a result of the recession, globalization, IT-driven productivity, or other changes in the business landscape. Faced with these tough circumstances, it is more critical than ever for professionals to create a plan of attack and make sound decisions as they navigate their careers.
The Strategic Career provides readers with the ultimate guide to career choices-both short-term and long. While other authors approach career development from the perspective of psychology and counseling, Bill Barnett demonstrates how business strategy concepts can successfully guide us as we chart our careers. Drawing on two decades of experience leading McKinsey & Company's Strategy Practice, as well as his popular Career Strategy courses at Yale and Rice University, he approaches the construction of a long-term career plan by looking at the main challenges professionals will face: developing and reaching long-term targets, surfacing opportunities, assessing career decisions, and staying on track. Underpinning his advice with research and illustrating it with vivid stories from others' successes, Barnett lays out practical, step-by-step processes to help readers realize their goals. Complete with a program to help you develop your own plan and over 100 specific activities to guide you, The Strategic Career is the ideal companion on your professional pathway.
Autorentext
Bill Barnett teaches career strategy at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business. He was formerly Director of McKinsey & Company, Inc., where he led the firm's Strategy Practice.
Inhalt
The introduction first tells the story of the research that showed how to make better career decisions by applying business strategy concepts to careers. It uses two examples to illustrate the way the book's stories will show the career strategy principles in action. It describes the book's step-by-step methodology to help readers get to fresh insights and positive impact. It sets in-going expectations about the potential for positive personal impact from reading the book and completing the book's exercises. And it presents the book's overall outline.
Career strategy begins when people recognize their personal values related to work. This chapter presents the jobs/careers/callings model and explains how people with callings enjoy greater happiness and personal satisfaction. It describes what distinguishes people in each category. Calling people are ambitious and emphasize the work as a positive end in itself - service, craftsmanship, and/or institution. Career people also are ambitious, but they emphasize what they take out of work - money, power, and prestige. Work isn't as important to jobs people who hope to contain sacrifice and earn acceptable pay. Ironically, calling people who don't emphasize pay and prestige often accomplish a lot, advance, and earn near the top of their professions. Understanding personal values at work is essential to finding a calling. This chapter then shows how to explore those values. The result of Chapter 1 is a prioritized list of values related to work.
In the short term, strengths are why an employer will hire someone. In the long term, strengths are the platform on which people can set career aspirations. People who emphasize their signature strengths will accomplish more, be happier, and have a good shot at finding their calling. Understanding strengths, therefore, is critical to career strategy. The strengths that are most important to career strategy are those that are distinctive and that closely relate to what's required for success at particular kinds of work; that often means the most important strengths will be narrow and very specific. It can be hard to understand oneself in that way. This chapter presents strength assessment exercises and shows how to use them. The result of Chapter 2 is a ranked list of strengths.
Callings emerge when people find fields and roles that reflect their values and use their strengths, but it's often hard to imagine what those fields and roles might be. Most people need techniques to stimulate creative thinking about appealing future fields and roles, and this chapter shows how to brainstorm future possibilities. For example: building off current strengths, building off extreme versions of strengths and values, imagining dream jobs and nightmares, recalling past interests, and writing an article about one's career for publication in ten years. It also identifies the most stimulating situations. The result of Chapter 3 is a list of potential fields or roles for people to explore and research in depth.
Rigor matters greatly in career decisions, and yet people often fail to get the information they need to support rigorous thinking. Once people imagine appealing fields and roles, for example, it's time to investigate them in depth. This chapter shows how to research fields and roles by taking full advantage of public sources of information and by talking with people who can provide the inside picture. This chapter also shows how to experiment with possible fields and roles; experiments are especially important when people are considering radical career moves. This chapter spotlights four big topic areas that are part of most career strategizing - organization culture, role, sacrifice, and industry and business outlook and shows how to investigate each of them.
The personal value proposition (PVP) is the heart of career strategy. Just like the value proposition in business, PVP is a person's target field or role, what's required to succeed there, how the person's strengths match those requirements, and what the person expects in return. This chapter shows how to determine a person's aspirational PVP - the positions they hope to reach over the long term, together with the capabilities they need to develop and the record of accomplishment they'll need to have in order to get there. That aspirational PVP is the result of this chapter. Setting direction, it is the foundation for developing long term career strategy.
A long term career strategy is not only the aspirations expressed in the personal value proposition, but also the steps required to reach those aspirations. This chapter describes the four categories of initiatives people can take. Two are career path planning and education; they both build personal capability and thereby develop the "product" people hope to become. The other two are a winning reputation and a powerful professional network (including executive search firms); both are essential assets to "market" that "product". This chapter shows how to build the product and the associated marketing muscle - the steps people can take to bring each of these initiative areas to life. The result of Chapter 6 is a list of possible initiatives to pursue across all four of these categories.
This chapter discusses three remaining steps. First, determine which of the potential initiatives to pursue, with what level of effort, and their timing and sequence. It so…