Your Move … And What You Can Do About It

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Your Next Move: The Leader’s Guide to Successfully Navigating Major Career Transitions

Competencies: career development, self development

Who benefits: employees on a vertical climb

Consultant Usage: career counseling, executive coaching

What’s it about? This is a very narrowly written book, so this review is not for every reader.  If it is not for you, stop now and get on to something important!

The book is written for those who see themselves moving into the highest echelons of organizations…the real executive levels.  It is further specific in focusing on the critical transition stage in a new role.  In essence, you have a 90 day time limit to make an impact or crash.  Put that way, vertical climbers need to consider this book.

Before going further, let me add an additional cautionary note.  If you have not considered your career in an organized way before today, be advised that vertical climbing is not the only way to have a successful career.  Consider reading Beverly Kaye’s seminal book Up Is Not The Only Way or consider taking Ken Nowack’s brilliant Career Profile Inventory (Ken is one of my bosses.  If you are a regular reader of this column, you know I frequently suck up to the bosses.)

Back to this book.  I love lists, so I liked this book because it has two lists.  A short one and a long one.  If you have not read the author’s previous book on this topic, he summarizes it in the first chapter: The Seven Elements of Successful Transition.  That’s the short list.  And now you don’t have to read his first book.

He really got me with the first item on the 7-point list: Organize To Learn.  Sounds simple but I doubt if any of us do that naturally…we are too tempted on the first day by what’s in the inbasket, and after that we a hooked on the short-term and have no time for what is really important.  His advice is to figure out what you most need to learn, from whom, and how you can best learn it.  He sees it as a mix of technical, cultural, and political learning. 

The long list is essentially what this book is about.  His list is what he calls “the eight types of career moves as representative types.”  I simply call them the eight career challenges.  Each one of the challenges is a separate chapter.

That’s probably what you need to know to decide if the book is right for you.  I mention at the top this book isn’t for everyone.  But no matter where you are on your career ladder today, if you see yourself climbing to the top, you need to read this book.

Catch you later.

[tags]careers, career ladder, promotions, vertical promotions, up is not the only way, career profile inventory, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.