Organizations & Culture
Crisis at Work: Why Today’s Organizations Are Failing To Unleash Human Potential
Jennifer isn’t happy. She started her career in strategy consulting, got her MBA from a top business school, went back into consulting for a few years, and is about to be promoted from director to senior manager in a Fortune 500 company. While Jennifer has achieved what she had set from the start as her ... Read more
Career Mental Model #2: Thinking about the “how” instead of the “what”
Early in my career I was fixated on the “what.” I set my goals on achieving the next thing. There was always another thing — the job title, the company, the institutions, promotion. I was achievement chasing. However, in terms of maximizing long-term sanity and career success, achievement chasing will not help you get anywhere. Since there ... Read more
Career Mental Model #1: Price your time at $1,000,000 an hour
Lawyers price their work at absurd sums, so why can’t you set an equally ridiculous rate for your own time? No one goes into their career or job and says “my number one goal is to destroy my marriage, my friendships and relationship with my children.” Yet many people do just this. There are no performance ... Read more
The vicious talent cycle and its link to our flawed ideas of human performance
Research findings from Ernest O’Boyle and Herman Aguinis should have rocked the corporate world in 2012. Instead, it was business as usual. Google, however, was one company that took notice. O’Boyle and Aguinis found that in a number of different fields, human performance followed the power law distribution rather than a normal distribution. This means ... Read more
The Ultimate Guide To Freelance Strategy Consulting Talent Platforms
In 2012 I worked for a firm called a-connect that gave me my first exposure to the “future of work” — nobody was calling it that yet, but I saw a clear shift. Our firm staffed independent professionals, many of which were alumni from firms like McKinsey, Bain and BCG, but many were experts with ... Read more
STEM is overrated — why we shouldn’t be pushing everyone to get a degree in science
People love STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. The New York Times wrote an article earlier this year talking about efforts to incentivize people to pursue STEM fields and stay away from liberal arts. It passes the conventional wisdom test. In a time of rapid accelerating change and more technology, we surely need more ... Read more
Planning a Career is Insane — Here is a better approach
I graduated from business school in 2012. The job I have now didn’t exist then and nor did the previous one. How do you plan landing your dream job if it might not exist yet? Predicting the future is hard, so I’d like to offer a better approach: #1 MANAGING YOUR ENERGY When you are energized, ... Read more
Career, Interrupted: Building a career while fighting for my health
As I laid in my bed after not working for the third month in a row, I started to question my beliefs. I challenged my beliefs about what mattered and also began to question my own identity and what I stood for. I had been sick for almost a year. I had taken a leave ... Read more
The Skills That Matter In Today’s Working World
Anyone who has dug into our US education system can tell you that the skills being taught are not aligned with what is needed in today’s jobs. In fact, anyone who has made the transition from college to full-time employment will often say “i didn’t learn anything until I started working” (raises hand). This week ... Read more