Networking
If you're reading this, there's maybe a 60% chance you've never been to a formal networking event that produced a relationship that actually mattered to your career. The standard format — nametag, plastic cup, 20 people standing around a function room hoping someone interesting will
Mentorship
The modern version of mentorship has decayed into a specific ritual: a 30-minute coffee chat, maybe quarterly, in which a senior person dispenses advice while a junior person takes notes. Both sides feel they've done the thing. The junior person gets to tell their boss they have a
Learning
Between 2018 and 2023 I watched two colleagues — similar age, similar starting point, both analysts at the same consulting firm — take measurably different career trajectories. One is now a director at a top-tier fund, running a portfolio worth nine figures. The other is still an analyst, at a different but
Goal Setting
George Doran coined SMART goals in a 1981 management-review article. The idea, reasonable at the time, was that vague managerial objectives produced vague outcomes, and that forcing people to write goals that were Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound would pull performance upward. For ordinary corporate work — hitting a quarterly
Goal Setting
John Doerr introduced OKRs — Objectives and Key Results — to Google in 1999. He'd learned them at Intel under Andy Grove, who had adapted them from Peter Drucker's Management by Objectives from the 1950s. The format became internal company currency at Google, and from there spread to
Communication
A director I know at a large consumer goods company has a Post-it note on the side of his monitor that reads, in black Sharpie, "No is the new yes." He put it there in 2021 after a year in which he said yes to everything — every cross-functional