Career - Self-improvement, productivity, career, leadership (Page 2)

Self-improvement, productivity, career, leadership

Career

A collection of 37 posts

Saying Yes to the Right Things: A Framework for Opportunity Triage

Decision Making

Saying Yes to the Right Things: A Framework for Opportunity Triage

Most career advice, at the senior level, focuses on saying no. The research-supported importance of declining, the specific phrases that work, the discipline of protecting your time. This is all correct, and it's the lower-hanging fruit. Once you've learned to say no cleanly, a more interesting

How to Handle a Bad Boss Without Quitting Your Career

How to Handle a Bad Boss Without Quitting Your Career

Almost every senior professional has, at some point, worked for someone they considered a bad manager. The pattern shows up in surveys, in coaching engagements, in honest conversations among peers. A significant fraction of those same professionals will tell you, if they're honest, that the experience of working

How to Think About Career Risk in Your 30s Without Reading More LinkedIn Posts

How to Think About Career Risk in Your 30s Without Reading More LinkedIn Posts

Most LinkedIn content about career decisions in your 30s is, fundamentally, optimisation porn. Perfect trajectories. Hockey-stick comp growth. The right number of company moves. The optimal time to go for an MBA versus an MSc. The correct calibration of risk for someone with your precise background. The advice is given

The Single Biggest Mistake First-Time Managers Make (and It's Not What You Think)

The Single Biggest Mistake First-Time Managers Make (and It's Not What You Think)

Most of the coaching literature for first-time managers focuses on specific skills: delegation, feedback, running one-on-ones, holding difficult conversations. These are real skills and worth developing. They are also not what actually fails most new managers. In the hundreds of first-time manager situations I've watched closely, the mistake

Imposter Syndrome Isn't the Enemy — the Enemy Is the Guy Who Doesn't Have It

Imposter Syndrome Isn't the Enemy — the Enemy Is the Guy Who Doesn't Have It

A director at a FTSE 100 company told me last year, in a tone of genuine confession, that she felt like a fraud. She had been promoted four times in seven years. She managed a team of 60 across three countries. Her department had, under her leadership, grown its contribution

Burnout Isn't a Rest Problem — It's an Autonomy Problem

Burnout Isn't a Rest Problem — It's an Autonomy Problem

The standard narrative of burnout has three acts. Protagonist works too hard. Protagonist ignores warning signs. Protagonist collapses and takes six months to recover, emerging with a newfound appreciation for boundaries and yoga. The cultural version of this story frames burnout as a rest problem — too much work, insufficient recovery,

How to Network When You Hate Networking

How to Network When You Hate 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 Old-Fashioned Way: Why Coffee Chats Don't Work and What Does

Mentorship the Old-Fashioned Way: Why Coffee Chats Don't Work and What Does

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 Velocity: Why Some People Double Their Skills Every Two Years

Learning Velocity: Why Some People Double Their Skills Every Two Years

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

Why SMART Goals Are a Trap for Ambitious People

Why SMART Goals Are a Trap for Ambitious People

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

OKRs for One: How to Apply the Google Goal System to Your Personal Career

OKRs for One: How to Apply the Google Goal System to Your Personal Career

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

How to Say No Without Burning Bridges — a Playbook for Senior Operators

How to Say No Without Burning Bridges — a Playbook for Senior Operators

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