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Embracing Career Adventures – A Guide to Thriving in Transition
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Career stories
Gayle
USA
Second Acts
Gayle
USA
Sales & Consulting, Hewlett- Packard
Encore Fellow, Second Harvest Food Bank
Gayle started her career in IT sales. Her mother was a lifetime IBM-er, and Gayle grew up intending to avoid the same fate. However, after studying mathematics and computer science at UCSB in California, she accepted a job with HP. She moved her way up rapidly, becoming a manager at 25, and joining the pioneering consulting arm of the company shortly thereafter. Global responsibilities came along, and she was extremely happy with her progress. Eventually, rapid changes at HP left her gradually more frustrated by the resulting culture. So when Gayle was offered a “phased” retirement at the age of 56, she accepted the offer. In her mind, however, her career was most definitely not over.
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Permjot
United Kingdom
FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early)
Permjot
United Kingdom
From Corporate Success
to Financial Independence
Permjot‘s initial success in London’s corporate world left him pondering the role of chance in achievement. Passive income from successful asset management granted him the freedom to explore a different life. Relocating to Nova Scotia, he leveraged his skills in leadership and investment to engage in meaningful, often pro bono work. Shedding ego-driven motivations, Permjot now finds joy in helping others succeed. His evolving roles reflect a conscious pivot, demonstrating that age-appropriate reinvention is key to a fulfilling life.
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Mutaz
Sudan
Refugees Restarting
Mutaz
Sudan
Sudanese refugee
Entrepreneur at Forward Incubator
As a child, Mutaz dreamt about inventing extraordinary machines. His life has turned out, so far, to be full of reinvention. Raised in Saudi Arabia by his accountant father, a Sudanese no longer welcome in his own country, Mutaz held on to his dreams all through high school. However, the first obstacle he encountered was Saudi universities refused admission to foreign students. So he went to Sudan to study architectural engineering. In 2009, after graduation, Mutaz returned to Saudi Arabia. His first job was as an architect in a firm that was planning a new city, 700 km north of Riyadh. For almost a decade, he progressed in seniority, making astute moves from one firm to another, until he was running large projects for both local and multinational companies.
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Iona
United Kingdom
Corporate High-Flyer to Artisan
Iona
United Kingdom
European equity analyst in investment banks
Landscape Architect
Iona encountered fewer obstacles on her journey. Raised in the Scottish Highlands, she frequently travelled with her family, developing an appreciation for local cultures and languages. An exchange year in France and a gap year in Australia later convinced her that she needed to make a lot of money to finance her wanderlust. So she decided on a career in investment banking in London. She first took a junior role on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs, before joining another bank, selling European equities. She loved the constant travel, the glamorous clients and the bright people around her. However, after seven years, the finance world started shifting. As the environment became far less pleasant, she reconsidered her options.
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The book
Disrupt Your Career:
How to Navigate
Uncharted Career
Transitions and Thrive
By Antoine Tirard and Claire Harbour
Paperback, 310 pages
Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
Professionals face many critical crossroads in their careers, sometimes unpredictable, sometimes more expected, but for which they were often not truly prepared.
This book discusses many such career transitions – from leaving a corporation to joining a non-profit, evolving from athlete to executive, or returning to a former employer.
Using the stories of 50 leaders interviewed all over the world, the authors describe what provokes the change, the challenges it creates, how the individual is surviving the transition, and what effective leaders do to navigate and grow from it.
The book offers a simple, easy-to-use framework to help make the most of any uncharted transition.
To thrive, you have to follow a four-stage process of Exploring, Experimenting,
Engaging and Expanding. Drawing on examples of a wide range of companies, Disrupt Your Career also provides recommendations to help organizations better acquire, develop and retain talent.
With both compelling stories and rigorous research, Disrupt Your Career serves as a call to exploit novel ways to approach careers and presents practical advice to help both individuals and organizations better prepare, manage, and make the most of career changes – ultimately leading to more fulfilling careers.
What people are saying
This book brings a fresh approach – based on the stories of a diverse and colorful range of career changers – that will inspire many to explore similar moves. It also provides excellent thinking for organizations, where there is still an enormous need for improved approaches to career management.
Herminia Ibarra
Charles Handy Professor of Organizational Behavior at London Business School
How often have you wondered if those that leave your organization are doing so for the right reasons? What would you give to know more, and lose less? Disrupt Your Career holds one of the keys to this increasing challenge for leaders, and outlines a series of insights and processes that can lead to better career comfort for individuals and enhanced, more effective career management for organizations. Tirard and Harbour-Lyell tell the stories that illustrate the career transitions with simplicity and empathy, and make it obvious that we can all learn from them.
Åsa Landén Ericsson
CEO of Cygate, Board Member of Grant Thornton Sweden, Formpipe and Rhenman & Partners
For a leader in any substantial organization, one major preoccupation beyond attracting the very best people is also keeping them stimulated, challenged and fulfilled. This book provides invaluable insight, research and strategies for improvement in both talent strategy and career management. The stories are inspiring and authentic, indicating new paths to follow, and innovative approaches to managing career paths for both companies and individuals.
Jean-Claude Le Grand
Senior VP Talent Development and Chief Diversity Officer, L’Oréal
An essential, soul-saving guide for anyone navigating a non-traditional career path, including most women. And for the companies smart enough to attract them – and creative enough to benefit from their adaptive skills.
Avivah Wittenberg-Cox
CEO of 20-first and author of Seven Steps to Leading a Gender-Balanced Business
Disrupt Your Career makes a significant contribution towards the career challenge, by illustrating various uncharted transitions with compelling and insightful stories. The frameworks are strikingly simple, and the book provides invaluable options and strategies for organizations and individuals alike.
Gianpiero Petriglieri
Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD
Career disruption will happen to everyone – and most of us are ill prepared. This captivating book shows how to understand career transitions and gives fascinating and practical ideas about how best to navigate. A must read for anyone embarking on a life change.
Lynda Gratton
Professor of Management Practice at London Business School
Whether you are an individual pondering a big change, or forced into transition by yet another downsizing, or you are leading an organization and hoping to stem the early attrition of your people, there is something here for you. The stories are compelling, and the frameworks for action simple and solid.
Per Heggenes
CEO, The IKEA Foundation
…combines insights drawn from stories of successful career changers with rigorous research and practical ideas that can be put to immediate use. The book beautifully demonstrates that career reinvention is not only possible, but should be embraced in today’s VUCA world.
Kevin Cashman
Senior Partner, CEO & Executive Development, Korn Ferry and bestselling author
About
Antoine Tirard is a talent management advisor and the founder of NexTalent. He is the former head of talent management of Novartis and LVMH.
Claire Harbour is a coach and global talent expert, the founder of Culture Pearl and a speaker, consultant and writer about all things to do with optimizing talent across borders.
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