Thriving Careers in the Age of Transparency and Trust
A conversation with Selina Millstam, Senior Vice President People Growth & Leadership of SAP, Senior Advisor, Board Member.
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Case Study: How Do I Come Back After a Career Break?
A returning marketing executive must choose between a startup role and a gradual returnship.
What It Really Takes to Build a Purposeful Career Over a Lifetime
A conversation with Pauline Kiraithe, Founder and CEO of Talentgurus@254, HR Consultant, Executive and Career Coach, Author of Owning Your…
Career stories
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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Richard
New Zealand, USA
Far from Home
Richard
New Zealand, USA
MBA, INSEAD
Wireline Engineer, Schlumberger
Richard, a 55-year-old C-suite executive, is without any doubt a poster-boy expat, who has not looked back. He grew up in small-town New Zealand, and nothing particularly predisposed him to an international career. His family expectations were that he get a good education and seek out a sound career path. But Richard knew early on that he wanted to explore the wider world. It was perhaps this desire to “get out” that drew him towards French in high school. He proved to be gifted in the language, which would later become critical to his success. At university, Richard studied engineering, in the hope that it would take him “out to where the action is”. During his penultimate year, he landed an internship with oil services company Schlumberger in Borneo, and he was, as he says, “hooked”.
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André
The Netherlands
Corporate to Startup
André
The Netherlands
CIO, business development at Pon, Gartner
Co-founder, Cambrian Technologies
Growing up in a comfortable, Dutch white-collar family did not predispose André to become an entrepreneur. His first job as a Volkswagen intern in Germany introduced him to the rigid and old-fashioned side of corporate life. After six months, he left to join a small company as its seventh employee, enjoying a great deal of freedom to create and innovate. Unfortunately, this company went under. This led André to do an MBA at INSEAD, after which he took a job at an international consultancy, for both the range of work and the regular pay he needed as a new father. However, he disliked the perspective of most of his clients and soon recognized that he was more of a doer than an advisor.
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Caroline
Canada
Serial Entrepreneurs
Caroline
Canada
From Corporate Scandal
to Spirits Pioneer and Reinvention
Caroline’s unconventional journey from a corporate career took an unexpected turn when a dark rumor forced her to leave a prestigious position. Amid personal challenges, she stumbled upon an opportunity to create a whisky distillery on Scotland’s Shetland Isle. Facing marital strife, financial struggles, and a hostile takeover, Caroline emerged resilient. Since selling her pioneering distillery, she’s embarked on diverse ventures, showcasing her entrepreneurial spirit, from turning around companies to launching social enterprises, proving that reinvention is her constant companion. Read more
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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