From Success to Meaning – Designing Your Good Life
A conversation with Charles Lee, Founder & CEO of Ideation, Author of “Design Your Good Life”.
Build your career
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News
The Predictable Executive Career Arc Is Over
Longer careers and AI uncertainty call for experimentation, continuous investment and reflection.
Author Chat: Collective Confidence by André Martin
André Martin talks about his new book Collective Confidence.
Career stories
Steve & Joe
United States
Coming Out at Work
Steve & Joe
United States
Love and Resilience
Steve and Joe’s Journey Through Workplace Evolution
Dive into the captivating journey of Steve and Joe, a married couple who navigated the choppy waters of corporate America as openly gay professionals. From facing homophobia during the AIDS crisis to Joe’s bold move at Deloitte and Steve’s courageous openness at Nautica, their story reflects the societal shift towards acceptance. Embracing marriage in 2006 and paving the way for diversity initiatives, the couple shares anecdotes of microaggressions and societal assumptions. Laughing off challenges, they highlight the importance of support and societal changes. Steve and Joe’s tale is a testament to love, resilience, and the evolving landscape for LGBTQ+ professionals in the workplace.
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Loren
Canada
Business to HR Leader
Loren
Canada
Using commercial instinct
to bring HR back to the playing field at LEGO
Embark on Loren’s transformative journey from accidental self-discovery in Australia to becoming the Chief People Officer at LEGO. His exploration of personal development and mindfulness, coupled with diverse leadership experiences, led him to reshape LEGO’s People environment. Loren’s innovative approach involved simplifying HR practices, creating a unique leadership model, and fostering a bottom-up movement called « The Leadership Playground. » Overcoming initial resistance, he redefined HR’s role, aligning the entire company. Now in an expanded role, Loren shares insights on his leadership philosophy and emphasizes the importance of being ‘in the business’ for HR to truly contribute. Dive into the article to learn more about Loren’s story, and explore LEGO’s journey toward a conscious and purpose-driven organization.
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Anabel
UK
Profit to Purpose
Anabel
UK
Partner / Chief Operating Officer, Pensions First
Chief Operating Officer, Save the Children
Anabel says she had little experience in not-for-profit work, apart from a short project in Sierra Leone during her degree work in Human Sciences, as well as volunteer work in the U.K. with underprivileged children. She is perhaps too modest, as many of us have done far less than that. When Anabel says that purpose work “was not on her radar,” perhaps she means she did not see it as a legitimate way to make a living. She had spent ten years building a massive capacity as a leader and motivator of teams at world-class companies such as Virgin and Carphone Warehouse, and so had developed a taste for being challenged and stretched in this context.
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Caron
United Kingdom
First Generation Professionals
Caron
United Kingdom
From a difficult childhood
to professional success
Caron’s turbulent childhood, marked by violence and hardship, didn’t stop her from pursuing a dream of studying Law at Cambridge. Through determination and hard work, she not only overcame societal biases but excelled academically and socially. Climbing the ladder in City law firms, Caron achieved material success but realized it didn’t bring happiness. Now, as a learning and development coach, she guides others on their paths, emphasizing the importance of humility, curiosity, and patience in the journey of reinvention.
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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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