I read a short book review in the Economist recently for Reid Hoffman’s (founder of LinkedIn) and Ben Casnocha’s new book “The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career”.
While I haven’t read the book (yet — has anybody out there reading this blog read it? If so, let me know what you thought…!), the book review itself contained a few nuggets that certainly resonated with me in terms of both my own career experiences and with the program we coach our clients through at my company Career Coaching International (CCI).
The book review suggests that thinking like a start-up (company) is “…an excellent way for workers to prosper in a world in which the notion of a job for life has been consigned to the scrapheap. By being on the lookout for new opportunities all the time, changing course if markets shift and tapping professional contacts for advice and leads, people can avoid ending up on the slush pile themselves.” It goes on to suggest that in some cases, people may need to completely rethink their careers. Again it makes the point that this is pretty consistent with how start-ups continually “pivot” in the marketplace until they find the kind of market traction they need to commercialize effectively.
I’m personally very committed to looking at career management this way, and I think it helps explain (to me, anyway) why a few years back I evolved beyond my traditional “sandbox” of business consulting with C-View Strategies to add “career coaching” to the mix and experiment with CCI. At the time I saw them as highly complementary business activities — nice to see that viewpoint supported now with a highly rated new book on career management written by a high profile “name”.
Frankly, that feels good… still not sure if I’m going to read the book myself, though!
