While most of us start out with the belief that our careers will follow a certain path, for almost all there will be time when despite our best efforts and planning there are dead ends and sometimes, crashes. David Byrne of The Talking Heads summed it up well! The ability to control our destiny from […]
Empathy and Career Transition
While familiarity is said to breed contempt, can it also breed empathy? Recent research conducted by Clements United shows this to be the case with career transition. Having invested over 14 years working with well over 500 executives in transition, I had arrived at some conclusions based solely on experience versus having empirical support, so […]
Human Being Versus Human Capital?
When an individual enters into transition, she or he wants to be treated as one. Just ask! A search for a reference to the term “human capital” yielded, “Human capital is substitutable, but not transferable like land, labor or fixed capital.” For me, this raises the question, “where does that leave an executive who has […]
Recovery Time
One of the great mysteries in sports concerns how athletes respond to injuries. Why is it the case that two athletes with similar injuries take different periods of time to recover? No two people have the same physiology, the same pain threshold, the same attitude or the same regenerative powers. Each person has his or […]
Attitudes towards Career Transition
If faced with the loss of your role today, how would you view the transition? Would you see it as an opportunity, as a challenge, as a threat, as a rite of passage or a combination of two or more of these? Experience shows attitudes and beliefs must be managed. Life is full of surprises, and […]
It’s Not Always a Smooth Ride
Just ask the cyclists competing in the Tour de France. Races are won and lost. Teams’ needs change. Competitors move on: sometimes of their own volition and sometimes not. With the summer upon us the Tour de France is underway. The professional cyclists have been training for years. Over the past year, teams have been […]
Crossing the Pyrenees at Night
In the book, “Killing a Mouse on Sunday” the Basque protagonist set out to sneak back into Franco’s Spain by crossing the Pyrenees on a cloudy night without using a torch. When the moonlight was obscured he found himself alone, and stuck in total darkness. There are times when we may feel a long way […]
Others Have Blazed the Trail!
At some point early in the transition process, many executives share with me their concern that they may be facing a difficult journey to their next role. I am sure many pioneers felt their trek west was going to be a challenge too. Each journey is unique as far as that individual is concerned as […]
Throw Away those Ponies!
I clearly remember a time when ponies were central to the lives of our young children. Our home was filled with various types and styles of ponies. We had plush ponies, plastic ponies for the bath, ponies that required batteries (and parents to stand them upright or point them in another direction for the fifteenth […]