One form employee engagement can take, especially during these uncertain economic times, is career engagement.
I had the opportunity to write the following top career management tips in Bonnie Lowe’s e-book – Best Career Strategies of 2009.
The single most important career strategy of 2009 in my mind is non-strategy or improvisation.
Here are My 10 Non-Strategic Zingers:
- To embrace the spirit of improvisation.
- To realize you are never alone, we need others to improvise both a life and a career.
- To build on what you have and what you receive and give it freely to others.
- To focus your work on making others look good.
- To always put life before work as in life/work balance as opposed to work/life balance.
- To engage fully in, and enjoy, your career time.
- To leverage your mental, emotional, physical, spiritual and organizational energy for career development.
- To go beyond one to two to three to four…to a full authentic network embracing mutual respect and mutual purpose.
- To know your strengths and ensure others know your strengths…be your brand and don’t be afraid to be brand new.
- To keep asking yourself: what comes next? (and if you don’t like the answer start improvising an alternative career path).
Click on the button below to get your own copy of Bonnie’s book with contribution from 28 different authors.
I like your twist on work/life -> life/work balance. I think one of the keys is living your values.
Some advice I’ve been giving folks lately is:
– think of it as part of the cycle, we’re in contraction following our expansion
– keep your energy high … it’s your most important fuel (play to your strengths and follow your passions and spend less time in your weaknesses)
– stay focused on the future and finding the path forward … there’s always opportunity.
Dear David,
I have been following your blog/website for a long time. Your blog is really great.
I must say it’s very very motivating.
I am from India but as the world is becoming small due to Globalization India is also facing the heat not as bad as US/Canada but still people are loosing jobs the economy is slowing down, people has to re skill and re educated ,it’s difficult in developing country like ours.
Congratulation for having a wonderful informative website and an incredible job that you are doing.
Good Luck,
Debashish Brahma
Good points, David! Re Point 10, Improvising an alternative career path: Jeff Howe in the book Crowdsourcing describes some intriguing new ways in which people are reinventing the whole concept of “career” – essentially, by doing a “day job” but then working on selected projects on their own time as offered by websites that “crowdsource” such projects for large companies.
Jerry,
Thanks for the comment and point from Crowdourcing. I would hope that we could bring more improvisation to the day job as we give so much of our time and energy to this.
David