Career Planning
Friction: The Hidden Force Holding You Back
What is stopping you getting promoted. Here is a useful perspective...
An aide memoire for a career chat
An excellent guide and handout to help you to have a career chat with your staff. It will also be of help to you. Thank you to Vicki Woodburn for sending it to me...
The secret to creating a career hot streak
Periods of concentrated career achievement often follow periods of failure. Concentrated achievement is also the product of investing in both breadth of experience and then exploiting depth in an area...
Early-career setback and future career impact
Scientists who have an early career setback do better later in their career than those who do not. It is the setbacks that forge your character. I never cease to be surprised by how often people who have suffered a significant setback tell me later that it was the best thing that happened to them...
Lifestyle creep is a trap to avoid
We are all prone to lifestyle creep. Our pay increases and so does our spending. Then we end up trapped, unable to save and unable to retire. Here is some guidance. The best advice I received from a boss early in my career was to save 50% of every pay increase. It is that advice that allowed me an early choice as to when I could afford to leave the public service...
Career reinvention and a longer working life
A podcast which provides lessons about career transitions in the context of a longer life. We will all be doing more career transitions...
Preserving Optionality: Preparing for the Unknown
This is an essay for our times. The author argues that to keep your options open, you need diversity. This applies to supply chains, to pandemic planning, to your future career and to most of the unknowns that you face...
Mental Models for Career Changes
Using mental models to make decisions we determine where we want to go and how to get there. The result is a change that aligns with the person we are, as well as the person we want to be...
The Rational Walk - The Psychology of Money
The truth is that time is the currency of life...
How Much Lifestyle Creep is Okay?
An explanation of 'lifestyle creep'...
Make a big difference with small change...
Educational Board Games for children...
The Best Career Advice I’ve Ever Gotten
Helping others to be successful has a compounding impact on your reputation, your value, and your future...
The Best Career Advice I’ve Ever Gotten
Helping others to be successful has a compounding impact on your reputation, your value, and your future...
A podcast by Richard Aedy at the ABC. We are living longer, the traditional three stage life i.e. education, work and retirement is changing. What does it mean for you?
VIA Survey of Character Strengths
This free Survey developed by Penn State University, ranks 24 Character strengths. When selecting a career or a job you will ideally look for opportunities that allow you to use your strengths. Similarly, when dealing with a challenge at work you will best be able to solve them by using your character strengths...
A website that provides research and support to help people to switch into careers that effectively tackle the World's most pressing problems. Of interest, working with Government and in policy is one of their recommended high impact careers...
The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity
Many of us have been raised on the traditional notion of a three-stage approach to our working lives: education, followed by work and then retirement. But this well-established pathway is already beginning to collapse as life expectancy is rising, final-salary pensions are vanishing, and increasing numbers of people are juggling multiple careers. Whether you are 18, 45 or 60, you will need to do things very differently from previous generations and learn to structure your life in completely new ways. The 100-Year Life is here to help...
Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think
A very good article about careers, life satisfaction, the inevitable decline and how to pivot to use different strengths in your later career. I particularly like the references to leaving while you are doing well and the importance of serving others...
Seven essential elements of a lifelong-learning mind-set
Seven practices that can help you remain relevant and increase your options throughout your career...
Early Career Failures Can Make You Stronger in the Long Run
Research from Kellogg School who have studied the success of scientists suggests that early failure can lift subsequent performance. This is not unexpected, those who face and overcome adversity are usually stronger as a result. This applies to public service careers as well as to scientists. Facing and overcoming adversity is often the making of a career...
Seven essential elements of a lifelong-learning mind-set
McKinsey article which outlines what you need to do to have a mindful and successful career. Building blocks include mastering skills, stretching yourself, building a reputation, taking responsibility for your own future, taking time for reflection and assessment and keeping a journal...
This podcast from the Conversations series explains how to identify and manage the psychopaths in our midst...
Can former political staffers turn into impartial public servants?
A better system is needed to acknowledge experience in a ministerial office to enable public servants to transfer back at a higher level and non-public servant staffers to have their service recognised in the APS, says Verona Burgess...
Seven Ways to Ensure Career Satisfaction
Executive coach Michael Melcher shares his insights for carving out long-term success and fulfillment...
Gender differences at work: relishing competence or seeking a challenge?
Fascinating article about the extent to which women take satisfaction from being great at what they do, and men take satisfaction from achieving in areas where the chances of success are less certain...
It is like a bereavement – life after leaving your job
This article interviews a number of people who have left executive roles. They describe the impact and how they have dealt with the transition. You will all leave, it is just a question of when...
Helping you to make major life decisions easier
A step by step approach to ‘Designing your life’ – a method developed and used in Stanford University’s most popular course...
Hidden Brain podcast number 56 - Getting Unstuck
A new approach to working out how to make major life decisions...
Amanda Horne asks what is your motivational focus? What is the motivational focus of the people around you?...
Shifting jobs across jurisdictions - financial factors
An article about the superannuation and other implications of shifting jobs...
SES secondments into private sector companies
The Australian Public Service Commission will call for nominations from the SES for secondments to the private sector...