Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career

Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career | Herminia Ibarra | I agree

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Working Identity: ...

	Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career Herminia Ibarra Harvard Business School Press, 2004 - 199 pages average customer review:based on 23 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A powerful model for career reinvention that reverses conventional wisdom.

Includes fascinating case studies of personal and professional reinventions?from literature professor to stockbroker, from psychiatrist to Buddhist monk, and from investment banker to fiction writer, among others.

Gives readers a new way to understand change in their lives. Career change is not a step-by-step linear process?it?s crooked and takes much longer than we think. Nor is change the result of one big event. Rather, many small steps add up to a successful change.

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Keeping Your Head When Others Are Losing Theirs

So many of us feel lost in these shaky economic times and troubling globalizing trends that foster paranoia and sometimes very rational fears about job in/security. Ibarra offers helpful advice about finding ways to uncover "what's next" for you in the professional domain. She doesn't subscribe to the fashionable belief that there is just one treasure within you that is the work you were meant to do, like so much psycho-spiritual literature out there. Rather, she urges readers to experiment, even to play with their identity (always-in-a-social-context) before making the big switch to something radically different.

Ibarra returns to these two themes, again and again: (1) "Our working identity is made up of many possibilities: some tangible and concrete, defined by the things we do, the company we keep, and the stories we tell about our work and lives; others existing only in the realm of future potential and private dreams." and (2) "Changing careers means changing our selves. Since we are many selves, changing is not a process of swapping one identity for another but rather a transition process in which we reconfigure the full set of possibilities. These simple ideas alter everything we take for granted about finding a new career. They ask us to devote the greater part of our time and energy to action rather than reflection, to doing instead of planning."

Our work identity is just one site of information about who we are and who we can be...it's never fixed nor is it an object to be discovered once and for all. I strongly recommend this book for anyone wanting a quick fix or a Seven Step Guarantee for Success after Job Loss -- this will bust that ersatz model wide open.

For those who want to see my vocational clarity guide book--something with lots of unconventional exercises--don't hesitate to check it out:
Polishing the Mirror: 90 Days to Vocational Clarity

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I agree

I agree with everyone else who's written a review of this book. I find it very useful and encouraging. The premise is simple. Make a list either mentally or on paper of the things you may be interested in and somehow try them out. Try them out somewhat in some sort of way. Do research where you experience the results and gauge your feelings. Then find some way to move into that field, either completely or connected to what you already do. Also one of the most important pieces of advice is to give yourself time to try out the different things on your list. Don't just jump, but actually give them a try. Write the business plan to see if it'll work. Speak to people who are in the industry you want to get into.

The fatal flaw of the book is that she seems to only address professors or top level managers. Suppose you are not in that category. Do you not deserve a great career? Do you not deserve to know strategies in order to move towards the life that's perfect for you? Of course you do. There are some strategies for people who can't simply take a leave of absence for a few months to try out something else. Volunteering. Side jobs. Part time work. Evening gigs. Etc. These were mostly left out.

Besides the above this was a good book and with a little common sense the advice can be applied to anyone's situation.

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An insightful and refreshing book

While I'm admittedly not in what the author declares as the intended audience of the book, I've still found it to be very insightful. The intended audience being those who have invested significantly in training for and carrying out a career in a specific field and are now considering switching. As a current member of the military who intends to move into the business world after 5 years, I was refreshed by the author's encouragement to explore potential selves instead of locking yourself into what you "should" do based on the results of some introspection or a personality test.

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Appropriate for Exec-Level Career Changers (or Contemplators...)

Most books on career reinvention are geared towards mid-level, mid-life managers. The assumption is that executives are already successful and don't need to reflect on what makes them shine. But for continued success in life, we all need to discover what truly drives us. Working Identity is ideal for the exec who wants to stretch beyond their current career, credentials and contact network.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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