What to Do When You’re Doing Important Work but Nobody Seems to Notice There is a frustrating kind of career problem that doesn’t look like a problem from the outside. You’re working hard. You’re solving difficult issues. People depend on you. Things go wrong less often because you’re involved. Projects move forward because you keep […]
How to Build Experience That Gives You More Choices Later A good career isn’t only about getting better at the job you have today. It’s also about making sure the experience you’re gaining today is useful when you eventually want something different. That distinction matters. You can spend five years becoming extremely efficient at one […]
Why Your Ability to Connect Different Pieces of Work Can Make You More Valuable Most jobs are made up of smaller pieces. One person gathers information. Another analyzes it. Someone else makes a decision. Another team turns that decision into a process. Then someone communicates the result to a customer, employee, manager, or partner. The […]
The Career Advantage of Knowing When to Challenge the Way Things Are Done Every workplace has a sentence that eventually becomes part of the furniture: “That’s just how we do it.” Sometimes, that’s a perfectly reasonable answer. A process exists because someone thought through the risks. A rule may have been created for a reason. […]
What to Do When Your Career Plan No Longer Fits the Person You’ve Become There is a strange moment that can happen in a career. You finally reach something you once wanted. The job you planned for. The promotion you worked toward. The industry you deliberately chose. The level of responsibility you thought would make […]
Why Understanding the Customer Can Make You Better at Almost Any Role You don’t have to work in sales or customer service to benefit from understanding customers. You might work in finance, operations, marketing, technology, HR, design, administration, or project management. You may rarely speak directly to a customer. And yet, the better you understand […]
The Career Value of Learning How to Recover When Things Go Wrong Everyone likes talking about how to succeed at work. Meet the deadline. Do excellent work. Hit the target. Make a good impression. Take on more responsibility. But careers aren’t built only from things going right. Eventually, something will go wrong. A project will […]
How to Tell Whether a New Responsibility Is Actually Helping You Grow Getting more responsibility at work usually sounds like good news. Your manager trusts you. You are given more ownership. People start coming to you with bigger problems. Maybe you’re handling work that used to belong to someone more senior. On paper, your career […]
Why Your Career Can Stall When You Only Optimize for Short-Term Success There is a career trap that can look like success for a surprisingly long time. You hit your targets. You keep your manager happy. You finish what you’re assigned. You avoid unnecessary mistakes. You take the opportunities that offer the quickest reward. Your […]
The Career Advantage of Becoming Someone Who Makes Other People Better There is a kind of professional value that’s easy to overlook. You finish your own work. You hit your deadlines. You know what you’re doing. People can depend on you. That’s all valuable. But eventually, another question starts to matter: What happens to the […]