Fear of making the wrong choice is one reason we may not commit to a career, market niche, or organizational strategy. “What if I/we choose this option and it’s not quite right? What if I/we choose this one and then learn of a better one? After all the investment in this one, I/we couldn’t go back.” […]
Here’s an exercise: Ask everyone at work today, “Who are we? What does our organization do? For whom? Why do we do that?” If your organization is like most, you will get as many answers as people you ask. And that’s quite a problem. A big part of the success of any organization is having a clear, […]
When we are in our SweetSpot, work ceases to be a stress or struggle. Where there is stress or struggle, we are out of our SweetSpot. That means we are misaligned in one or more of these four ways: We are not using enough of our talents, We are not engaging enough with and seeing enough […]
Is there an ultimate answer to the question, “Why?” Are life, the universe, and everything teeming with meaning? Or is it all particles and waves that randomly bash about guided by a few basic rules? Do our answers these questions do anything practical for our work, life, and happiness? Yup. Regardless of which way we see things, we […]
The criteria: Our work is successful and meaningful to the extent that it uses our talents, engages our passions, meets our needs/wants/desires, and helps others (individuals and/or organizations) solve problems that we find compelling or interesting. With these criteria in mind, let’s do a career checkup. Explore the following questions. Write down your answers. How would you rank your […]
Don’t push yourself to do all the things on your growing to-do list. Don’t be driven by other people’s opinions. Trust yourself and others. Go for true win-win. Find and operate from your personal and organizational SweetSpot. Ignore what everyone says are the tried-and-true steps to success. Just find a way to feel good then act as inspired and […]
Landing a job can be a hard and unrewarding endeavor. We can waste time and drain our psyches by trolling job boards, sending out résumés, attending networking events, going on dead-end interviews, and hoping. Yet there is a simpler way to land a job. First, we become killer candidates. Second, we grow our network until it includes […]
Work that doesn’t use your talents is work you should have others do. Work that doesn’t engage your passions is a dead end. Work that doesn’t meet your needs, wants, and/or desires is martyrdom. Work that doesn’t solve compelling problems for other people or organizations is a hobby. Work that engages all four of these factors–talents, passions, needs/wants/desires, and compelling problems–is […]
To be successful, we must first define success. Looking inside ourselves for definitions of success leads to satisfaction, creativity, energy, happiness, and/or meaning. Looking outside leads to empty achievement, perpetual dissatisfaction, learned helplessness, burnout, superficiality, frustration, and regret. Ouch. We know this. We see how externally-defined success leads us and others to chase money, fame, […]
We can come up with some pretty great ideas for projects, businesses, jobs, and adventures we’d love to do. They can occur to us in a meeting, while cleaning the dishes, on a walk, in the shower, during our commute, and even if we lie in bed unable to sleep. Our ideas may be, at various […]