What Is Strategic Thinking (and What It Isn't)? There is a common misconception about what “being strategic” actually means. Most leaders I coach say they’ve received the advice to “be more strategic” from their manager, but they rarely get any concrete steps or a clear pathway on how to actually ge...

Why the Traditional Career Ladder No Longer Fits For generations, the architecture of a successful life seemed reassuringly simple: get educated, build a career, retire. Progress meant moving upward, one rung at a time. But that model was designed for lives—and working lives—considerably shorter tha...

Who Are the 'Disposable Workers'? MIT labor economist Paul Osterman has identified a growing segment of the workforce that he calls "disposable workers." This unsettling category describes employees who exist on the periphery of their organizations—present enough to collect a paycheck, but absent fr...

Look Where No One Else Is Looking In the film The Fabelmans, director Steven Spielberg brought some of his earliest childhood filmmaking memories to the big screen. Long before he became a three-time Oscar winner, he was a boy with an 8mm camera, painstakingly crafting homemade movies. He didn’t hol...

Career Ambition Is Less Tied To Rapid Promotion For many workers, career ambition no longer means climbing the ladder as quickly as possible. Deloitte found that 44% of Gen Z workers and 45% of millennials prefer a more gradual career path over rapid promotion. Another 21% of Gen Z workers and 20% o...