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Your Job Survival Guide: A Manual for Thriving in Change by Gregory Shea PhD, Robert E. Gunther
(Paperback)
- Pub. Date: August 2008
- 241pp
- Sales Rank: 941,241
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| Available in eBook | $11.39 |
Product Details
- Pub. Date: August 2008
- Publisher:FT Press
- Format: Paperback, 241pp
- Sales Rank: 941,241
- ISBN-13: 9780137127023
- ISBN: 0137127022
Synopsis
Selected by IBM Competitive Edge Book Club Selection.
"The beauty of this book on top of its life-saving timeliness is its capacity to give the reader concrete steps to live the good life and enjoy it. The book made me understand that work can be more fun than fun.”
–Warren Bennis, Ph.D., University Professor, University of Southern California, coauthor, Judgment: How Great Leaders Make Winning Calls and Transparency: How Leaders Create a Culture of Candor
Change. It’s your job. It just won’t stop. It’s relentless. It keeps coming at you like never-ending rapids in a permanent whitewater river. Change will burn you out if you don’t learn how to handle it. This book is not, however, about mere survival. It is about thriving amidst the challenges of your permanent whitewater world at work.
•Protect your career, improve your resilience, and seize the opportunities in turbulent times
•Take charge, learn to pace yourself, set your own course, and lead others in ad-hoc teams
•Ride the rapids and rediscover play and adventure in today’s demanding work environment
•Learn from research and the experiences of hundreds of professionals in industries from energy to telecommunications to financial services to health care
There’s nothing abstract or cute about the way this book talks about change: This is practical, grounded knowledge for managing your life in a business world that’s churning with change. Gregory Shea, Ph.D. and Robert Gunther show how to keep your working life on course instead of being pushed beyond your limits...find fun and fulfillment...regroup and rebound from failure...protect yourself from events you can’t predict...take charge of your life, an your future!
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
Gregory Shea, Ph.D., consults, researches, writes, and teaches in the areas of organizational and individual change, leadership, group effectiveness, and conflict resolution. He is president of the consulting firm Shea & Associates, a principal in The Coxe Group international consultancy; Senior Consultant at the Center for Applied Research, Adjunct Professor of Management at The Wharton School, where he has taught for more than 25 years, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, and a Faculty Associate of the Wharton School’s Center for Leadership and Change. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard, Shea holds an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and an M.A., M. Phil., and Ph.D. in Administrative Science from Yale. He is a member of the Academy of Management and the American Psychological Association.
Robert Gunther is coauthor or collaborator on more than 20 books, including The Wealthy 100 and The Truth About Making Smart Decisions. He has appeared on CNBC’s “Power Lunch,” NPR’s “Morning Edition,” and numerous local and national radio and television programs, and his projects have been featured in The New York Times, Time, USA Today, and Fortune. His columns or articles also have been published in Harvard Business Review, American Heritage, Investor’s Business Daily, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. As founder of Gunther Communications, he has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, universities, and major nonprofits. He is a graduate of Princeton University.
Customer Reviews
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Good advice for professionals in a changing worldby Steven_Savage
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February 10, 2009:
The book is based on the idea that the job and career realm is like whitewater rafting - always changing, always potentially dangerous, always moving forward. Thus, managing your career is much like managing a raft or raft team, requiring one to adapt, face danger, understand when to change, learn to fail and get going again, and organize almost spontaneously. The metaphor does occasionally get overused, but it's applied very well, and in a way that makes sense.
Taking this metaphor, each chapter of the book covers a particular issue, usually using the whitewater metaphor (and others) to illustrate the importance of the actions one must take to deal with a particular issue or related set of issues. This is done practically, with very readable and straightforward text, and a very welcome sense of humor. The book flows along lightly, each chapter has solid practical advice (made even easier with asides, quotes, and summaries).
To give an example, there's a chapter on play - which may seem odd considering the whitewater metaphor, except plenty of people face whitewater for fun. The chapter looks at how one can enjoy themselves at work (that is the point) in the midst of chaos, how sometimes the difference in fun and danger is the right equipment and attitude, and cultivating the attitudes to enjoy life. The chapter also contains a section on how, despite fun you have had or want to have, sometimes you just have to "paddle like hell." The book recommends optimism, but it doesn't sugar-coat bad situations or suggest positive thinking solves everything.
The advice itself is extremely solid - I measure a book by how much new information and ideas it imparts, and this book managed to help me see things different. In a few cases, I found the warnings about behaviors that were "bad for being in whitewater" seemed aimed squarely at me. The authors know what they're talking about, and know who they're talking to.
One flaw in the book is that the good advice often seems aimed at people in high-level careers: those who manage others, who are well along their career path, etc. The book in fact is good for anyone who has a career started and going, but they may be put off by some of the high-level people mentioned in the book, and some of the advice is aimed at those people. This however is not a reason to put off purchasing it, but it does affect what some people get out of it.
Of the career advice books I've seen, this is definitely one of the best. Its got a solid foundation, good advice, is easy to read, highly accessible, and very little fluff. You may not enjoy the heavy use of metaphor, and its is more useful (and aimed) at someone whose careers have been going for awhile, but these flaws are minor. It's worth the purchase for anyone who has a solid career or is solid career foundation.
Practical and easy to use tool for anyone dealing with workplace changeby Anonymous
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June 17, 2011: This book provides a practical guide to navigating, and most importantly, coping with the fast changing business environment. I read this book two months ago, have easily integrated the techniques into my daily life and have been much more effectively dealing with the chaotic pace at my company. My stress level is lower, job satisfaction level is higher and my business results have increased. This is a powerful read, and if you want to thrive rather than feel thrown against the rocks, read this book.
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