The Next Book

Casey and I have toying with various ideas for the next book. The process of writing is so much fun that we definitely want to do another one, and we have a bunch of different ideas, but until this week, none of those ideas had particularly inspired us to immediate activity.

Caterpiller announced that they are laying off 800 workers because of a slump in sales. Congress denied the auto industries request for a full-scale bailout and the President has been forced to provide temporary support until another solution appears. I heard somewhere that 84% of Americans are unhappy in their jobs.

For our parents' generation, a successful career meant spending 20-30 years at a single company moving up the corporate ladder via promotion every few years and retiring on a pension sometime between 55 and 65.

Our generation started out along the same path with a great job on the bottom rung of the same corporate ladder, but changes in the corporate world (including lay-offs and a common policy of not providing raises equal to the market) caused us to leap from company to company, each time hoping that this one would be the place where we could finally be successful according to our parents' definition. Then the dot-com explosion happened and we all started thinking in terms of stock options and IPOs. For some, this meant entrepreneurial ambitions. For others, just a tolerance for longer resumes with many more employers and a willingness to change companies in order to get the raises and promotions we wanted.

The next generation is coming into the workforce now and they have no desire to make a lifetime commitment to one corporation. The loyalty that our parents felt toward their companies, which was reciprocal for a long time, is just a quaint, old-fashioned idea from History class.

When inspiration hits, it hits hard. We realized that many, many people in this country would benefit from a change in approach to their work. Consultants, and particularly independent consultants, have long known that they are responsible for managing their own careers. This includes maintaining a network, honing their skills, finding work and managing their interactions on each engagement to be productive, profitable and fun (if possible).

And the idea for the next book was born. We are going to write about ways to manage your career for a lifetime of success and ways to manage your daily work for immediate success. Our discussion will be both strategic and tactical, and we hope to influence people to develop a new attitude toward working.

How's that for a BHAG?