The Career Lattice: Combat Brain Drain, Improve Company Culture, and Attract Top Talent

Book excerpt: Reroute your career path for better, faster, longer-lasting success “If you’ve been waiting for your HR department to plan out your next career move, you’ll be stuck waiting forever. Joanne Cleaver explains why the career matrix is what you need to succeed. It’s valuable information that most HR departments aren’t ready or able to give you.” —Suzanne Lucas, the Evil HR Lady, evilhrlady.org “ As Cleaver insightfully writes, the traditional career ladder is dead. To stay relevant, workers need to become nimble, enterprising, and far more professionally connected than their pre-recession counterparts. Essential reading for anyone who wants to stand out in today’s highly competitive business world.” —Michelle Goodman, author of The Anti 9-to-5 Guide and My So-Called Freelance Life “In post-recessionary Corporate America, the ladder is becoming a thing of the past. You need to think of your career in a new way, a way in which you are constantly focused on acquiring new and honing existing skill sets to remain marketable and competitive. Using Joanne Cleaver’s Career Lattice’s prescription of group-centered coaching and mentoring, you’ll get by with a little help from your friends.” —Alexandra Levit, author of Blind Spots: 10 Business Myths You Can’t Afford to Believe on Your New Path to Success OVER IS THE NEW UP. Thanks to the rise of global labor, increasing automation of job functions, and the flattening of workplace organizations, the traditional corporate ladder is gone—and we’ll probably never see it again. For smart, talented, motivated workers, this is the best career news to emerge in a long time. Instead of following the path of predetermined corporate hierarchies, you need to design a more flexible career path. It’s called the Career Lattice, and it’s about adding new skills to current abilities—while letting go of things that are no longer relevant. It’s about evolving. It’s about embracing change. In The Career Lattice, career consultant and business journalist Joanne Cleaver gives you the insight, information, tools, and best practices you need to: Invest in the best training or continued education for your future goals Make smart lateral moves now to help you make upward moves later Network more strategically than ever See possibilities down the road that would otherwise have escaped you The Lattice is both more stable and more dynamic than the linear career ladder. No matter your age or career stage, latticing equips you to make your move into emerging jobs or careers in all industries with more speed, skill, and confidence than your competitors. It isn’t your father’s world of business anymore. Linearity is out; flexibility is in. The Career Lattice is what you need to make the smartest possible career decisions in a completely transformed world of business.