"Design thinking is about believing we can make a difference and having an intentional process in order to get to new, relevant solutions that create positive impact. Design thinking gives you faith in your creative abilities and a process for transforming challenges into opportunities for design. . . . . . design thinking is the confidence that new, better things are possible and that you can make them happen." --Design... Read more →

One of the career books I've been reading recently is Business Model You: A One Page Method for Re-Inventing Your Career. It offers an interesting template for evaluating your career aspirations and looking at them in light of the different ways you can bring value based on your various assets and resources. I signed up for their email newsletter and this morning received an update on their latest European workshops... Read more →

Imagine crafting a sustainable career for yourself. Year after year, you perform work that makes full use of your skills and challenges you to develop new ones. Your work not only interests you, it gives you a sense of meaning. You enjoy opportunities for learning and development. You work with people who energize you. You are confident that your skills and competencies make you valuable and marketable and that you... Read more →

Small Wins Journa - The other day I had a good conversation with a manager about my post Six Positive Professional Development Strategies for the Toxic Workplace. He's dealing with a lot of work drama and interested in how you can address these issues. One of the things I recommended in that post was to do a daily debrief with yourself to provide a sort of "reality check" on what's... Read more →

My good friend Christine Martell shared a wonderful story of career mentoring with me the other day. A woman was being sexually harrassed at work and went to see a labor attorney about it. After a few minutes of discussion about the situation, this was the conversation that followed: “Karen, I’m going to talk to you like we’re having a glass of wine, okay?” “Okay, I like those conversations,” I... Read more →

There are several tenets I try to live my career by including: Go out of your comfort zone Create multiple income streams Play to your passions About a month ago, I wrote up my 6-month plan and one of the goal areas I focused on was my art. This is something completely unrelated to my primary work in career clarity and resilience, but it's another passion of mine that I've... Read more →

". . . the cycle of being-doing is also the cycle of remembering-forgetting. Like Persephone in the myth of Demeter and Persephone, you blossom, you die, you are reborn again and again. You contact the knowledge of who you are and what you need and then slowly, bit by bit, you forget, eaten up by life again. Then you descend and reconnect with yourself. . . It is an organic,... Read more →

For the past several months, I've been in a sort of career quandry about where I want to go next. I'm feeling the need for some big shifts in my life, but I'm not entirely sure how I want those to play out in my business and career. Part of this is because I'm turning 50 in September. Part of it is due to shifts in my client base. And... Read more →

I wrote a couple of long posts in February on the two major factors most job seekers are dealing with in this economy. The first was on the reality that there aren't enough jobs for everyone who wants one. The second was on the poor quality of many of the jobs that do exist. After writing these, though, I was left wondering what it is we can do to operate... Read more →

In my life, I've had some of the most profound and important realizations about myself when I've been working with relative strangers. I was thinking about this in regard to my upcoming Dream It/Do It Retreat where I'll be bringing together a group of people who don't know each other to work on their creative projects. I've found that people are often reluctant to do really personal work around people... Read more →