How To Stay Relevant & Have Impact

We are in an age of immense disruption: industries, societal codes, politics, demographics, you name it.  If we are going to handle this continually changing the world, we have to adapt ourselves.  All we can really control is how we react, and more importantly, pro-act to our world.  While we should hold our principles and values dear, we need to reinvent the how, where, and why we live those out.  Grateful to call her a friend, Dorie Clark’s new book, “Reinventing You” is an indispensible guide to just that – reinventing ourselves, continually, to adapt to and thrive in the 21^st century.  Many of you may familiar with Dorie’s view on the subject through her Forbes and Harvard Business Review blog posts.

Dorie’s book is a practical, applicable, actionable guide on how we can reinvent our role in the world, and hence our impact.  One of the powerful aspects of the book is Dorie’s ability to go from very specific, tactical details on how to network and reach out to others (e.g., when to call, how to find out nicknames, etc.) to more the more strategic issues around why we need to reinvent ourselves in the first place.  Dorie gives us very actionable advice on how to identify our starting point, why we are starting from there and then discovering possible destinations.  She continues with a ‘how to’ plan that is so easy to follow and execute on our own. 

Since reinventing ourselves can be daunting, Dorie uses a ‘lean startup’ approach to help us experiment and prototype (as she says, “test drive”) our path and develop the skills we might need.  As someone who loves mentoring, and being mentored, her chapter dedicated to finding and learning from a mentor hit home.  Reinventing You shows us how to find our value, communicate our value and continue enhancing our value to others.

Dorie’s book is a much-needed guide among the noise of books on career development, personal development and ‘how to’.  This is a book of truth and practical advice, based on Dorie’s experiences and those of others she shares in the book.  It is a book leaders and managers should share with their people and encourage and support them in pursuing.  It is a book students in college should read as they think about what they may want to do.  It is a book even those of us fully satisfied and complete in our current positions should read. It is a book you will read, mark, re-read and want to loan out to others, so buy a few copies to give away – because paying it forward is part of the book!