Monthly Archives: April 2008

Book Review: Life Beyond IT

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I mentioned career coach Joanne Dustin’s site, Career Lost and Found, in a previous post and today I’d like to review her book, “Life Beyond IT”. (Also available on Amazon.com)

Two important points:

First of all, this book is aimed directly at Information Technology professionals who are considering a career change, although the coaching themes running through it also make it useful to non-IT folks in the corporate world.

Secondly, the book is (I think) deliberately short and well edited at just 91 pages and easily readable in a few hours – I finished a chapter at a time during lunch breaks.

Joanne begins with a poignant recall of her own extensive IT experience in the US corporate world and the effects of outsourcing and offshoring on US-based IT colleagues and friends.

Of the 15 people featured, 5 are female and almost all are in mid-life. The majority left Corporate IT employee roles for a range of entrepreneurial pursuits but a few successfully reinvented themselves as IT consultants.

That’s an important point about the impact of good coaching – which is to help the client’s best interests. And in some cases, a career change may not be the optimal solution.

Simply reinventing your role (and purpose) within an existing career track can work wonders!

The life stories are succinct and interesting in themselves but the real power of the book comes in 3 short sections at the end of each chapter. These are:

1- Advice To Others:
Here the featured person gives some advice on the pluses and minuses of their career change story, albeit with the added benefit of hindsight.

2- Purpose:
This is a subtle coaching theme running through the book and one the reader is gently reminded to examine in their own life, through the stories of others.

(And by the way, “Life Purpose” statements don’t have to be “change-the-world” manifestos – although they can be! Some in this book are very “ordinary” but just right for the persons concerned.)

3- Food For Thought:
Here’s the “coaching dessert”!
Served up in the form of some powerful and challenging questions. (Of course, they are only powerful and challenging questions if you take the time to think about them and start coming up with answers and ideas…)

How To Use This Book:

I can see 2 powerful ways to apply the knowledge and experience contained in Joanne’s book.

1- Pick some chapters that really appeal to you, get a small pocket notebook, and work through the Advice, Purpose and Food for Thought sections.

2- Work with a Career / Life coach on some of the questions and ideas that come up for you.

Conclusion:
Although the IT career change stories are all of US-based corporate employees, the life lessons shared are valuable to anyone wanting to “do more of what they enjoy” (and get paid for it).

Achieving that goal may be an even tougher journey than the apparent “benevolent dictatorship” approach that underlies the existence of corporate careers in the “competitive global economy”.

(And just how tough is revealed in some of the stories. But if you’re not prepared to work hard for what you really want, then this book will probably not inspire you.)

Recommended reading for IT Career Changers.

- Mark McClure

Career Change Email Coaching – An Update

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After “beta” testing my career change coaching by email service I’ve decided to replace the email part with a secure and private 1-to-1 forum. (Oct 2011 Update: I no longer offer private coaching by email.)

Why?

Two reasons:

1- “Lost Emails“:
All too often, legitimate Internet email gets “lost” due to ISP sp#m filtering. Since I want to reliably communicate with my paying clients (and vice versa), that level of service is just unacceptable.

2- “Continuity of Thought“:
Emails to-and-fro (between client and coach) can quickly turn into long, unwieldy threads, that people then have to store somewhere in their email folders.

And who hasn’t lost emails by accidentally deleting or storing them in the wrong folders?

What the email coaching beta test revealed was the need for a private and secure online storage area where client and coach can read and respond to each others messages and questions.

I believe I’ve found an ideal and cost effective solution which can make e-coaching a virtual “walk in the park”.

And I’m planning to release this solution as a 48 hour special to my blog email subscriber list – probably on 1st May or sooner.

So, if you want a month of e-coaching at 70% off the price when the 48 hour special ends, then make sure you sign up for the email blog announcement list on my home page (top right, underneath my photo.)

Don’t worry – You won’t get spammed to death!

Just a short email each time I post a new blog entry – here’s one from Tues 22 April:

***
Hello Mm,

I just posted a new blog entry entitled:

Silly Utility Vehicle

You can read about it here:
http://www.markmccluretoday.com

***

By clicking on the link you’ll be taken to my blog and can read the post.

Of course, some people choose not to join email lists and that’s fine.

Others prefer to use Feed subscription services to follow a blog – and you can do that with this blog too. (I use Feedburner).

However, only folks actually on the email subscriber list will get an email about the 70% discount.

- Mark McClure

PS – You can automatically unsubscribe from the list by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the blog announcement email.

SUV – Silly Utility Vehicle

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Saturday 1 March: Spring is in the air and I’m walking to my local train station.

Part of me thinks it’s a crying shame to be working on such a glorious day.

Yet there are benefits too:

- I can take a compensation day off during the week.

- No packed commuter trains at 11am Saturday.

My “feeling grateful” for the existence of such options is abruptly broken by the “beep, beep, b-e-e-p!” of an increasingly irate weekend SUV driver trying to turn into the narrow road I’m walking along (from an even narrower side “street”, more like a “lane”.)

His way’s temporarily blocked by a 7-11 convenience store van making a delivery.

The van driver’s straining to push the loaded trolley between van and store, as the SUV nutter gives vent to his frustrations on that stupid h-o-r-n.

I truly wish he’d STFU.

In many parts of Tokyo, roads are really narrow, with footpaths being something of a forgotten after thought. In this case it’s a 1 meter white line painted along the outside of the road.

The delivery trucks often have nowhere off road to park – and there are gazillions of these stores in Tokyo. What fun that job must be.

Anyway, as I nimbly skirted the child high bull-bars attached to the front of the SUV tank(!), I’m struck (pun intended?) by the fact that some people construct lives and careers in like manner.

Traveling along life’s apparently narrow lanes, unable to reverse, yet consumed by unconscious but programmable desires to get somewhere, no matter who or what’s in their way.

B-e-e-p! I want it and I want it now. Get out of my way.

Does it ever occur to these people that there might be another way?

Hey Buddy-san!

How about trading in your gas guzzling monster for something more appropriate to the environment you share with the rest of us?

And while you’re at it, get rid of the bull bars. There are none in overcrowded Tokyo.

Ah! That felt better.

Now that those clouds of annoyance are mostly rained out, I feel the sun starting to shine again.

Forecast? “Set Fair!”

- Mark McClure

(Thanks to that Silly Utility Vehicle driver for the opportunity to have a Short Unexplainable Vent. This too shall pass.

Self Coaching For Career And Life Change

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OK, time for an update on my “invisible target” post.

Thanks to Geoff Roberston over at total self improvement for his vote. I’d dropped the ball on this and forgotten to close comments on 23 February.
Lucky I didn’t!

So the invisible target on my desk now has something to visualize around – and to keep taking action on until the product is physically created and available for customers to purchase.

This is what I see so far:

1- The product is a CD or DVD.

2- The idea is to help people self-coach themselves on the career and life change path they want to follow.

3- This is not a replacement for personal coaching – but a useful and affordable supplement to help people follow through on turning dreams into reality. (now there’s a conundrum..!)

4- The working title is “Self Coaching For Career and Life Change“. If you can think of a better one, just leave a blog comment. I’ll send you a free copy of the CD if I use your suggestion.

5- If you want to be one of 3 “review testers” of the product, just leave me a track back comment on this post from your own blog or web site.

(I will accept most legitimate and relevant sites – my decision is final on whether your site meets that criteria.)

As a review tester I will give you time limited access to an online version of the product once it is in beta stage. In return, you agree to send me constructive criticism and feedback by email within a couple of weeks on how to improve it.

Comments close on this post Friday 9 May.

- Mark McClure

Press Up! Press On!

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Even though it was way back in 1980, I can still recall doing 105 press ups on the evening of the 10th October – my 20th birthday.

105 remains my personal best and the closest I’ve come since then is 80 – achieved last year after a few months of daily practice, working my way up from 20 a day.

Mark McClure Press Up Press On!

Alas, starting back after a short stomach upset last month, I found it a struggle to hit 30 without running out of arm power.

However, I know that with fifteen and forgiveness it’s probable that 80 can be reached by the summer time.

After that? Well, even though the mind says “age shall not weary him”, the body seems to have other ideas!

We shall see…

My experience of career change has required a similar degree of effort and forbearance, along with a pragmatic understanding (maturity – aka the school of hard knocks?) of how age, abilities, geographic location, intention and luck all play a part in what I will loosely call “Career Opportunities“.

From my role as a coach, I understand that people interested in career change most likely know that “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. Yet, many still hesitate to take those vital first steps, however small they might be.
Where the real value of career coaching often comes from is helping to increase a client’s awareness of two fundamental concepts behind a successful career change:

1- In what direction would you like to take your career?

2- How can you start out (and remain) on the path your new career choice is suggesting?

The answers can be as individual as you are.

Meanwhile – time for 50 on the tatami mat!

Later.

- Mark McClure