Novations: Strategies for Career Management

by Gene W. Dalton

Two ideas are central to understanding the careers of professionals: career stages and novations. The authors have found that careers do not proceed in straight lines. Instead, they develop in distinct stages, each different from the preceding stage, and each requiring different activities, skills, and relationships.

This ground-breaking book describes the four major stages of career growth - the apprentice, colleague, mentor, and director stages. ... Understanding what is expected of you at each stage - and how novations proceed - can greatly increase your chances of success.

Novations also includes numerous examples and a self-test questionnaire that will help you determine your own career stage. This book will help you make sense of what often seems incomprehensible - your progress through the organizational hierarchy.

280 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[Roy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this book was a revelation. It uses data to support its claims, rare in a book about careers. It argues that there are 4 levels in any field of work, and that every time you change jobs, even if you come in at the top, you have to move through each of those at some level. It also explained to me, and convinced me, that the structure in which executives are paid more than those who do the work makes much more sense than I thought it did (largely by explaining what a good executive does, and why the impact of doing those jobs badly can make all the work of the individual contributors a waste of time). I liked it a lot, and it is readable with lots of good examples. Almost 30 years later, still worth your time.