Career on Course: 10 Strategies to Take Your Career from Accidental to Intentional

by Scott Jeffrey Miller

Most careers unfold accidentally, haphazardly, and with too much serendipity. That means lost traction, lost years, and lost opportunities. But your career doesn't have to be that way! Career on Course unpacks the 10 steps that will take your career from accidental to intentional.

Drawing upon insights and best practices from three decades in professional and leadership development, Scott Jeffrey Miller shares his proven process for creating a plan that empowers you to take control of your career. Based on his own successes and failures, and those that he's watched from both high-performing and frustrated professionals, Scott shows you how to

· know your professional values
· develop your long-term plan
· define and build your brand
· and more

The most successful professionals are those who have clarity, have a plan, live in accordance with their values, and know how to pivot in the face of disruption. Whether you're just starting your career or you've found yourself stuck somewhere in the middle, this book will help you get your career on course.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Self Help, Leadership

224 pages, Hardcover

Published February 20, 2024

Reviews

[CatReader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scott Jeffrey Miller is marketer who's held a number of prominent corporate jobs (including being a chief marketing officer and EVP at career coaching company FranklinCovey, where the late Stephen Covey was his boss) and spun out his experience into his own business books, consulting books, and multichannel social media revenue streams. Career on Course is the first book of his that I read (in Kindle Ebook format that frustrating doesn't sync with Goodreads, leading me to spend an inordinate amount of time preserving my many highlights in a separate document), and I found it very useful (as implied by the many highlights). For fans of Stephen Covey and his business/self-improvement enterprise (i.e., The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change and all subsequent books in the series), the content of this book won't be too surprising -- they're certainly not a transposed version of the 7 Habits, but a distilled version in the same spirit, brewed with Miller's own career experiences and anecdotes.

The book opens with Miller postulating the top five reasons people get hired, get fired, and get promoted at work, and then enumerating ten career strategies to place oneself on track to get hired, promoted, and hopefully not fired. Each strategy comes with worksheets and exercises in which interested readers can partake. Some of these strategies can be found in any career development book (i.e., strategy #5, define and build your brand; strategy #7, take the lead with your leader; strategy #8, do the job you were hired for, plus the one you want), but I actually found the most value in the strategies that are uncommon in other books in this (very oversaturated) genre. Case in point, strategy #6 is be willing to disrupt yourself, which Miller explains this way:

I know countless colleagues who I think stayed in their roles too long. Fortunately, they didn’t all end up in an awkward termination meeting, but they certainly stayed below the level of their peak contribution as they embraced the safety of the status quo over self-disruption—even when the role required incrementally more from them each year. Such lack of self-disruption can become a prescription for stagnation in skill development and shrinking relevance. And despite that perception of safety, many were caught up in a downsizing as the organization went through a business transformation and their skills were less vital for the new go-to-market strategy.

Did they do anything outwardly wrong? Not really. Their contributions were on par with previous years, as was their work ethic, but their skills didn’t outpace the company’s need for reinvention.

The lesson here is clear: you have to stay ahead of your colleagues, the marketplace, and your employer’s need for reinvention and self-disruption. Yep, the most successful companies also self-disrupt as frequently as is necessary to grow and dominate.

Then again, this was preaching to the choir for me, as my #1 work pet peeve is complacency.

Overall, though the career development market is definitely overcrowded, I would rank this book alongside Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love as some of the foundational books that define my work philosophy.

My statistics:
Book 272 for 2024
Book 1875 cumulatively

[B.J. VDubb · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book I wish I had when I was just starting on my career journey! All 10 strategies presented in this book are amazing, but the best, and likely most valuable, was getting to understand that there is a difference between personal and professional core values, then figuring out what my professional core values were. Doing that first sets the foundation upon which all of the other strategies are built.

This book is perfect for the new high school or college graduate just starting their professional journey. I know what I’m buying for every graduation gift from here on out!

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in the midst of a job and career change, and was very happy to have this as a resource. I think the reader will come away with good skills that benefit anyone working on a team in an office setting. The author was a bit hard to relate to as his successes seemed a bit too lofty as to be relatable. I would definitely read this along with other career books for best advice.

[Vincent · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75 stars
🌕🌕🌕🌖

Thanks NetGalley for a great copy of the book!

"Listen to the advice you give to others. It's usually the advice you need to take yourself" - Adam Grant

"A gap will always exist between how you think your leader views your performance and how they actually view it" - Scott Jeffery Miller

The book gives me the impression of an "instant-noodles" kind of a book, which means it's fast, easy-to-read, compact and straight-forward. This book is great for the young adults in their early 20s or even earlier than that. It has many good advices. Although for me there are not so many new points to learn, there are quite many things to remember and they linger in me.

The book has a good introduction chapter that gives an overview look of what it is going to discuss. Therefore, it's easy to follow. Throughout the book, I feel like I was talking to the author directly and he is like my mentor in career. The book has clear examples, exercises and summaries, taking action is very important during or after reading a book, therefore, this is a plus for me.

There are some minor points. For example, in some chapters, I felt like the author's ideas was hard to follow, sometimes it was too much of beating around the bushes. The ending felt a bit rushy. Chapter 10's exercise targeted only focused on social network growth which I think doesn't apply for everyone. Networking is not only about social networks.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book reads like the career mentor you’ve probably never had. It emphasizes the importance of intentional career development through knowing your values, building your personal brand and always, always, always be working on your self-awareness muscle. This book advocates for taking ownership of your relationship with your boss, networking outside of your organization, and disrupting yourself so you and your skills will always be relevant.

[Sarah Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Career on Course helps rethink your career choices, and most importantly your value system.
It isn't exactly anything new, but if you're rethinking your career and need help finding direction, this book can help you.

Its writing style is direct and easy to follow, nothing too complicated. There are a few exercises that will take you time to pause and reflect. FYI: This book is lacking a bit of the female perspective, and has a very male take on career advancement.

[Jen Schomaker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Filled with great reminders for anyone looking to make changes or improvements in any area of life. The exercises are helpful to brainstorm and think about next steps.