Book Review: Master Your Next Move
17 Oct 2019
Michael D. Watkins has spent the last 10 years exploring how leaders succeed or fail. His most recent book answers the challenging questions of applying career transition principles in diverse situations.
Any successful executive CV shows a series of transitions into more challenging roles. Ultimately, your next professional move can make or break your career and the way in which you make your next move will vary dramatically depending on the type of move you are making.
In our business of executive search and recruitment we get to be on the journey with candidates where we experience first-hand the truth of the statement – you are only as successful as your next career transition. Our role is to support you in strategically planning your career by helping you find your next career challenge and supporting you and your organisation with your transition-acceleration through peer and expert facilitator coaching in HG Learning Sets. It’s our job to support you do well, and fast track to more challenging roles to enhance your career – and your organisation. Mastering Your Next Move offers you a great tool for navigating that journey successfully. In his international bestseller The First 90 Days, transition guru Michael D. Watkins outlined a set of basic principles for getting up to speed quickly in new professional roles. Many of the leaders that Professor Watkins worked with posed challenging questions on how to apply the basic principles in real-life situations.
The First 90 Days framework can be applied in every transition, but the way you apply it is entirely different when you have been promoted to a higher level than it is when you are joining a new organisation or taking a role in a different country.
Master Your Next Move answers a distinct need, provides real-world examples and many practical models and tools. It maps different transitions under eight key headings:
- The Promotion Challenge
- The Leading-Former-Peers Challenge
- The Corporate Diplomacy Challenge
- The Onboarding Challenge
- The International Move Challenge
- The Turnaround Challenge
- The Realignment Challenge
- The STARS Portfolio Challenge
The final chapter deals with designing organisation-wide Transition-Acceleration-Systems. Building transition acceleration systems, adjusting for types of transitions and deploying through coaching, leadership programs and e-learning.
Highly recommended for those leaders on their journey to be challenged.
Michael D. Watkins, PhD, is the world’s foremost expert on accelerating leadership transitions. He is cofounder of Genesis, a leadership development consultancy based in Boston, Massachusetts, and author of the international bestseller The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013), which was named one of the 100 Leadership and Success Books to Read in a Lifetime by Amazon editors in 2016.
