The often quoted metaphor of dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants expresses the meaning of “discovering truth by building on previous discoveries”. Career Constructors’ view of how the world of work actually works — and how to work the system most effectively to your advantage — has been developed and continues to evolve from our ongoing research and study into the handful of topics listed here. The books listed below form a part of that research agenda, and are included on this page as we find them to be helpful and timely resources.
Personal Development
It all starts with you — focusing on your own personal development so you can become a better, more engaged and purposeful version of yourself. While that sounds hokey, the reality is that you are the only person you hold any “control” over, and can actually drive purposeful change. This is tough work, and highly rewarding. Here are some books that can help you on your journey of discovery.
Career Development & Leadership
Our prime recommendation in the career space is our book — (Re)Boot Your Career — an easy-to-follow blueprint and instruction manual, including dozens of specific exercises to help you figure it all out and build confidence and momentum while developing a pipeline of great-fit opportunities. Once you’ve got the basic blueprint in hand and you know what you need to do, you’ll find these other books helpful in focusing on addressing specific challenges you face in your chosen career development activities.
Team Development & Organizational Effectiveness
In our working lives, the bulk of our work is done in some sort of formal or informal team structures, with task hand-offs, resource interdependence, and ongoing communication and conflict challenges. And although teams are everywhere around us, how to build sustaining high performance teams is generally not well understood and rarely practiced. With the complexities of our modern organizations growing daily, really figuring out “team effectiveness” and learning how to access that ready pool of untapped potential is a massive leverage point — these books will definitely help.
Coping in a World of Disruption and Turbulence
Our underlying theme? The working world is increasingly turbulent and disruptive, and you need to significantly and continuously re-tool yourself, your team mates, and your organization if you’re going to survive and succeed in the 21st century. These books provide you a deeper perspective on what is actually going on in the world and will help you start to develop more effective strategies and tactics for engaging the world around you.
