A Moment of Reflection: Six Months of Notes from the Field
Here's to the journey, together.
Six months ago, we took an idea that percolated for more than a decade and transformed it into this newsletter that you enjoy every Tuesday morning, starting with our first post January 2, 2024.
Since January, we’ve grown from a handful of friends & family patiently learning with us and into an organic engine that reaches both our intended audience - students transitioning into the first five years of their career - as well as mid- and late-career professionals reflecting on their own growth journey.
If your peers and colleagues aren’t receiving Notes from the Field in their inbox every Tuesday, send them a quick nudge to subscribe:
Throughout our growth, we’ve had countless conversations and fantastic feedback. In the spirit of transparency, here are the three big themes we’ve heard over the past six months.
#1: What is Success?
There’s no doubt that the world of work is evolving - and quickly. Expectations for engagement, commitment, collaboration - even benefits and workplace perks - are radically different than a decade ago and nearly unrecognizable to late career professionals.
Reactions to this evolving environment are as widespread as the changes facing professionals at all levels of experience. We interview new graduates regularly and pick up both generational slang and generational perspectives on the world of work. We interview mid-career professionals about their experiences and the specific skills they’ve learned, tested, and adapted throughout their journey. We interview late-career experts on their reflections on the evolving world of work and the specific components most important to successes and failures.
The unifying theme among everyone we speak with: the personal expectations and resulting decisions stemming from the concept of success.
The personal definitions and expectations around the concept of success are an infinite combination. Our response: a methodology to codify the fundamental principles to defining your personal expectations for the world of work.
Welcome to our Know Yourself series, including our most popular download, The Know Yourself Workbook.
Over the next six months, we’ll continue to explore the topic of success, the methodologies to increase self-awareness, and introduce new voices and formats to help professionals of all stripes develop their own definitions, expectations, and decision-making frameworks for success.
#2: Feedback is a Gift
There is no doubt that launching a career is difficult. Successfully navigating the frameworks to research your interests, narrow your scope, find aligning roles, engage with your colleagues, leverage your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses, and take on new challenges requires significant planning, strategy, resilience, and, frankly, a bit of luck.
Our most vocal and opinionated feedback over the past six months comes from our Launch a Career series:
We unleashed a torrent of perspectives: positive, negative, constructive, and uninformed. And within this flood of feedback, it’s clear - we will revisit these topics (and related topics) with more specificity, context, and voices from across the world of work.
Our most positive feedback from the past six months stems from two posts - Making the Ask and On Feedback.
From those who are early in their career and ready to bring their ideals into the workplace to those who are mid-career and asking for that next step into leadership roles to those who are late career and reflecting on the things that made the difference for their journey - making the ask for what you want and ensuring you’re receiving constructive feedback are the top two skills (to date) for your path forward.
Over the next six months, you will continue to see more posts and content focused on these critical skills - as well as broadened perspectives, voices, and expertise as we tackle the toughest topics from the field.
#3: Broadening Our Accessibility
While you’ve enjoyed reading our weekly posts on critical skills in the world of work, we know there’s a wide variety of channels, formats, and distribution methods to utilize.
It’s our most common feedback: “you should do a [podcast / TikTok / YouTube / audio recording / Facebook / LinkedIn / my favorite channel & format]”
If you’re not already following us on social media, click below to follow along in your channels of choice:
TikTok (coming soon!)
YouTube (coming soon!)
For the past six months, we’ve intentionally moved slowly. We’ve focused on consistent weekly content development (and built the necessary habits and patterns to do so.) We’ve implemented and adapted technology to help us stay aligned and create faster (even when the learning curve is steep.) We’ve tweaked and experimented and evolved to ensure that we earn the right to be at the top of your inbox every week.
These principles will continue to remain intact. And we hear you: you want additional formats to better fit your preferences.
In the next six months, expect some additional experimentation with different content types, formats, and channels:
We anticipate additional social media engagement, a great way to connect with your peers and engage on topics;
Short- and long-form video interviews with our contributors and experts in the field to bring more color, context, and wisdom to our weekly posts;
Audio recordings of our weekly posts for those who prefer to listen to content;
A new post type called “Perspectives” (more on this in the coming weeks!)
Thank you for being an integral part of our initial six months and thank you for your feedback, recommendations, contributions, conversations, guidance, and help along the way.
Here’s to the journey, together.
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