Do what you love and the money will follow! …. but when?

I know a colleague who is undergoing a mid life career change. We are both familiar with the phrase “do what you love and the money will follow”. We discussed silent issue that this statement doesn’t address – the fact / fear that between the doing and flowing, there can be a gap of many months or even years. For a solo person, who don’t have a working partner or financially supportive family, or existing capital, this can make a career change dangerous if the income dries up in the transition.

In a similar vein I’ve recently had conversations with Uni colleagues about choosing research topics based initially on “market attractiveness” and less on passion, but then changing topics because the passion is what sees us through the long grind of research projects and we have to trust that at the end there is some interest in our expertise.

Along with passion, I keep noticing the power of a supportive environment. (more…)

Continue ReadingDo what you love and the money will follow! …. but when?

Sustainability – people, planet, profits

I loved the title of this AMCHAM Women in Management seminar and I enjoyed the content and the format. The speakers gave great insights into what organisations are doing to contribute to sustainability, they also gave us their personal stories and the format gave us time to engage with our table groups rather than just passive listening. Three big ticks from me.

On the “people” front, Siobhan Toohill told us about a number of initiatives to engage Stockland employees in sustainability, including introducing a balanced scorecard for all employees. What a way to embed the corporate balanced scorecard – with a 10% KPI requires each employee to identify what they are doing to contribute to sustainability.

The flow-on benefit for Stockland is that employee engagement scores are way up, confirming that sustainability is good for business.

(more…)

Continue ReadingSustainability – people, planet, profits