What Leaders and Managers Can Learn from What Color Is Your Parachute
You're not job hunting, but you're probably stuck in the same rut this book was written to fix: waiting for the next role to be posted internally, or assuming your path forward means doing more of what you already do. Leaders often treat their next move — a promotion, a lateral shift, a new challenge — as something that will simply appear if they perform well, instead of something they can actively shape by knowing what they want and talking to the right people. The book's ideas apply just as well to moving inside an organization as to leaving one.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Question whether your current lane is really the only one that fits you
Many leaders assume their next step must extend their current function, without ever checking whether their real strengths and interests point somewhere else in the organization.
A strong operations manager gets nudged toward a bigger operations role every cycle, never mentions that the part of the job she loves most is mentoring junior staff, and ends up leading a larger team doing work that drains her.
List the three parts of your current role that energize you most and the three that drain you, then check whether your assumed next role has more of the first list or the second.
Have real conversations with people doing the work you're curious about, before a role opens
Waiting for a posting means competing for a role once it's already visible to everyone; a conversation with someone doing that work months earlier tells you what the role really involves and puts your name in the room before it's a competition.
A manager waits quietly for a director role to open, assumes seniority will carry the decision, and is blindsided when someone who spent the past year having informal conversations with the hiring committee gets the nod instead.
Pick one function or leader you're curious about and set up one genuine conversation this month — not to ask for anything, just to understand their world.
Make the case for what problem you'd solve, not just your track record
A resume of accomplishments tells people what you've done; naming the specific problem you'd solve for them next tells people what you're for.
A manager pitches herself for a stretch role using a list of past wins, and the decision-maker, who is trying to solve a specific gap on his team, can't tell if she's even aware the gap exists.
Before your next internal pitch, write one paragraph naming the specific problem the team or role is facing and how your particular strengths address it — lead with that, not your resume.
Keep re-examining what you want as your role and organization change
What energized you two roles ago may not energize you now — treating your fit with your current position as something worth periodically re-checking, rather than settling it once, keeps you from drifting into a role that no longer suits you.
Being curious about other paths can look like disloyalty if you're not careful; keep your exploration conversations low-key and framed as learning, and stay visibly committed to your current team's success while you do it.
Name one thing, honestly
If no one else were watching or judging the choice, what kind of work would you actually want to be doing a year from now?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Before your next internal pitch, write one paragraph naming the specific problem the team or role is facing and how your particular strengths address it — lead with that, not your resume.