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Thrive: Standing on Your Own Two Feet in a Borderless World, Mike Cook, 2006, ISBN 097676315x The business world has drastically changed in the last few years. This book shows how to develop the inner strength and abilities to survive in the new global marketplace. For many years, a central component of American business involved the concepts of Commitment and Loyalty. It was a time when a person could expect to spend their entire working career at one company. As long as the employee was willing to give the company the best years of their life, and not even think about going to another company that may be a better fit for the employee (keep dissenting opinions to yourself), the company will be there to take care of the employee. If you haven’t already learned, the hard way, that such a way of thinking no longer exists, you will. The most important thing, in today’s world, is to learn to be adaptable, which involves several things. First of all, take personal responsibility for your own financial welfare; no one else will do it for you. Come up with your own personal vision; something more than simply "employment at my previous salary level." Technical competence and reputation are pretty self-explanatory. The last is collaborative competence. It doesn’t just involve how well you get along with others at work, but how well you bring value to the workplace. In the myriad of small and large interactions that make up the workplace, how willing are people to interact with you? If you can become something like the "go to" person, upper management will think long and hard before giving you a pink slip. This book doesn’t try to lay blame for globalization, or look at "hot" industries in the coming years, but tries to show a new way of thinking so that a person in any industry can make themselves indispensable at work. It succeeds really well, and is very much worth reading. Paul Lappen is a freelance book reviewer whose website, Dead Trees Review, has over 600 reviews on all subjects, with an emphasis on small press books.
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