Morning Coffee  Jan 03 2012

Best Career Books for 2012

By Kelly Eggers

Career books nowadays go well beyond the career bible everyone should have on their bookshelves. Here's one in our list of the top 10 career books coming out in 2012.

The Career Lattice: How Lateral Move Strategies Can Grow
Careers and Companies, by Joanne Cleaver

(McGraw-Hill, June 2012)

Recession-weary companies have begun abandoning traditional advancement paths and creating cultures of lateral moves, which can help you grow your skills in a different business area and add to your relevancy across an industry.

Cleaver explains how to use these opportunities to your own advantage and open doors that could have remained closed. "Technical skills are part of the solution, but employers also want business and creative problem-solving skills," Cleaver says. "All of these are essential for growing through lateral moves, which offer immediate growth and an alternative path to promotion."

Joanne Cleaver has latticed since 1981. Fresh out of the master's program in journalism at what was then the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, she launched a career as a freelance business journalist, writing for Crain's Chicago Business, the Chicago Tribune, Working Woman, Working Mother, Inc., and many other publications, as evidenced by her portfolio. Along the way, she developed an expertise in designing and managing major research projects that measure and support the advancement of working women. To gain daily news and digital editing skills, Joanne cycled into stints at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Tribune Digital, managing business news and major digital content projects.  Realizing that these skills and experiences could be remixed with a certification to qualify her as a pre-eminent media trainer, Joanne became licensed through Jane Jordan & Associates, the U.S. branch of the Media Skills Network to help experts and executives get their message out via media interviews.

Based on her own ongoing research about workplace best practices and her exclusive research partnership with the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning,  Joanne is a leading advocates for the career lattice.  The Career Lattice, scheduled to be published in June 2012 by McGraw Business, will show managers, entrepreneurs, professionals and human resource leaders how to adapt and adopt latticed career paths for their employees and for themselves.

The concept and term of the career lattice, invented by CAEL over a decade ago, is the practical vision for lifelong career advancement for Americans in all career stages and all industries. Over is the new up.

Contact Joanne at jycleaver@wilson-taylorassoc.com.