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Time to read: 8 minutes
In this edition:
1. The Thought You Had on Holiday
2. Five Questions Before You Forget
3. The Other Post-Holiday Move
4. Come to Our In-Person Meetup in Zürich
The Thought You Had on Holiday
Distance is the best career coach I know. (And I say that as a
career coach.)
Lofoten Beach as I saw it in July
Some days away from the office and your head clears. No meetings,
no deadlines, nobody needing anything from you. And you can finally
tell the difference between a bad week and a job that no longer
fits.
Then you fly home. The inbox refills. The meetings return.
Actually, a dump of Teams meetings waiting to be accepted. By mid
October the holiday thought is forgotten. The routine stays.
It does not have to go that way. Just before the summer break,
several new clients signed up for coaching with me. They come from
different angles, but they all want the same thing: to improve
their careers. Each took one open question with them into the
holiday and let the time away work on it.
- One is preparing his pitch for an
AI transformation role in his company.
- One is going for the promotion to
Director.
- One is deciding whether to stay
corporate or finally build something of her own.
They gave their thinking a head start. And I can't wait for them to
come back and we start the work.
And the calendar rewards them. Promotion rounds, hiring waves and
budget talks restart in autumn. The people who move in the last
quarter of the year are the ones who decided around their holiday,
just before it or just after. They use September to prepare while
everyone else is still settling back in. Headstart, it is. When the
Q4 conversations start, they walk in ready. If that sounds like
you, let's talk.
Five Questions Before You Forget
Let me share my holiday tip with you. Here is a thought starter I
love: let your AI interview you. Ten minutes, one coffee, give it a
chance.
Open ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot (whichever knows you best) and
paste this:
"Act as my thinking partner. I just came back from my summer
holiday and I want to capture what the distance showed me,
before I go back to my daily routine. Interview me with these
five questions, one at a time. Wait for my answer before you
ask the next one.
1. What thought kept coming back on holiday, when nobody was
asking?
2. What did I not miss about my job?
3. What did I miss?
4. How does three more years in the same role sound to
me?
5. What is one step I could take before October?
Push back once if an answer sounds vague. At the end, write a
short summary of my answers and name the question I should
start working on in September."
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Keep the summary it writes for you. Notes app, email to yourself,
wherever you will actually find it again. Two weeks from now, when
the calendar is full, that little text is what brings the beach
thought back. (And if you want company for the deciding part, that
is literally what I do all day. More below.)
The Other Post-Holiday Move
Now the second move. Whatever your beach thought was, a promotion,
a new role, your own company, this one strengthens all of them.
Quick context. Kyndryl is the IT infrastructure company that was
spun out of IBM; they run core systems for many of the world's
largest enterprises, so they see AI adoption from the inside. They
just published their second annual People Readiness Report, built
on answers from 1,100 senior business and technology leaders in
eight countries. Two numbers are telling. Only 23 percent say their
workforce is fully ready for AI, down from 29 last year, while the
money going in keeps growing. And 52 percent say finding people
with the right AI competencies got harder this past year.
Read the study here.
Earlier, on LinkedIn, I
wrote about the responsibility side: readiness is a choice you
make before anyone asks you to. Here is the career side. Companies
pour money into AI while their people fall behind, and the managers
cannot find the AI-competent people they need. That is your
opening. The same promotion rounds and hiring waves from part one
will have AI somewhere on the table, and the person who has already
done something with it is the one those 52 percent are trying to
hire.
I also have a prompt for this, look. Because it's the easiest to
have a first chat with your AI about your job. The AI, that knows
your thoughts, decisions, that's not surface level only. Again,
open your favorite AI tool (ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or whichever
knows you best) and try this prompt, it takes a couple of minutes:
"Here is my real week: [paste last week's calendar or list
what you actually did in the last five working days]. My
role: [role], [industry]. AI at my company right now: [which
tools or rollouts exist, or write none yet].
Based on this, and everything you know about my work from our
previous conversations, ask me three short questions about
the tasks that eat most of my time. Wait for my input. Then,
after I have answered, get specific: name the three tasks on
my list that AI will change most within a year, the one I
should hand over first this month and with which tool, and
the one skill I should build in September inside my normal
week. Finish with one sentence I could say in my next
development talk to show I am ahead of this."
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Ten minutes, and you know where you stand this September. For more
ideas, here is my offer to you:
Come to Our In-Person Meetup in Zürich
One more thing before you go. If you are near Zürich on 19 August,
come and meet us in person. I am due at another event that evening,
but I will do my best to duplicate myself or the like. In all
seriousness, #OpenDoorInnovation is the non-profit meetup I run
with Gitanjali Ponnappa, Andreea Stanescu and a small group of
enthusiasts to connect corporate innovators. This round we have
Heather Pace Clark on innovation ecosystems: how they help
organisations scale AI, which partnerships between corporates and
start-ups actually work, and which technologies beyond AI are worth
watching. Small group, real conversations, no networking theater.
19 August, 18:00, at Implement, Gutenbergstrasse 9, Zürich Enge.
The registration link is in the LinkedIn post, hurry up, waitlist
applies. One click on the picture above takes you there. Come say
hi.
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