Your Job Survival Guide: A Manual for Thriving in Change

Gregory Shea, PH.D

Change. It's your job. It just won't stop. It's relentless. It keeps coming at you like never-ending rapids in a permanent whitewater river. Change will burn you out if you don't learn how to handle it. A new book, Your Job Survival Guide: A Manual for Thriving in Change, (FT Press) is not about mere survival. It is about thriving amidst the challenges of your permanent whitewater world at work.

In a Leadership edition of Total Picture Radio, Peter Clayton speaks with co-author Gregory Shea, Ph.D. about the way this book talks about change: This is practical, grounded knowledge for managing your life in a business world that's churning with change. Greg Shea and Robert Gunther show how to keep your working life on course instead of being pushed beyond your limits...find fun and fulfillment...regroup and rebound from failure...protect yourself from events you can't predict...take charge of your life, and your future.

Talking Points: Questions Peter Clayton asked Greg Shea:

• What was the impetus for writing this book?
• Your timing was excellent.
• You teach a number of courses on the topics of leadership and change management. What’s top-of-mind with executives in this economic environment.
• Your book uses the metaphor of a whitewater river.
• One idea I’d like you to expand upon... Treat your career as a series of experiments.
• Expand on the following bullet points:
• • Protect your career, improve your resilience, and seize the opportunities in turbulent times
• • Take charge, learn to pace yourself, set your own course, and lead others in ad-hoc teams
• • Ride the rapids and rediscover play and adventure in today's demanding work environment
• Learn from research and the experiences of hundreds of professionals in industries from energy to telecommunications to financial services to health care
• Master the emotions of failure.
• You are responsible for your own security.
• Strategies for communicating above the roar

About the Authors:

Gregory Shea, Ph.D., consults, researches, writes, and teaches in the areas of organizational and individual change, leadership, group effectiveness, and conflict resolution. He is president of the consulting firm Shea & Associates, a principal in The Coxe Group international consultancy; Senior Consultant at the Center for Applied Research, Adjunct Professor of Management at The Wharton School, where he has taught for more than 25 years, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, and a Faculty Associate of the Wharton School's Center for Leadership and Change. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard, Shea holds an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and an M.A., M. Phil., and Ph.D. in Administrative Science from Yale. He is a member of the Academy of Management and the American Psychological Association.

Robert Gunther is coauthor or collaborator on more than 20 books, including The Wealthy 100 and The Truth About Making Smart Decisions. He has appeared on CNBC's "Power Lunch," NPR's "Morning Edition," and numerous local and national radio and television programs, and his projects have been featured in The New York Times, Time, USA Today, and Fortune. His columns or articles also have been published in Harvard Business Review, American Heritage, Investor's Business Daily, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. As founder of Gunther Communications, he has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, universities, and major non-profits. He is a graduate of Princeton University.

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