The Fast Track Formula

How to accelerate your career

Alan Robertson

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 2004 , 155 pages

ISBN: 0-273-67550-8

Synopsis:

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Capability matters.

But so does opportunity.

And visibility.

And credibility.

The Fast Track Formula is the first book to uncover the critical hidden factors that affect career progression, and enable you to control your own rate of progress.

Learn how to demonstrate mental agility and when to use the power of higher order thinking. Discover how to recognize defining moments and be ready to capitalize on the next one that happens to you. Develop your influential relating ability, be aware of career hot spots and know how to succeed where others fail.

Time to shift up a gear or two…

Table of Contents:

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• Thanks to …
• Acknowldgements …
• Introducing … An Ambitious little book
• A provocative proposition
• The shape of things to come
• Assumptions
• Part One: The Nature of the Track
• Chapter 1: Careering Along
• A glance in the mirror
• Controlling the pace
• Where next?
• Chapter 2: The Hidden Structure of Careers
• A mysterious parcel
• The changing nature of work
• A new view of the pyramid
• The accelerators
• Understanding your own track
• Conceptual hotspots
• Where next?
• Part Two: Mental Agility
• Chapter 3: Higher-Order Thinking (HOT Stuff)
• Thinking at the edge
• Your current thinking challenges
• Is your thinking up to it?
• How do you think?
• Characteristics of higher-order thinking
• Developing higher-order thinking
• Thinking hotspots
• Where next?
• Part Three: Interaction
• Chapter 4: Defining Moments
• Career limiting moments
• Successful moments
• The nature of defining moments
• When to be most vigilant
• Being ready for defining moments
• Progressively harder to spot
• The paradox of progression
• Fatal incompetences: reasons you might not get promoted
• Interaction hotspots
• Where next?
• Chapter 5: Influential Reading
• Five ways of relating
• The competitive (forcing) postures
• The avoiding (reluctant) postures
• The accomodating (befriending) postures
• The collaborative (joint problem-solving) postures
• The compromising (give and take) postures
• Extracting some principles
• Developing your influential reading
• Where next?
• Part Four: The Formula at Work
• Chapter 6: Hotspots, Cool Careers
• How does career progression really work?
• Knowing a hotspot when you're in one
• The use and abuse of higher-order thinking
• Cool careers
• Where next?
• Chapter 7: Great Examples
• Does the formula work?
• The Boy Racer
• Extraordinary — a Popular Politician
• The Spy Mistress
• The Adventuring Entrepreneur
• Where next?
• Beyond the Edge of this Book
• The escape clause, maybe…
• Selected Further Reading
• Part One: The Nature of the Track
• Part Two: Mental Agility
• Part Three: Interaction
• Part Four: The Formula at Work
• Alan Robertson — Supporting transition into higher-level roles