Reinvent Your Work: How to Rejuvenate, Revamp, or Recreate Your Career (Paperback)

~ (Author) "An employee rejuvenates his performance, while a colleague revitalizes her attitude..." (more)
Key Phrases: reinvention option, sense your timing, reinvention goal, Step Five, Steps One, Suiza Foods (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This refreshing idea can have the effect of liberating us from a tendency to lock ourselves into a vocation in ways that discourage innovation. Felicia Zimmerman has articulated techniques not only for maximizing potential, but for reviving or installing zest in what we want to do. "Reinvent Your Work" is a most useful book." -- Hugh Downs

Product Description

Whether you’re a big company manager facing a merger or layoff, a new economy go-getter who wants to survive the shakeout, or an entrepreneur looking to transition a business to the next level, you undoubtedly will face—if you haven’t already—some sort of workplace shift. That’s because reinvention at warp speed is the norm in today’s work world.

For the first time, a business professional provides other business professionals with advice on how to rejuvenate, revamp, or recreate their jobs, the businesses they work for, manage, or own, or both. Felicia Zimmerman presents readers with a comprehensive and intensely-practical approach. She lays out five reinvention options, seven steps to complete these options, and hands-on implementation assistance. Zimmerman also profiles eight successful businesspeople whose stories demonstrate that her approach works.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 213 pages
• Publisher: Dearborn Trade (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0793145511
• ISBN-13: 978-0793145515
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,253,256 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars rewrite reinvent, June 23, 2003

By A Customer

This is a book that is based on an interesting idea, a practical step by step guide to help you devise the steps for a transformation in your career. Not what the transformation should be or if you want to do it, but once you have made the decision, helpful hints and guides as to the steps involved in getting there. She sites examples for personal to corporate level transformations which for me as a small business owner were very interesting and touch many salient points. The interviews with other business people provide informative and encouraging stories and provide a nice narrative closure to each chapter. However, the author then pairs each separate story with one of her own transformation. Once would have been OK, but she does it too often to be anything but arrogant and repetitive. And indeed this is often the problem with the writing of the book in general. It is so deeply redundant that it took a great deal of discipline to not start skipping around and skimming the material which would have been a shame. Because as bad as it is, nestled in all the redundant repittiions, (maybe I should say that again!) there are a few good ideas that are worthy of the read. The author's last transformation was to become a writer and public speaker and while I have no doubt that she is a talented and persuasive salesperson (she did talk someone into publishing this book), she is not a very good writer and would have done better to have collaborated with someone who is.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reinvent you, February 22, 2002

By	Martin Schray (West Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Reinvent Your Work is an intriguing read. Felicia Zimmer explores ways to reinvent work. There are five basic "patterns" for recreating work they are as follows:

Reinvigorate your job
Change Jobs within your company
Enhance your business' offerings or approach
Transition your business
Start a new business within your company

One of the neat concepts in Reinvent Your Work is there in fact multiple ways to accomplish a reinvention (the list above). Another neat concept is that a reinvention can be at a corporate level rather then just a personal reinvention.

Some other books on reinvention "activities" make your take personality tests and other self diagnosing activities. The end result is a self diagnosis without necessarily insight into how to reinvent or how to get to your reinvention. Reinvent Your Work also profiles individuals and how they went through the reinvention process, which was quite insightful.

I think that Reinventing Your Work takes an extremely pragmatic approach to helping you unearth your reinvention, define how to get it done, keep it on track and monitor when it is time for the next reinvention. Reinvent Your Work is not a one size fits all approach to reinvention.

If you pick this book up (and you should) be ready to do some serious thinking about who you are, what you really want and defining a path to get there.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Roadmap to Career and Corporate Transformation, October 17, 2001

By	Michael K Nissenbaum (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

Reinvent Your Work is more than the all-too-prevalent "help me find a job" resource by career coaches, psychologists, and journalists. Felicia Zimmerman uses her years of experience as a mentor, coach, and consultant to present an integrated picture of career and corporate evolution. That's what Zimmerman's five reinvention options are all about!

If your company truly believes that their employees are their most valuable asset, you or your leaders will appreciate how this book recognizes the inextricable link between the individual and the business. Forget terms like "skunk works", "thinking out of the box", and "breaking glass", this book is a classic road map of career and corporate transformation. Not a quick read that you put on the book shelf but an invaluable resource that you keep in your desk and consult when facing both opportunities and challenges.