SUMMARY: I received a review copy of Alison Cardy's book, Career Grease: How to Get Unstuck and Pivot Your Career. As with anyone who buys the book, I also received access to her e-course. Alison Cardy's work will be useful for Millennials and Boomers as well as appeal to readers who have different styles of learning. If you are considering this book, reading this review, are pretty serious about taking some action, and want a book that will provide you with concrete exercises and actions, I recommend it and the free e-course to which you have access once you buy it.
FOR MORE OF THIS REVIEW, KEEP READING. What I liked best about Career Grease was its action oriented focus, and its flexibility for use by people who have different styles of working through this kind of process. For a person who is highly self-directed and motivated, every chapter identifies an key factor and provides techniques for making real progress toward getting unstuck or making a career pivot. For a person who is looking for additional support, the e-course provides weekly emails that break actions down into manageable steps for people who find the density of a chapter overwhelming or want a more gradual time table for working through different steps. For the non-linear learner, the book starts out with a quiz that allows the user to identify which chapters are most relevant to his or her situation. The e-course activities support the book but in a less structured order that reinforces the concepts of the book while providing a different platform for experiencing the material.
Career Grease follows a common format of providing client stories to illustrate each point. Cardy has selected stories that are broad enough to resonate with people at different career stages as well as specific enough to retain a strong sense of reality. I thought her story about an individual who had invested a great deal of effort in his career dream of acting who was trying to deal with the reality that he was unable to support himself (much less the family he hoped to have) accurately captured the challenges presented by our emotional attachment to things that we consider essential to our self-image (or aversion to those things we perceive as completely opposite to our sense of self). Through that chapter, Cardy demonstrates the power of a pivot in perspective that I found completely relatable as a reader, even though I didn't relate to that particular individual's specific dilemma.
The author use of sections such as "Core Concepts," "Career Myth," "Coach's Notes", and "Lookouts" do a great job of addressing the "but what about" questions a reader is likely to have. Cardy isn't slavishly bound to form; not every chapter has every section. She uses two or more sections as she needs to make points relevant to the subject matter of each chapter. However, Cardy is consistent about making sure that each chapter includes specific exercises and action steps, which are key to enabling the reader to move forward toward his or her goal of making a career change (whether it is moving forward or making a shift).
If you read the book straight through (a linear learner like myself), Cardy's repeated references to the e-course and her own private consulting services can seem repetitive. On the other hand, these references also serve to emphasize her point, and the reality, that no one can make a change by "just" reading a book. If you are serious about making a change, you need to do the exercises. If you find that is a challenge to do on your own, Cardy has provided additional options to support you in your efforts from the free e-course to fee-based personal career coaching.
If you are unsure of whether you want to spend money on career coaching, this book and the related e-course are a good place to start. Maybe it will be enough to get you through your current challenges. If you choose to work with a career coach, her book and the exercises will give you a good sense of whether Cardy's style suits you. Any of the work you do using the book will certainly move you along in a process of moving your career forward, in your current field or with an view toward transitioning to a related or completely different field.
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 14, 2016
