My Amazon Review of Joanne Lipman's "Next!: The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work"

 Reinventing Yourself

Veteran journalist Joanne Lipman has written an important guide to career change and life. Simply put, change is hard, but in the final analysis, it is necessary. Although personal reinvention is small change relative to statecraft, I would like to quote Niccolò Machiavelli here, “It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.”

 

She highlights among others how James Patterson gave up his successful career as an advertising executive to become a bestselling author, jazz musician Alan Greenspan became the central banker to the world and mild-mannered White House budget analyst Ina Garten, became the “Barefoot Contessa” of cooking fame. She further discusses how the recovery from trauma forces change upon people. Simply put, they have no choice. In the realm of physical reinventions, she notes how a wallpaper cleanser was reinvented as Play-Doh and how a failed heart medication became Viagra.

 

Her formula for career change is search-struggle-stop-solution. To change careers the process begins with search and the use of wide connections, not necessarily close connections, is most helpful. The exception to that is having a mentor really helps, and it was Ina Garten’s husband Jeffrey Garten, who encouraged her all the way. However, in the case of personal trauma, struggle comes first.

 

My own personal experience through numerous reinventions parallel much of what Lipman writes about. To me the most important aspect is to be open to new ideas and be in the flow where you can capitalize on them. However, sometimes one does not have the luxury of James Patterson, where he kept his day job while writing his novels. Circumstances force us into reinvention. Further the existence of a secure day job can become a security blanket. For example, I walked away from a tenured position in academia for the private sector. I wanted to make it work, so I did not want to have the option to retreat and I did that with a young family. In other words, change can be a risky business.

 

As for my own reinventions I have worked in aerospace, was drafted into the army, became a Ph.D. student and later a university professor, was a political activist along the way, did macroeconomic forecasting, became a leading real estate researcher, and left Los Angeles to work on Wall Street where I met the author when she was a cub reporter.  I wasn’t looking to go to Wall Street, but Wall Street came to me. Thus, being in the flow is what counts. With respect to that my leaving academia was the result of helping a friend find a job. In the course of helping him, I ended up being introduced to my new employer.

 

On retiring from Wall Street, I returned to academia with simultaneous posts at Baruch College, UCLA , and the University of Wisconsin. The most rewarding of which was helping to set up a program for Baruch College students for high profile careers in financial services which hitherto were unavailable to them.

 

Joanne Lipman backs up her anecdotes with serious social science research. Although that slows down the pace of the book, it puts her anecdotes on a firm foundation by turning the anecdotes into data. I highly recommend this book for those who are interested in career change and to those who may be too contented with the way things are.

For the full Amazon URL see: Reinventing Yourself (amazon.com)