SESSION 1: WHEN OPPORTUNITY STRIKES

SESSION OVERVIEWMANAGING YOUR CAREER DEVELOPMENT

For more information, visit hbx.hbs.edu/courses/managing-your-career/.© Copyright 2017. President and Fellows of Harvard College. All Rights Reserved.

The first session will explore, in depth, the choices of a conscientious, hardworking, mature, and well-trained individual who, relatively early in his career, has been given his first general manager role in an entrepreneurial venture. We will closely follow his decisions as he attempts to successfully launch his first product as a general manager to decipher what it means to be prepared for great opportunities in one’s career.

SESSION 2: FITOur second session will look at an established, successful leader who struggles to decide whether to take a new role or stay with his current role. The case allows us to fully consider the emotional nature of that decision for ourselves and the people and institutions around us, and how to communicate effectively through that emotional environment. We will consider how to leave a role, as well as think about our fit with the roles presented to us.

Once you know how to evaluate your fit with a particular role, how do you design a career out of a sequence of roles? Design thinking is becoming increasingly mainstream in many aspects of work. In this session, we take the core concepts behind design thinking and apply them to your career, thinking through how you might design the next stages in order to set the conditions for a higher probability of success.

SESSION 4: TRANSITIONS

Whether one’s career design requires moving up or moving out, career transitions are a key part of managing a career. In this session, we explore career transitions through the lens of a very different type of career—a celebrity career—and then help you bring the lessons back to you.

SESSION 5: NEGOTIATING YOUR CAREER

Negotiating through opportunities and around pitfalls is one key skill of managing your career development. Prior to this session, you will engage in a virtual negotiation with another member of the cohort—and then in this session, we will debrief that exercise with you. In the process, we will distill core tenets of negotiation and help you apply them to how you manage your career.

SESSION 6: BUILDING A TRANSFORMATIONAL CAREER

After putting snippets of our prior protagonists’ careers under a microscope, our sixth session will zoom out to look at the entire career of an individual who transformed an entire industry. After analyzing his dilemmas, choices, and the way in which the various pieces of his career fit together, we will hear his advice for you and reflect on how you might incorporate it.

SESSION 7: CREATING YOUR NEXT STORYLINE

In a capstone session combining the best practices of management and Hollywood movies, a special guest will help you to create your career story and think about the organizations, roles, and individuals you need to ‘hire’ to make the story a reality.

SESSION 3: DESIGN THINKING FOR YOUR CAREER