Radical Careering is not a book. It is, in fact, a multi-media experience.
Sure, it looks like a book in this photo, but trust me on this, it’s not. Not in the traditional narrative sense. It’s much more poetic and random. The randomness is by design, and gives the book a kinship with Medicine Cards or tarot.
The book looks and acts like a web site. It has that flip through feel scrolling provides.
RadicalCareering.com, which offers a ton of stuff to look at and play with also has 20 microsites. Not all are currently active, but most are. The sites have names like Forehead-Smack.com, Ramen-Noodles-Again.com, Portable-Equity.com, Ultimate-Competitive-Advantage.com, Anti-Vanila.com and Divorce-Lawyers-R-Us.com.
On Forehead-Smack, this advise is freely offered:
– I will not call someone an idiot while on speakerphone
– I will not let other people take the blame for my flatulence
– I will not accept lies from a boss in exchange for a paycheck
Pretty solid stuff with a slice of Onion, in other words.
In the book, Hogshead gives 100 radical truths to help move one’s career forward. Many of them speak to me, but this one particularly so:
Radical Truth #99
Expressing your truest self is the ultimate competitive advantage.
Traditional corporate culture induces mind-numbing homogeny. Success requires fitting in. The game is to get the “right” suit, the “right” handshake, the “right” letterhead. Hundreds of books tell you how to be right.
But “right” is standard. Boring. And frankly, beneath you.
Sally Hogshead tells it like it is and challenges all who come into contact with her neatly packaged ideas, to be honest with themselves about work. There’s bravery here, along side common sense. Work is what we do all day, we had better be brutally honest with ourselves, or be prepared to suffer the humiliation, insanity, alcoholism, etc. that comes with repeated and fearful attempts to just laugh “the bullshit” off.