Executive Turned Consultant: Transitioning from Experienced Executive to Trusted Advisor in Healthcare

By Scott A. Mason

The reality of a healthcare consulting career can be vastly different from how people often imagine it. Although an executive might transition to a consulting role, management experience and knowledge do not guarantee success.

Executive Turned Consultant provides a road map for executives contemplating a move into management consulting. The book walks readers through key considerations and includes firsthand accounts of executives who have navigated the transition.

Topics covered include:

Why and how to conduct a mid-career assessmentHow consulting compares with executive managementCommon mistakes executives make when launching a consulting careerThe pros and cons of joining an existing firm versus going into solo practiceHow to determine the best time to move into consulting

In his previous book, The Healthcare Consultant's Handbook, author Scott A. Mason offered early careerists insight into the essential role of healthcare consultants and what truly makes a consultant exceptional. Now he provides practical guidance to help healthcare executives make an informed career decision about becoming a professional consultant, with eyes wide open to both the risks and rewards.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ACHE Management Series
• Release date: Jul 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781640553330

Book preview

Front Cover: Executive Turned Consultany: Transitioning from Experienced Executive to Trusted Advisor in Healthcare, Scott A Mason, HAP, ACHE Management Series

PRAISE FOR EXECUTIVE TURNED CONSULTANT

Scott has the kind of insight and perspective that only a lifetime of practical and pragmatic management experience can bring. As a career strategy consultant, Scott has clearly established himself as a national thought leader. In this most recent book, Executive Turned Consultant, he continues his tireless pursuit of knowledge to help optimize results in the most complex industry in the world by speaking to experienced executives who might be considering a career change to consulting.

Jonathan Burroughs, MD, MBA, consultant, author, speaker

In these turbulent times, the healthcare industry desperately needs advice from those who have developed their insights and wisdom from practical experience. As Scott points out, Being a successful consultant is not easy. This book is timely, providing a glide path for those with practical industry experience to become effective consultants from someone who has been there, done that.

Nathan Kaufman, strategy consultant, speaker, author, digital influencer, transaction specialist

In Executive Turned Consultant, Scott has again used his extensive consulting experience to provide practical and real-life advice to mid-career or nearing-retirement healthcare executives. As someone for whom this is a lived experience, Scott has captured how the two roles of executive and consultant differ dramatically. These are challenging times in healthcare. The executive who can partner successfully with a trusted advisor has a step forward in managing these challenges. Scott describes clearly how one’s ability to achieve the status of a trusted advisor requires overcoming significant challenges. This book makes a real contribution to healthcare executives considering consulting as their next career.

Don Wegmiller, member, Healthcare Hall of Fame; retired CEO, Allina Health; chairman, Scottsdale Institute; chairman emeritus, Gallagher Integrated Strategies

Scott Mason’s new book Executive Turned Consultant: Transitioning from Experienced Executive to Trusted Advisor in Healthcare is a must-read for all healthcare executives and consultants. Key insights are offered on how the role of advisor and executive are distinctly different. Having partnered with Scott on numerous engagements, I know his gift resides in truly understanding the client context before offering expert guidance on how to approach a certain issue. Scott gives a compelling case for effective consulting and the essential role it must play if we are to successfully transform healthcare. Executives contemplating such a career change would do well to heed Scott’s advice.

Bob Ritz, president/CEO of MercyOne

ACHE Management Series Editorial Board

Douglas E. Anderson, DHA, LFACHE, Chairman

SHELDR Consulting Group

Tyler A. Bauer

NorthShore University HealthSystem

CDR Janiese A. Cleckley, FACHE

Defense Health Agency

Kris M. Drake, FACHE

Ingham Community Health Centers

Guy J. Guarino Jr., FACHE

Catawba Valley Medical Center

Shanna Johnson, FACHE

Ascension St. John Hospital

Sylvia E. Lozano, FACHE

Alameda Health System

Faith Needleman

Samaritan Life Enhancing Care

Mitali Paul, FACHE

Houston Methodist Specialty Physicians Group

Jayson P. Pullman

Hawarden Regional Healthcare

CDR Lisa A. White, FACHE

Navy Medicine Professional Development Center

Nichole C. Wilson, FACHE

Community Health Network

Front Cover: Executive Turned Consultany: Transitioning from Experienced Executive to Trusted Advisor in Healthcare, Scott A Mason, HAP, ACHE Management Series

Your board, staff, or clients may also benefit from this book’s insight. For information on quantity discounts, contact the Health Administration Press Marketing Manager at [phone].

This publication is intended to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold, or otherwise provided, with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

The statements and opinions contained in this book are strictly those of the author and do not represent the official positions of the American College of Healthcare Executives or the Foundation of the American College of Healthcare Executives.

Copyright © 2022 by the Foundation of the American College of Healthcare Executives. Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form without written permission of the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Mason, Scott A. author. | American College of Healthcare Executives, issuing body.

Title: Executive turned consultant : transitioning from experienced executive to trusted advisor in healthcare / Scott A. Mason.

Other titles: Management series (Ann Arbor, Mich.)

Description: Chicago, IL : Health Administration Press, [2022] | Series: HAP/ACHE management series | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: This book provides a road map for executives contemplating a move into management consulting. It walks readers through key considerations and includes firsthand accounts of executives who have navigated the transition—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021055778 (print) | LCCN 2021055779 (ebook) | ISBN 9781640553378 (paperback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781640553347 (epub)

Subjects: MESH: Health Services Administration | Consultants | Vocational Guidance

Classification: LCC RA418 (print) | LCC RA418 (ebook) | NLM W 64 | DDC 362.1—dc23/eng/20211124

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021055778

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021055779

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. ∞ ™

Acquisitions editor: Jennette McClain; Manuscript editor: DeAnna Burghart; Project manager: Andrew Baumann; Cover designer: James Slate; Layout: Integra

Found an error or a typo? We want to know! Please e-mail it to [e-mail], mentioning the book’s title and putting Book Error in the subject line.

For photocopying and copyright information, please contact Copyright Clearance Center at www.copyright.com or at [phone].

To my trusted advisors—

my wife, Melanie,

and my children, Kayla and Nicholas—

for their love and support.

Contents

List of Exhibits

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I    WHY?

Chapter 1.    Why Consider a Career Change?

Chapter 2.    Making a Midcareer Assessment

Chapter 3.    The Mounting Challenges of Executive Roles

Part II    WHAT?

Chapter 4.    Identifying the Options

Chapter 5.    What Others Have Experienced

Chapter 6.    The Road Less Traveled

Part III    HOW?

Chapter 7.    Executive Management Versus Consulting

Chapter 8.    A Closer Look at Consulting

Chapter 9.    CEOs Face Some Unique Challenges

Part IV    WHEN?

Chapter 10.  Avoiding Common Mistakes

Chapter 11.  Making the Transition with a Firm

Chapter 12.  Starting a Solo Practice

Part V    WHO?

Chapter 13.  If Things Don’t Work Out

Chapter 14.  Let the Journey Begin

Appendix A:  Early Pioneers

Appendix B:  Contemporaries

Appendix C:  Selective Consultant Story

Appendix D:  Case Study of a Failed Engagement

Index

About the Author

List of Exhibits

0.1    The Career Change Decision Framework

1.1    Partial List of Stress Scores

2.1    Key Dissatisfiers for Healthcare Executives

4.1    The Six Phases of Your Career

4.2    The Latter Three Phases of Your Career

6.1    Insights from Talent People on Executives Turned Consultant

6.2    Comparison of Early Pioneers and Contemporaries

7.1    Key Differences Between Executive Roles and Consulting

7.2    Turner’s Hierarchy of Consulting Purposes

7.3    The POSDCORB Conceptual Framework

7.4    Comparison of Consulting Roles Based on Scope and Approach

7.5    Transferable Skills by Consulting Category

7.6    Transferable Skills by Firm Structure

8.1    The Consultant Value Chain

9.1    CEO Traits Attractive to Consulting

9.2    Rice’s Five R Factors

9.3    Comparison of Entrepreneurs, Consultants, and Operators

10.1  Eisenhower Priority Matrix

11.1  Joining a Firm Versus Starting a Solo Practice

12.1  The Solo Practice Start-Up Checklist

Preface

MANY YEARS AGO, I was part of a group of healthcare consultants who gathered at an educational meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona, to discuss several topics of interest. Although I have forgotten most of the conversation, one thing that stuck in my mind was when we went off script and talked about how we would most like to spend our time if we were not consulting. It was obvious as we went around the group that some had not given it much thought. Gardening and travel were among the common answers, but by far the most popular was writing. I think part of this stemmed from the near universal belief that, as experienced professional consultants, we each felt we had something of value we needed to share with others. After all, that is effectively how we made our living, and we each were well compensated for our opinions and insights. Yet as I look back on this conversation, very few who took part have taken up the pen.

In contrast, writing and thought leadership have long been part of my consulting practice, especially as it relates to the future of healthcare and related strategies for success.¹ Things didn’t start out this way. Time is the currency of experience, as noted in the updated introduction to Pine and Gilmore’s seminal book The Experience Economy (Boston: Harvard Business, 2019; ix). The thoughts I share in this book accumulated after over time after I first received formal training in the skills of management consulting, and they have been greatly informed by a myriad of client experiences when put into practice over the course of more than 40 years. Some of these experiences were unique, others perhaps more common, but all involved lessons if one was attentive to the details.

These experiences led me to share some of the tradecraft I learned in my career as a healthcare strategy consultant. Some of this tradecraft pertains to consulting in general, some is more specific to the changing healthcare industry. I must confess that I have used this platform to point out some of the shortcomings embedded in the current state of healthcare, and to suggest some issues that must be addressed by leaders in the coming years. These are not only opportunities for healthcare consultants, who often lead major change initiatives, but for executives and policymakers as well.

Another motivation for writing this book is my fervent belief that there is a material difference between a trained professional consultant and one who has not received formal education or training. Observing the best among us over the years, I am struck by the realization that they had at least one thing in common—experience in operations within a healthcare organization, or at least completion of an administrative residency or fellowship. And while there were exceptions, most of the talented consultants I worked with and observed also received formal training early in their consulting careers, often by working for a large global consulting firm heavily invested with internal training capacity.²

I also noticed that a few prominent healthcare leaders had decided to enter consulting later in their careers, even without this earlier consultant training. When I first started out as a career consultant, this change from executive to consultant was rare; it represented much more than just a job change. Those who went down this path were a bit of an anomaly and aroused curiosity among their peers, to the point that they often found themselves asked to share their experiences in panel discussions (healthcare sponsors a lot of meetings). I found some of the comments at these meetings quite revealing.

As I recall, these executives turned consultants said they enjoyed what they were doing and liked working with a variety of clients, but some noted that they may have lacked a full appreciation of the risks involved. Whether my impression was right or wrong, there was a stark contrast when these leaders discussed their executive careers versus their newfound consulting; when it came to consulting too many of them appeared as deer in the headlights. Mind you, these newly minted consultants had been highly accomplished leaders of healthcare organizations. A few were quite successful in their new role. Others essentially played out their two- to three-year severance package from their last CEO position and quietly faded into retirement.³ Perhaps they did not appreciate that merely sharing their successful experiences is rarely enough to address a client’s situation, which almost always involves some unique twists and turns. Further, the role of decider is materially different from that of advisor. Understanding this difference is critical in making this career change.

Please note, in discussing a career change I am not referring to the retiring CEO who sells time back to her company while shifting to a part-time role on the path to retirement. Nor am I referring to the hobbyist who does consulting on the side, or the executive who has cards printed up that say Consultant while waiting for the right executive job to come along. Finally, I am not referring to the retired CEO who is a part-time member of a CEO network offering counseling to new CEOs. Rather, I am referring to the person for hire who hangs out their shingle or joins an existing firm and goes full-on at-risk pursuing their consulting practice. This is where consulting skills, including sales skills, come into play.

Seeing these respected leaders stumble with this career change disturbed me. These were talented people on an important mission to share their judgment and lessons from their illustrious careers as healthcare executives, yet they seemed to be missing some of the basics of how best to monetize the experience that they had spent so much of their career accumulating.

When I began to address this executive turned consultant trend, it became immediately obvious to me that the unregulated term consultant is confusing and subject to many interpretations, some of which are misleading. On top of that, it became painfully clear to me that, contrary to popular belief, not everyone is cut out for consulting. To be blunt, the profession of consulting is poorly understood and underappreciated, including in healthcare. This requires some redress.

The notion of what it means to be a professional consultant in healthcare is the topic of my previous book published by Health Administration Press, The Healthcare Consultant’s Handbook: Career Opportunities and Best Practices. That book is relevant to anyone contemplating a career in consulting, but it focuses on early careerists just setting out on their journey—recent college and business school graduates who are just entering the job market. The Healthcare Consultant’s Handbook devotes considerable time to defining the profession of consulting (how to be a superior consultant; the essential skills of consulting), both in general and specifically for healthcare organizations. I believe that much of the skill set required to be a successful independent management consultant is generic, but some aspects of the healthcare industry are not intuitive and require some explanation. The Healthcare Consultant’s Handbook also includes a discussion of the rich history of consulting to healthcare organizations going back to World War II, which helps draw attention to some of the dramatic changes taking place in US healthcare and related factors that make healthcare today so ripe for consulting.

In contrast, the target audience for this book is the midcareer or near-retirement healthcare executive. These people may have spent decades managing healthcare organizations and their component entities, and the bulk of their career may now be behind them. They have been fully exposed to the nuances of US healthcare. But while these executives possess significant operating knowledge, their consulting experience may be somewhat limited. In other words, this book assumes that most readers lack the skills training that career consultants receive as they start out. Being a successful career consultant is not easy. Changing careers to consulting is at least as hard as, if not harder than, beginning your career in consulting, since you must overcome many hurdles to parlay your time as an executive into a successful consulting career.

In considering a potential consulting career, it is not enough to understand the state of a particular industry today; one must have some insight into what is to come. So, in addition to the requirements of transitioning from a managerial role to a professional consulting role for healthcare organizations, this book discusses factors relevant to the evolving challenge of managing these complex organizations. While the focus is on healthcare, much of the discussion applies to any executive, from any industry, who is interested in transitioning into a consulting career.

These two volumes on consulting are intended to be complementary. And while noticeably different from those of early careerists, the interests of midcareer professionals and those who are close to retirement are not always identical. Accordingly, these two subgroups are treated as similar in most sections of this book, but the discussion is more specific to the unique interests of each subgroup in a few key places.

Obviously, I have drawn on my own experiences as I have approached this work. I am therefore obligated to provide some additional context in this regard. I have spent some time in line management of provider-based healthcare organizations both as an employee and on an interim basis (i.e., as an independent contractor). I am also a serial entrepreneur; I set out to establish my own consulting firm when I turned 30 and was asked to run two other start-up organizations along the way, as an investor and as CEO.⁴ The memories of weaning myself from a regular employee paycheck and starting out as a solo consultant are as vivid today as they were 40 years ago. To be sure, certain memories stand out more than others. It is hard to forget attempting to run a start-up organization and keep people motivated when there is no money. No one ever said being an entrepreneur was easy.

My experience as a healthcare executive, an entrepreneur, and a consultant have all come into play in writing this book. Admittedly, my background and experiences as a strategy consultant show through in my writing. Not all consulting is strategy. Compared to strategy engagements, more specialized consulting involves fewer gray areas, with less process, and with clearer right and wrong answers.

I firmly believe that that for many people, the concept of consulting and the reality of consulting are vastly different. The consulting experience differs from the current executive experience—sometimes in dramatic ways. This book is meant to help executives prepare for their new context. Approaching a career change in a casual manner ignores the inherent risk. Insight and awareness are required to enable a professional to lean into their new calling if they are to be well received as a trusted advisor. It is for this purpose that this book has been written.

1   I was honored in 2016 to receive the coveted Dean Conley Award for best article of the year for Retail and Real Estate: The Changing Landscape of Care Delivery, published in Frontiers of Health Services Management.

2   It should be noted that early in my career, not many medium or larger specialty healthcare consulting firms existed. Healthcare was just coming into its own in the 1970s, and global firms were just starting to incorporate healthcare as a legitimate vertical.

3   I believe these rather generous severance packages may be an anomaly of this unique period of consolidation that won’t be sustained in the future.

4   Both organizations were focused on developing strategic and operational information through digital technology in the perioperative and personal health record arenas.

Acknowledgments

TIME AWAY FROM the day-to-day grind has allowed for completion of this second book on consulting in Health Administration Press’s Management Series. I am indebted to the many people with whom I have collaborated over the years who have helped me hone my skills through specific consulting engagements I have been fortunate enough to pursue. Along the way this has included collaborating with people from other firms, as well as conscripting solo experts where their unique skills could be applied.

I gained a genuine appreciation for the experience that these experts brought to various assignments. I mostly focused on strategic planning, organization structure and culture, mergers and acquisitions, and clinical service lines, which could be characterized as functioning more in the role of a generalist, not a specialist. Others were added to these consulting teams with specific expertise in such areas as medical group management, clinical medicine, reimbursement, finance, data analytics, facilities design, real estate, and quality improvement, to name a few.

Since I made the commitment to consulting right out of graduate school (and my administrative residency), writing this book on career change required that I approach a few colleagues who first spent more time in operations to capture their experience of making a true career change by joining the consulting ranks. My thanks go to the people who allowed themselves to be profiled in this book, including Ken Ackerman, Reginald Ballantyne III, Nicole Denham, Fred Hobby, Kim King, Chris Morgan, and James A. Rice. I have attempted to summarize what they shared with me as part of this discussion. To a person, they have been generous with their time and candid with their observations about their careers. The written observations are mine, but they have each had an opportunity to review drafts and provide comments.

While not obvious at first, it became clear to me that there is an element of recruiting involved in making a career change. Many if not most senior executive positions in healthcare are filled by search consultants, and these searches sometimes involve executive coaches. This exposes such advisors not only to key executives who are looking for a similar position elsewhere, but also to some who have determined to make a career shift to consulting. For insights in this regard, I am indebted to Jack Schlosser (formerly Spencer Stuart; now Desert Vista Advisors), J. Larry Tyler (formerly of Tyler & Company; now Practical Governance Group), Carson Dye (formerly of WittKieffer; now Exceptional Leadership), and Michael Hein (MEDI Leadership)—a few of the best in the business.

Any consultant will admit to learning much from their clients. I doubt there is a client I have worked with who has not caused me to at least pause and reconsider something involved in the work I was doing with them, regardless of similarities with other client engagements. In those rare situations where we are lucky enough to become the trusted advisor, the lessons learned seem most enduring.¹ I have been blessed with more than my share of such clients and am compelled to pay tribute to the many professionals who were most instrumental in my personal development as their trusted strategy advisor. Respect for privacy and adherence to brevity requires that I not attempt to list all of these people. While some have since passed, most are still with us; suffice it to say that you know who you are. Please know that I cherished our time together and am forever grateful for the partnership that we shared and that you allowed me and my colleagues to share our counsel and advice. That our collective work helped your organization succeed in competing and growing while improving your ability to deliver quality health services more efficiently in the many cities where you operate throughout the United States is a legacy that will stay with me always.

I am also indebted to Andrew Baumann, editorial production manager at Health Administration Press, for squiring me through the completion of both books in this series—his steady hand has been much appreciated—and to Jennette McClain, acquisitions editor, who advised me regarding both volumes. I am particularly indebted to DeAnna Burghart for her professional editing support.

1   See chapters 12 and 13 in The Healthcare Consultant’s Handbook for a more detailed explanation of what is required to become a trusted advisor.

Introduction

THIS BOOK FOCUSES on making a career change from executive to consultant, which appears to be of interest to a growing number of experienced healthcare executives. For some, this will become their new career. Others may end up moving in and out of consulting over a few cycles. After all, career goals can change just as the healthcare industry is changing—through dynamic disruption. A career can take many paths.

Historically, consulting has been a road less traveled for people who are trained to manage healthcare organizations, but this is changing. When we begin selecting college courses and choosing between possible careers, we begin a journey that decides how we will spend a substantial part of our adult lives. The choice of a career is consequential. A career change is no less consequential, and can be stressful, yet since the 1990s it has become common to change careers at least once. As part of that historic shift, experienced executives are increasingly likely to consider a career change to full-time consulting.

It should be noted that consulting as used in this book refers to management consulting, which can include administrative, technical, and clinical interests in the context of management. Consulting is sometimes confused with outsourcing (e.g., IT or other technical operational services), which is not our focus. For our purposes, consultants make themselves available as independent contractors to complete discrete engagements for individual clients who hire them for advice that is both unbiased and cost-effective. Pure clinical consulting focused on individual patient care I leave to the clinicians.

Consultants make themselves available as independent contractors to complete discrete engagements for individual clients who hire them for advice that is both unbiased and cost-effective.

At the core of this discussion is the recognition that consulting does not come naturally to everyone. Conventional wisdom might be characterized as, Anyone can be a consultant. This is simply not true. Experience shows that consulting may fit better with certain personality traits, but even then, there is no guarantee of success.¹

For those who start out in consulting, acquiring the relevant skills becomes natural, especially when they work for one of the global or larger specialty consulting firms that have significant resources invested in their internal leadership development programs. As training and experience accumulate over the years, these consulting-specific skills become muscle memory.² The skill set of the midcareer or senior executive is generally different from what is required in consulting. There is some possible overlap, to be sure, but the roles are materially different. This role transition will represent a serious hurdle for some. It may even require some executives to do some unlearning.

For purposes of this discussion, this book assumes that the midcareer or senior executive has not previously been a consultant, though they may have hired and worked with many consultants. If your background includes consulting, then some of what is in this book (and in my previous book), while helpful, will be review for you.

At this juncture, one might question whether the reverse is true—whether professionals who start out as consultants can apply consulting skills in executive positions. Clearly they can, and there are many examples, reinforcing the value of experience gained as a consultant working with many different clients. Consulting is a great way to start a professional career, in healthcare and in other industries. The transferability of consulting skills was reinforced in a 2020 campaign by one of the well-known healthcare consulting firms, the Chartis Group, to celebrate their 20-year anniversary. The campaign web page (https://info.chartis.com/chartis-20) includes an Alumni Spotlight video featuring former consultants who had moved on to key executive positions in different healthcare organizations.

ORGANIZATION OF THIS BOOK

Regardless of the motivating factor for a career change, the thesis of this book is that it helps to make the change in an organized manner. As a strategist, I have used a technique I call Strategic Building Blocks to organize this pursuit. This simple but profound construct can be applied to virtually any issue that involves strategic content. Used with skill and experience, its sequential framework improves the discipline of the analysis and increases the likelihood of a sound decision on the back end. Simply stated, the sequence builds content by starting with why and progressing through what, how, when, and who.

It is essential to understand that there is a proper sequence to the Strategic Building Blocks approach. One does not attempt to address the how until the why is fully baked. If the why is not fully considered, the purpose of the inquiry tends to get lost. The more granular the analysis, given this flaw, the more likely it will suffer from goal displacement, where a starting goal is ignored in favor of a new one. Goal displacement can be diagnosed wherever the common refrain is, now why are we doing this again? When considering a career change, skipping the why and the what can easily result in a false conclusion that a career change is necessary, when all that may be required is to change positions or employers. This is a tragic error when it occurs, and I fear that it occurs often.

We can tell the why has been fully considered when many what options arise. Rarely is there just one option (what) in a strategic inquiry. Typically, each option has multiple alternatives (how). A thorough process requires that you identify and sort options to determine which ones surface as priorities for further consideration. Something important can usually be learned from considering each option, even if the lesson falls into the category of what not to do. Each option usually has certain favorable or unfavorable aspects; considering the whole group helps you determine which options stand out. Sometimes, the solution ends up being some combination of options. Further, it is imperative that the option selected is not only the best conceptually, but is also one that can reasonably be implemented (i.e., in terms of capacity, access to resources, competencies)—another fatal flaw in many strategic studies.

The Strategic Building Blocks approach becomes even more powerful when combined with key questions, which is how I have organized this book. Developing key questions is an important technique that I picked up when I first trained as a consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton (hereafter Booz Allen). It has stayed with me over the years and served me well, as has their unique writing style that translates easily into a cogent analytical construct. These skills provide an efficient and effective basis for approaching virtually any problem or challenge. The theory of key questions, like the 80/20 rule (also known as the Pareto principle), holds that spending more time up front on determining which of the many related questions are core to a given issue can save significant time and effort later by avoiding rabbit holes that are tangential or of no consequence.

Combining these two techniques sets up the Career Change Decision Framework, shown in exhibit 0.1. Icons from this framework are included at the top of each page to indicate the Strategic Building Block corresponding to that part of the book, to help you navigate. As previously mentioned, the process is sequential, so I encourage you to read the book from front to back.

Exhibit 0.1. The Career Change Decision Framework

A career change decision framework shows the key questions and the chapters.

How do we begin to answer these key questions? There are many potential sources of information on making a career change, not least of which is learning