Kathryn Bishop - Make your own map : career success strategy for women

Make Your Own Map is an absolute gift to yourself, to your best friends, to your mentees. It is the guide Ive being searching for when trying to help others define their journey and their destination. Kathryn Bishops application of corporate strategy at an individual level not only facilitates an effective, adaptable and practicable strategy for you, it also details the real-world implementation and experimentation necessary to realise your strategic purpose. Applicable to all, but mindful of the particular workhome challenges women may face during the evolution of their career, this is a guide to read with relish and revisit!

DR KATHERINE LEIVESLEY, MANAGING COUNSEL, KINGFISHER PLC

Wonderfully practical and easy to read I wish I had had this book when I made a fairly radical transition from one career into another, and Im glad to have it now. The book is elegantly structured and the different stages introduced with great clarity, alongside carefully curated case studies to aid understanding. Kathryn Bishops many years experience gives her a calm and authoritative voice to guide the reader through the many and various models and ideas that help define purpose and success and lead towards real-world solutions. This is a book for busy women who crave focus and strategic insight in order to plan ahead definitely one for the knapsack as you navigate your way through your (working) life.

PHYLLIDA HANCOCK, SENIOR PROGRAMME DIRECTOR, OLIVIER MYTHODRAMA, AND FREELANCE FACILITATOR AND COACH

Whether you are lost, having to re-route because of an obstacle or just checking you are on the right path to reach your destination, everyone needs a map. This book is packed with clear guidance, useful exercises and thought-provoking case studies which are particularly designed for women managing their busy lives and juggling the multiple demands on their time.

JAN CAMERON, CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSIONER

Not only has the content in this book been life changing for me, but I have led multiple clients through the exercises that Kathryn Bishop teaches in this book and each one has found them immensely helpful. For any person who finds themselves at a bit of a crossroads professionally, the context, teachings and case studies in this text have the ability to help you get unstuck and move from the passenger side to the drivers seat of your life. This is a must read for any woman looking to intentionally uplevel their career.

AMY YOUNG, FOUNDER AND CEO, REDEFINE POSSIBILITY, HEAD OF COACHING AND ENTERPRISE, SWAYWORKPLACE, CERTIFIED CAREER COACH AND FORMER HEAD OF GLOBAL PARTNERSHIPS, GOOGLE

What a fantastic guide to plotting and navigating your career. Straightforward, easy to follow, and just the right mix of the strategic and the tactical. As our working lives get longer and many of us will have more than one career, this guide will help (any/every) woman plot her course. Having a career map will ensure that no matter the detour, one will always know that a temporary setback is not a dead-end, and be able to navigate a way through and continue on the path to ones goals. Thats a very powerful thing to be able to do. The examples of other womens journeys in the book are inspirational and make it real.

SARAH LAESSIG, PORTFOLIO NON-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

A gamechanger! Practical, easy-to-follow, and 100% customizable to where I was in my life. This book will help any woman navigate the next steps in her career with clarity and focus. Kathryn Bishop understands the many roles that women juggle and why they need a book just for them. Her advice is based on years of research and practical experience coaching women on their careers. You can apply corporate strategy techniques to your life and ambitions, and this book shows you how.

ROBYN TINGLEY, CEO, GLASSSKY INC

Create your own map is a companion style of book for women wanting to chart their career path. I can imagine in years to come hundreds of women with tatty worn copies in handbags everywhere, like a trusted friend, as the book is used repeatedly to refresh, remind and re-discover fantastic tools that helped them map their personal success story. It has helped me and I have relished reading it.

HAYLEY MONKS, DIRECTOR, THINK INSPIRE & CREATE LTD

This book is simply refreshing with practical frameworks and models to assist you to navigate the different phases in your career. This process will ensure you come to a resolution about what success looks like for you and the steps that you need to take to get there. I found the book provided examples so that you dont feel alone in this balancing act of life. This book will certainly be a go to for me and having Kathryn explaining the process is like listening to your best friend.

DERINDA BROWN, DIRECTOR, MASTERCARD, ASIA PACIFIC

Kathryn Bishop is a tour de force and learning from her and her experience is a privilege. She brings real-life perspectives to her teaching and I have found her to be relevant, balanced and empathetic to all points of view while helping to shape the individual story and actions. Her book carries the same trademark. Teacher, mentor, friend, colleague and coach all wrapped into one for the best advice and practical strategies for YOU!

JHUMAR JOHNSON, DIRECTOR, VICE CHANCELLORS OFFICE, THE OPEN UNIVERSITY

For all the women I have worked with in organizations, in lecture theatres and in coaching sessions, with the hope that this book will be useful to them.
And for my mother, a woman who worked throughout her life and supported me through mine.

Kathryn Bishop is an Associate Fellow at the Sad Business School, University of Oxford, where she has taught strategy development to organizations and individuals for over 20 years. She is the Programme Director for Oxford Universitys leadership programme for women, Women Transforming Leadership, and has worked with women from all over the world as they make their career and development plans. In her teaching and in this book, Kathryn draws on 35 years of experience in working with organizations undergoing major change, in both the public and the private sectors and with individuals leading those changes. Her background includes IT and HR and she has worked as a line director and manager, a project manager, a consultant and a non-executive director in both the private and public sectors.

We know from our research in Oxford, examining the factors that shape womens leadership journeys and transitions, that womens working lives take many different directions. They are often both propelled and constrained by organizational and cultural changes. This gives women a particular navigation challenge as they seek to carve out meaningful roles in increasingly uncertain contexts. The ideas and exercises offered in this book will really help in dealing with this.

Over the last eight years, Kathryn has developed the ideas in this book and taught them on our programmes at Oxford, both residential and online, working with male and female leaders from all over the world. She has built up a remarkable evidence base of what helps leaders to have impact and deal with transitions in their roles. I have had the privilege of working with her, and I have seen that women who use these ideas and do the exercises find them transformational, helping them to think differently about their working life so far and their future plans.