Drawing out the implications

David considers storyboarding - {click for original post}

What’s in a word (or several)?

I would like to thank Lorna Dargan from Newcastle University for contributing this guest posting. — David.

You are constructed of words

I was thinking recently about how my clients conceptualise their careers, and it reminded me of some work I did in my last job as an urban policy researcher (bear with me, there is a link in there somewhere). In my research I used a theoretical approach called ‘discourse analysis’. It occurred to me that I’ve been tentatively using it in guidance sessions, and I was wondering whether I could take it further.

Escape velocity

Just waiting for the right moment...

A recent survey of over 4,000 UK employees conducted by GfK NOP found that one in four were planning to leave their organisation within the next year.

The survey suggests these intentions are linked to the actions taken by the employers dealing with the effects of the recession. Continuing measures such as redundancies, recruitment freezes, pay freezes and restrictions on training have led to reduced morale and diminished job satisfaction.

In the public sector almost 40% of employees reported that morale was worse than the previous year.

Throughout the recession a lot of attention has been paid to the obvious victims — those who have suffered redundancy and job loss — but what about the survivors, the ones who have kept their jobs but may have suffered in other ways?

Anticipation versus consummation

If you dream it will be plain sailing, you may never set off

In a recent post (What might have been), I discussed a way of looking back to the past called counterfactual thinking. In this post, I would like to start exploring the ways in which we look forward into the future and some of the pitfalls involved in that activity.

Being able to speculate about and imagine the future is an essential part of decision making and it should be an area of interest for anyone involved in supporting other people to make decisions.

However, the way we go about that speculation may have a profound impact on our ability to bring that future into existence.