Suzy Welch

Are you a generalist or a specialist?

And where you are on that continuum makes you better or worse at certain kind of work.

That's hardwired.

Are you a brainstormer, kind of a font of ideas, or are you an idea processor?

So there's pillars of cognitive wiring.

And you can certainly have work that you are not cognitively wired to do.

But man, it's harder.

I mean, if you're a specialist by wiring, you should be doing specialist work.

Well, the book is about understanding

your values, your aptitudes, what you're good at, and what the world needs right now, and figuring out what's at the intersection of three data sets.

I think the reason to read it is if you need a little guidance and tough love in a time where there's kind of a terrible perfect storm.

One is that the typical job paths for people are evaporating.

Any typical career path is changing as the work changes dramatically.

And the second thing that's happening is that there's just this gigantic values disconnect between what many people entering the job workforce at any age, what their values are given different cultural and societal things that are going on and the values that hiring managers are looking for.

Let's talk about what a B-plus life is.

So it's a job that we're in, and it sort of meets some of our needs, and it sort of gives us some chance for doing well.

And we can just hover there for a long, long time.

It's very easy to get used to B-plus.

And so the book says, let's just figure out exactly what your true values are.

I have data which suggested only 7% of Americans are sure what their values are.