After a couple of weeks away in Norway and the Nordics, I came back with a renewed sense of perspective on the work I want to keep building. There is something about being in nature, especially somewhere as expansive as Norway, that changes the scale of your thinking. The landscape creates distance from the everyday.…
Few sustainability professionals work in environments that perfectly reflect their personal values. This is not necessarily because organisations lack ambition or commitment. More often, it reflects the reality that sustainability exists within complex systems where commercial priorities, regulatory requirements, stakeholder expectations, operational realities, and competing interests must continually be balanced. What I have found interesting…
9 min read • Career Transitions • Reflection 7 One of the assumptions we often make about professional development is that becoming better at our work largely means becoming more knowledgeable. We invest years building expertise, mastering increasingly complex subjects, and developing the technical capabilities that allow us to solve difficult problems. Expertise earns credibility,…
9 min read • Career Transitions • Reflection 6 One of the themes that has surfaced repeatedly in my conversations with sustainability professionals has very little to do with workload, technical expertise, or the pace of regulatory change. Instead, it concerns something that many people find surprisingly difficult to put into words. These are not…
10 min read • Career Transitions • Reflection 5 One of the more surprising conversations I’ve had over the past few years has been with people who tell me they feel as though their career has reached a plateau. What makes those conversations particularly interesting is that, from the outside, there is often very little…
9 min read • Career Transitions • Reflection 4 Career transitions rarely begin with a decision. More often, they begin with a possibility that quietly captures our attention long before we understand why. The idea may first emerge while listening to a podcast, attending a conference, mentoring a colleague, or talking to someone whose work…
10 min read • Career Transitions • Reflection 3 When we think about career transitions, we tend to focus on visible changes. A new role, a promotion, moving into leadership, or joining a different organisation all signal that something has changed. They are the milestones that appear on a CV, making it easy to assume…
8 min read • Career Transitions • Reflection 2 At certain points in a sustainability career, the question is no longer whether the work matters. It becomes whether the contribution we’re making still feels meaningful to us. Many sustainability professionals choose this profession because they want their work to contribute to something they genuinely care…
One thing I’ve noticed over the past months is that a lot of people are curious about coaching, but at the same time slightly hesitant about it. And honestly, that makes sense. Coaching is one of those things many people have heard about, but far fewer people have actually experienced. So people often try to…
One thing I’ve noticed repeatedly in leadership and transition work is that insight does not automatically create movement. People can clearly recognize that something is no longer working: And still find themselves unable to move forward. Not because they lack intelligence, ambition, or self-awareness, but because transitions rarely happen only at a rational level. Often,…