Superconductors: Revolutionize your Career and Make Big Things Happen, reviewed

By @SimonCocking review of Superconductors: Revolutionize your Career and Make Big Things Happen by Derek Loudermilk is published on 3 July 2018 by Kogan Page, priced £14.99. or from Amazon here.

The steady career path is a thing of the past: disruption is here to stay. You need to be able to keep learning, growing and reinventing yourself to stay valuable in the midst of this change. Those who succeed in this new world will be the ones who have skills that are always in demand and cannot be replaced. Creativity, charisma, confidence, constant learning, storytelling, adaptability and tribe building are the keys to having a thriving professional life and turning ideas into reality. Superconductors is your treasure trove of exclusive interviews and hands-on self-development exercises to inspire you and push you into action. Derek Loudermilk brings together some of the best minds to coach you on every skill, including entrepreneurs, podcasters, venture capitalist experts, human behaviour hackers, journalists and digital storytellers. 

This book does aim to tap into the current zeitgeist of our changing working habits, methods of work, and ways of working. With the rise of youtubers, vloggers, bloggers, niche specific subject experts and the like it can make for uncomfortable times for those in more mainstream roles and organisations as they attempt to navigate an uncertain future. Is a writer for a traditional newspaper more ‘legitimate’  and professional than someone who has reached a position of influence and authority based on their passion, energy and application? Ideally whoever has the most relevant and insightful opinions are those worth listening to?

This book is a spirited and enjoyable attempt to get its teeth into these questions and current challenges for many of us, and in fact everyone who is looking to future proof their career and future working environment. This book as a fun attempt to engage with these issues, at times it seemed to be a companion piece to Jenny Blake’s Pivot and she is an explicit point of reference in this book too. We enjoyed reading it, and it covers a wide range of strategic areas to consider and aim to engage with or tweak to enhance your own prospects. Loudermilk is specifically interested in travelling while he works, aiming to work and live in a diverse variety of countries, cultures and continents. This never seems like a bad idea as you can only learn from actually spend time in diverse locations – again something not always on offer to those journalists based in one location, for one newspaper, covering one topic. If you’re looking to freshen up your own future of work then probably no harm to give this book a look.

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