Michelle Pratt | Co-Creation

The New Career Compass: Because the Ladder Isn’t There Anymore

Michelle Pratt — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The world of work is shifting fast. Traditional career planning—based on fixed roles, clear next steps and long-term certainty—is no longer fit for purpose.

Instead of relying on rigid career paths or role-based planning, future-fit careers are shaped by internal signals rather than external expectations. This means helping people with three things:

What’s needed now is a mindset shift: from mapping roles to developing people. From prescriptive plans to adaptable inner resources.

Curiosity – About Themselves

Not just curiosity about roles or opportunities, but a deeper curiosity about:

What drives you
What brings out your best
Where you want to go or simply, what feels like a good next step

In a world where careers don’t follow a fixed script, people need the space to explore:
“What does my career journey look like for me?”

This isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about creating the right questions—and giving people permission to ask them.

Agency – Learn How to Learn

When certainty disappears, the ability to adapt becomes a superpower.

Agency is about giving people the confidence and tools to take ownership of their development even without a clear destination. This includes:

Knowing how to learn (not just what to learn)
Being able to spot growth opportunities in day-to-day work
Making small, self-directed moves to build skills and confidence

The shift here is from waiting for formal development to noticing and acting on informal learning, in real time.

Resilience – Iteration, Not Straight Lines

Resilience isn’t just about bouncing back. It’s about learning from experience and applying that insight. Think of it as a growth loop:

Try → Reflect → Adapt → Try again

Make progress, not perfection.

This mindset helps people stay motivated and forward-moving, even when things don’t go to plan.

But let’s be honest—most organisations don’t create space for that kind of looped learning. Reflection gets squeezed out by deadlines. Adapting often feels risky. And trying again sometimes gets mistaken for failure.

Without the right mindset and permission, even motivated people can get stuck repeating the same patterns instead of growing through them.

What Does This Mean for Managers?

We don’t need them to be career experts. We need them to be career enablers.

This starts by creating space for meaningful conversations. Ones that focus less on “What role do you want next?” and more on:

What would you like more of in your day-to-day?
What are you learning about yourself lately?
Where do you want to grow next?

It also means shifting the narrative from planning to possibility. From mapping out certainty, to building direction, adaptability and confidence.

The role of the manager is no longer to give a roadmap. It’s to walk alongside, ask better questions, and open up options.

Many managers tell us they want to support career growth, but feel they’ll be ‘found out’ if they don’t have a clear path to offer. Others feel guilty for not having more time, more budget, or more senior sponsorship to offer their team real progression.

This can lead to surface-level conversations—or worse, none at all.

Quick Wins to Support Self-Directed Growth

Small actions build big momentum. Here are two easy ways to support development without waiting for the next big promotion or project:

Start with identity, not job title
Ask: “What kind of work feels like ‘you at your best’?”
It helps people focus on strengths, not roles.
Use ‘next experiment’ language
Instead of asking for a career plan, encourage people to think in experiments: “What would you like to try next?”

Reflection Prompt

What would shift in your culture if development wasn’t something people had to “wait for”—but something they were already equipped to do?

What’s Next: From Diagnosis to Direction

This blog builds on our earlier piece: “What If Career Development Isn’t Broken—Just Outdated?” which explored why traditional career models are no longer serving organisations or individuals, and why it’s time for a mindset shift around how we support growth.

If this resonates, or you’re rethinking career development in your context, please do get in touch—we’d be happy to co-create something that works for you.

At Co-Creation, we help HR, OD and L&D teams enable future-fit development through strengths-based coaching, manager capability, and adaptable tools.

Let’s build the mindset, language and habits that help your people grow, no matter what the future holds.

What If Career Development Isn’t Broken—Just Outdated?

Michelle Pratt — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

For decades, career development made sense. There was a ladder to climb, a five-year plan to follow, and a promotion waiting at the top.

But that world is no longer relevant, and yet many organisations are still using tools and thinking designed for a completely different landscape.

If career conversations feel stuck, uninspiring or superficial, the problem may not be your people; it may be the model you’re still asking them to follow.

Old Maps No Longer Work

The linear career path is fading. Structures are flatter. Roles are more fluid. AI, automation, and global shifts have brought more uncertainty — and with it, more ambiguity.
This uncertainty leaves people overwhelmed, unsure which skills to invest in, and unclear how to navigate their future within the organisation—especially in hybrid or fast-scaling environments.

People aren’t asking “How do I get promoted?”
They’re asking:

How do I grow when nothing feels certain?
How do I stay employable in a changing world?
How do I find meaning in what I’m doing now, not just what’s next?

Yet many managers are still expected to give answers they don’t have. Some are even nervous about having career conversations at all. They worry they’ll open a door they can’t walk someone through, or promise a future they can’t control.

And organisations continue to treat development as a reward for the few, rather than a tool for the many.

The result? Conversations are avoided altogether, leaving people to interpret silence as lack of interest.

This disconnect is fuelling disengagement, stagnation and short-term thinking. And it’s putting pressure on line managers to provide certainty where none exists.

Why This Matters for Managers and HR

Many managers feel stuck in the middle, tasked with developing their people but lacking the tools, time or confidence to do so.

At the same time, HR and L&D are being asked to modernise development strategies without a clear blueprint.

The result? Patchy support, missed opportunities and rising frustration.

If organisations want to retain and grow talent, they need to rethink what good career development looks like not just at the top, but at every level.

This means shifting from fixed ladders to flexible frameworks.
From rigid planning to real-time growth.
From top-down answers to enabling self-led insight.

Reflection Prompt

What would change if you gave people more permission to explore, rather than pressure to decide?

Quick Wins for Future-Fit Development

Here are two simple shifts to help managers and HR teams start changing the conversation:

Replace “Where do you want to be in 5 years?” with “What energises you right now?”
A small language shift that opens up possibilities, not pressure.
Introduce short, strengths-based check-ins
Encourage managers to regularly ask: “What’s working for you?” and “What would you like more of?”

These low-stakes prompts invite reflection without needing all the answers.

INTERESTED IN THIS TOPIC?

This blog is part of our Future-Fit People series. If you’re wondering what career development looks like in practice when there’s no clear ladder to climb, take a look at our next blog (19th August 2025): The New Career Compass: Because the Ladder Isn’t There Anymore.

It explores the inner capabilities people need now—curiosity, agency and resilience—and how managers can support growth without needing all the answers. If this is a topic you’re looking to explore in your own organisation, please do get in touch. We’d love to have that conversation.

At Co-Creation, we help organisations build modern, strengths-based approaches to career development that support agility, ownership and growth—without relying on old methods. Let’s co-create something that works for your people, your context and your future.

Beyond the Ladder: How Career Conversations Boost Wellbeing AND Performance

Michelle Pratt — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 06:47:00 +0000

We typically devote around 90,000 hours of our lives to work – that’s roughly one-third of our waking years. Those hours not only shape our career paths but also have a profound impact on our wellbeing, energy levels and sense of identity.

It’s time to rethink what career management really means. Rather than a tick-box HR exercise or simply a route to the next promotion, it’s one of the most overlooked drivers of wellbeing, engagement and sustainable performance.

Why Career Development is a Wellbeing Strategy

More and more, we hear from people who feel stuck. Not because they dislike their job, but because they can’t see a path forward. When people lack clarity, challenge or recognition, it affects their energy. Their engagement drops. They feel disconnected.

That’s why career development matters. When done well, it provides a sense of progress, purpose and ownership that supports emotional resilience and mental health.

Let’s explore how.

What Career Development Offers the Individual

Clarity & Direction When people know where they’re headed, it reduces anxiety and uncertainty. Career pathways act like a GPS—providing focus and helping individuals navigate choices with more confidence.
Motivation & Engagement Career conversations help people connect day-to-day effort with long-term aspirations. That sense of meaning fuels motivation and makes even challenging work feel worthwhile.
Skill Development Learning new skills boosts confidence and adaptability. In fast-changing environments, people feel better equipped and less overwhelmed when they’re learning and growing.
Confidence & Ownership Career management puts people in the driver’s seat. It shifts the mindset from waiting for promotion to actively exploring possibilities. That builds resilience and self-efficacy.
Job Satisfaction When people do work that aligns with their values and goals, they feel more fulfilled. That reduces burnout and increases long-term commitment.

A great example I saw recently comes from The Plan Group, featured in the article “Want to be Happy at Work? It’s All About Growth” (Telegraph, June 2025). Employees credited learning, development and purposeful work as key contributors to happiness, retention and energy at work.

What Career Development Offers the Organisation

Retention & Loyalty People stay where they feel they have a future. Career development reduces turnover and the stress (and cost) of constant recruitment.

Stronger Talent Pipeline Structured development allows internal talent to grow into future roles. It reduces reliance on external hiring and strengthens succession plans.

Better Performance People who see growth on the horizon are more likely to go the extra mile today. Development fuels both capability and discretionary effort.

Organisational Agility Future-ready skills help organisations pivot when market conditions shift. A growth culture enables faster, smoother adaptation.

Positive Culture When development is part of the employee experience, it signals trust and investment. That strengthens morale and team cohesion.

Bringing Development into the Wellbeing Conversation

If you’re looking to strengthen both engagement and resilience, you might want to explore how to make growth part of the wellbeing conversation.

Here are a few ideas to consider:

Could development goals be included in wellbeing check-ins and PDPs?
How might learning objectives support energy, purpose and confidence?
Are visible, flexible pathways available beyond traditional promotion?
Do managers feel equipped to hold future-focused career conversations?

The Bottom Line

Career development isn’t a standalone exercise but a vital contributor to wellbeing at individual, team and organisational levels. When people feel recognised, supported and able to grow, they become more resilient, more engaged and far likelier to stay. And when organisations invest in their people’s futures, they unlock stronger performance today.

Career development and wellbeing aren’t separate conversations, they are deeply connected. The real question is: are we treating them as such?

If you’re curious about how to connect career development and wellbeing more intentionally in your organisation, we’d love to explore that with you.

The Power of Small Experiments in Career Planning

Michelle Pratt — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 06:01:18 +0000

When we think about career planning, we often jump to the big things.

New job.
New title.
New direction entirely.

And yes, sometimes that’s exactly what’s needed.
But more often, it starts smaller.

The truth is, most career change doesn’t happen in one clean, confident leap.

It’s a series of nudges.
Of questions asked.
Of things tried sometimes quietly, sometimes clumsily, that build clarity over time.

And that’s why Tiny Experiments, a concept I came across in Anne-Laure Cunff’s book “Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World“, really resonated with me.

Instead of rigid goals or five-year plans, she invites us to commit to small actions. Experiments, not outcomes.
Then, reflect.
Learn.
Tweak.
And repeat.

A refreshing alternative to the high-stakes, high-pressure way we usually think about growth.

What does a career experiment look like?

An experiment doesn’t need to be strategic or impressive.
It just needs to be intentional.

It might look like:

Volunteering for a project outside your usual remit
Having a coffee chat with someone in a role you’re curious about
Trialling a new skill on a freelance platform
Spending 20 minutes a week writing about what energised (or drained) you at work
Offering to lead a meeting or run a short workshop, just once, to see how it feels

None of these requires a career change.
But each of them offers a signal.

They tell you:

This gave me energy.
That felt heavy.
I want more of this.
That’s not for me.

And sometimes, that’s exactly the information we need to move forward with confidence.

The mindset shift: from strategy to curiosity

Career development doesn’t need to be linear.
In fact, it rarely is.

What we need more of, especially in fast-paced, ever-changing organisations, is space to explore.
To be allowed to not know yet.

And that’s what small experiments offer us.
Permission to learn, instead of perform.
To try things out, instead of committing immediately.
To hold our next step lightly, rather than grip it tightly.

It’s also a gift we can offer others.

As leaders and managers, one of the most impactful things we can do is create room for our teams to run their own small experiments. To back them as they grow, not just when they’ve arrived.

Why this matters now

At Co-Creation, we’ve seen time and again how powerful these micro-tests can be.

They build confidence.
Reduce fear.
Create visibility.
And slowly but surely, they help people shape careers that feel like a good fit—not just on paper, but in real life.

They’re also a key tool in navigating the uncertainty many of us feel in the current world of work. With AI reshaping roles, hybrid working changing visibility, and wellbeing increasingly interwoven with career satisfaction, linear pathways just don’t make sense for everyone anymore.

But experiments?

Experiments work in uncertainty.
They thrive in ambiguity.
They give us something solid to build from, one small step at a time.

So if you’re feeling stuck, stalled or unsure where your next move might be—

Maybe you don’t need a grand plan.

Maybe all you need…
is a tiny experiment.

And if you’re leading others?
Creating the space for small steps like these might just be one of the most powerful things you can do to support growth—yours and theirs.

At Co-Creation, we’ve seen what happens when people feel safe to explore.

They become more confident.
More curious.
More ready for what’s next, even if they don’t know exactly what that is yet.

Because careers aren’t built overnight.
They’re shaped, slowly, by what we choose to try.

If you’re looking to build a culture where career growth feels less like a leap and more like a series of supported steps—we’d love to help you explore what that could look like in your world. Please contact us to arrange a chat. Call: 0161 969 2512, or email: info@Co-Creation.Group.

Co-Creation Blog : Why do we leave best practice at the door when we facilitate virtually?

Michelle Pratt — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 10:51:46 +0000

What are the first things you do when you walk into a physical classroom as a facilitator or speaker?

If you are like most seasoned facilitators, you move the furniture about. Why? Because you know that you need to create the right environment to get the participation you want.

When you want your group to talk to each other, you move the chairs and tables into a horseshoe or board room arrangement.
When you want to remove barriers to personal connection, you move physical obstacles such as tables or lecterns.
You adjust the light, the temperature and you carefully decide where resources are placed, to facilitate the interaction you want.

This extends to your facilitation too.

When you want people to listen to your directions, you move TVs out of your audience’s eyeline, and you blank out any screens. You stand centre stage.
When you want the group to speak to each other instead of you, you step aside or sit down among the group, so they focus on each other.
When you want people to focus on the slides, you step out of the way and bring the TV/screen to the centre.

What you probably do not do, is have eyes on the screen, you, workshop materials and every other participant at the same time. Why? Because you know that attention will be split, and your participants will have to work that much harder to follow the session.

So why do we do exactly that when we facilitate a group session online?

Think about how most people conduct meetings on Zoom.

We have slides onscreen, the speaker’s video is pinned, participants are typing in chat, and everyone can see every other participant on the call and themselves, all at the same time.

We split attention and we unintentionally make our audience work incredibly hard. You would never ask your audience to focus on all these things at once face to face.

When we communicate online, we quickly pick up on a problem. We can’t see people’s faces and read their body language. So, we get people to turn their videos on and then we can see their faces and read their body language. Problem solved right? Well, not really. Here is why:

Being on a video call requires more focus than a face-to-face chat. Video conversations mean we need to work harder to process non-verbal cues like facial expressions, tone and pitch of the voice, and body language. Paying more attention to these consumes a lot of energy. This makes your audience work harder and leaves less focus for your message.
Cognitive dissonance. Our minds are together when our bodies are not. That dissonance causes people to have conflicting feelings and processing this can feel exhausting over time.
Silence is another challenge. Silence creates a natural rhythm in a real-life conversation but experiencing silence on a video call is less comfortable. It also changes our perception of the speaker. A 2014 study by German academics showed that delays on phone or conferencing systems shaped our views of people negatively: even delays of 1.2 seconds made people perceive the responder as less friendly or focused.
When our cameras are on we are very aware of being watched. When you are on a video conference, you feel like everyone is looking at you. You feel like you are on stage and with this comes social pressure and feeling like you need to perform. Feeling like you are on stage is nerve-wracking and stressful. It is also extremely hard for people not to look at their own face if they can see it on screen, or not to be conscious of how they behave in front of the camera. This means that the very strategy we created to read body language and understand moods (turning on videos), decreases the chances of us being able to understand our audiences’ true feelings.

You may have noticed that is harder to get people to turn their cameras on in meetings these days. At Co-Creation, we actively invite people to leave their camera off if they aren’t speaking. And to be honest, we feel the camera fatigue sometimes too.

So what can we do?

Approach an online session more like a face to face one.

While not every process directly translates to the online world, we are usually trying to achieve the same things; connection, engagement, team bonding etc We just need to be flexible in the way we achieve these.

Over the last year or so we have seen our clients adopt some brilliantly inventive ways of checking in with how people are feeling, and we have witnessed some really clever approaches to collaboration and facilitating change. Many of these are not reliant on using cameras, or at least, these exercises shift focus to objects, pictures or activities rather than causing people to feel ‘onstage’.

Ask yourself: what kind of interaction does the session need?

Just because you can use a product feature, it doesn’t mean you should. Most people follow the technology, but when we think about the quality of the interaction we want to create, we make the technology work for us.

Be clear on where you want people to focus.

If it’s on some fantastic content, invite others to switch their cameras off and switch yours off too.
If you want them to focus on a story you are telling, spotlight your camera and remove everything else from view.
If you want group interaction, ask for their cameras to be on and ask people to switch to gallery view for group discussions only. I find this leads to better participation.
Give clear direction on how features should be used. A lot of the leading software tools allow participants to choose their own set up, meaning that audience members are potentially looking at different things. Of course, this makes it harder to create a shared experience. You may have to clearly signpost which view is best for particular activities.

What about you?

What steps have you introduced to facilitate a good learning and sharing environment?

How have you made technology work for your team?

Call Co-Creation on +44 7876 024555 to speak with a member of our specialist team or email us for further guidance on how to manage change using a strengths-based approach on info@co-creation.group

How to Turn Learning New Ideas into Action!

Michelle Pratt — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 09:11:42 +0000

How to Turn Learning New Ideas into Action!

You’ve recognised the need to adapt to changes in your industry and you’ve decided to implement your own change programme in response.

Like many organisations, perhaps you’ve created or bought in some training to allow you to pivot and prepare your people for your new reality. For most organisations it is imperative to adapt quickly.

But how can you be sure that training new skills will translate into new behaviours? How can you overcome the ‘rubber band effect’, or the tendency to snap back into old ways when the pressure is off?

At a time when many are feeling overwhelmed with new information, here are 4 things you can do to help your people turn learning new ideas into action:

A Compelling Reason

Before even contemplating training your people on the what and the how of your change, establish a compelling reason to learn in the first place.

This is not the organisation’s ‘why’, but a deeply personal emotional connection to the need to learn for each individual. In order for people to commit their time and energy into learning, it needs to be of consequence.

We need to know that it will either:

Solve a pressing problem we want to get away from
Help us seize an attractive opportunity that takes us closer to what we really want

Put simply, if undertaking learning removes a painful problem and helps us achieve our individual desires, why wouldn’t we use it?

A Sense of Urgency

Not only do we need to appreciate why we should engage with learning, but we also need to understand why we should learn NOW. Even when we have a compelling reason, we need a sense of urgency or we will not act.

I know that learning some useful phrases a few weeks before going on holiday abroad will make the holiday easier. I also really enjoy learning languages. Guess when I learn them?

Yes that’s right, on the plane!!!! There’s genuine pain in not doing this and I get real joy from it too – but it never becomes a priority until I am onboard that flight.

The Right Amount of Uncomfortable

There is a problem with educating yourself with TED talks. They create false confidence. The passive experience of watching a video lecture leaves us with the illusion that we have learnt a great deal but when we try to use our new insights, we find they haven’t stuck as we expected.

For learning to stick, it needs to have ‘desirable difficulty’. We need to be challenged enough that we have to grasp for the answers for a while. As long as we are able to come up with a solution, the discomfort of problem-solving results in more engrained, useable learning.

Make it Real

The more you can reduce the distance between the learning environment and the performance environment, the greater the chance that learning will be turned in to behavioural change.

The simplest way to achieve this is to get people to learn by doing. Take the old approach of learning a skill and applying it afterwards and then reverse it.

Try your hand at the new skill then learn to improve your performance. I’ve heard of people moving to a new country having none of the language. They try speaking with people first and add in the grammar and vocabulary learning as they need it. They learn much quicker and more of the learning sticks.

What if that isn’t possible?

Of course, pilots don’t try their hand at commercial flights before passing their assessments! I wouldn’t fancy being on such a flight no matter how reasonable the fare was. However, they do learn in an environment that is as close to the performance environment as possible. There is also the example of divers who revise for exams using flash cards kept on the sea bed. Not only does this deepen the learning and increase recall of information, it also reminds them of the compelling reason and urgency mentioned earlier.

The simulation doesn’t need to be exact, just close enough.

Smooth the Transition

To turn training for a change initiative into action, people need to want to learn first and foremost and then they need to know how to apply that learning.

Once you have ignited the motivation to learn, make applying the learning as easy and straight forward as possible. With both the desire to change behaviour and a clear idea of how to do it, the transition from learning to doing will be easier and quicker.

If you’d like to learn more about this or other Organisational Development topics, call Co-Creation on +44 7876 024555 to speak with a member of our specialist team, or email us for further information – info@co-creation.group