Herminia Ibarra

Today I get to share something I've been looking forward to for a long time: the cover of my new book, The Bonus Years: Reinventing Our Longer Work Lives.

When the design team asked me what I had in mind for the cover, I wasn't sure how to answer. But I kept thinking about a Matisse exhibition I saw at the Grand Palais in Paris this year.

What struck me was that many of the works we most associate with Matisse today were created late in life, after illness left him unable to stand at an easel. Working from a wheelchair, he developed the cut-outs that transformed modern art.
 
The cover designers somehow captured something of that spirit. I love the sense of growth and flourishing in the image—the vibrant colours, the leaves reaching beyond the page, the feeling that life continues to unfold in unexpected ways.

That's what this book is about.

As longer lives, transforming organizations, and new technologies reshape our futures, more and more people are finding themselves asking: What's next for me? How do I reinvent myself? What does meaningful work look like now?

I've spent the last several years exploring those questions with remarkable people who are creating new chapters in their 50s, 60s, and beyond.

I'm delighted to finally share the cover with you.

More to come soon.

Some news I'm delighted to share.

Lynda Gratton and I will be serving as Academic Co-Directors of the newly established SARI Foundation Institute for Work, Careers and Longevity at London Business School

For me, this is unique opportunity to build on a lifetime of work devoted to understanding how people navigate careers, leadership, identity, and transitions. As increasing longevity, changing organizations, and new technologies tranform our working lives, these questions feel more urgent than ever. I am excited by the prospect of helping advance the ideas and conversations that will shape the future of work and careers.

I am especially thrilled to be doing this with Lynda—a close friend, trusted colleague, and one of the most creative and influential thinkers I know. In many ways, the institute brings together the questions Lynda and I have each been pursuing from different angles throughout our careers. Now we have the opportunity to build something together.

We are enormously grateful to the generous donor whose vision and support have made the institute possible.

Stay posted. We'll be up and running in September.

The bookshelf behind me at home, the one that appears in my podcasts and webinars, has been a constant source of curiosity. Some viewers zoom in to see what's there. Mostly, they are surprised by the mix.

A few years ago, when I had professional photos taken, the photographer insisted that I tidy it up. That lasted about a week.

I try to keep the sections organized: fiction, social science, leadership, business, art. But books have a habit of migrating. The more I pull them out, lend them, revisit them, and add new ones, the more they get mixed together.

I've come to think that's not a bad thing.

Most good ideas come from intersections rather from inside the categories.

Although in the mad rush to finish my new book, I discovered just how impractical a cultivated mess can be when you need to pin down exact quotes for a bibliography.

Still, there is some method to it.

I have most of my books on transition, identity, careers, and adult development at home, because here is where I write. During my ten years on the Financial Times Business Book of the Year jury, fifteen books arrived at my door every summer. I’ve kept my favorites, including Empire of Pain and Bad Blood.

I also read a lot of fiction. I suspect that's how I learned to write. I spend a lot of time with art books because contemporary art is one of my consuming passions.

My family and I immigrated from Cuba to the US when I was seven, with only a small suitcase. I was allowed to take a couple of favorite books. They included The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and a book of stories from all over the world compiled by our national hero, José Martí. I always keep those books near.

While writing The Bonus Years, I realized how many of the ideas that found their way into the manuscript came from reading outside my discipline.

Chinua Achebe helped me think about what happens when the structures that once gave our lives meaning begin to crumble. Edward Said's reflections on late style shaped my thinking about creativity and originality in later life. E.L. Doctorow's observation that writing a novel is like "driving a car at night—you can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way" became a perfect metaphor for navigating major life transitions.

So, at least for now, I’m reconciled to my love of bookshelves that never stay organized for very long.

Today I’m teaching the first day of our Senior Executive Programme at London Business School. The topic: taking charge and leading change as a CEO or top team member.

And, conveniently, I got a live case study over breakfast.

Earlier this morning I was on Monocle Radio talking about John Ternus stepping into his new role as Apple CEO and I was asked for my “Top 5 tips for a new CEO stepping into the boardroom.”

So here they are:

1. Know why you were picked — but don’t let it define you. Ternus is a hardware guy who has spent his career turning new technologies into products. In choosing him, the board is be signalling renewed emphasis on product and technological innovation. He’s there to help Apple make a more convincing case for its technological direction, especially in AI.

But the expertise that gets you the CEO job can also become a liability once you're in it. A functional expert moving into the top role has to resists the temptation to see everything through the lens of their discipline and quickly learn to integrate across technology, talent, geopolitics, regulation, customers and capital markets.

2. Convey a clear diagnosis of what to preserve and what to change.
Following in the footsteps of a highly successful predecessor, you’re kind of in a bind. You’re there to do something different but what came before was pretty great. So, Ternus needs to be asking: What must remain true for Apple to remain Apple, and what must change for it to thrive in the next era? He has to preserve the soul of the company while changing any habits that might be holding it back.

3. Build your own inner circle.
Your power as CEO comes partly from the team around you and the team around you is a reflection of what you stand for. Surround yourself with people who bring perspectives you don’t have, who will challenge you honestly, and who signal what you stand for.

4. Balance listening with action to maximise learning in the early days.
New leaders need to listen, even when they have spent almost their entire career in a company, but they also learn by doing.

Pick a few things to act on early — problems to solve, decisions that have been waiting, or priorities to clarify. You’ll get some quick wins, but just as importantly, they show you and what you need to learn next.

5. Lead from your own strengths and style.Don’t try to become a more charismatic version of your predecessor or to fit anyone else’s mould. Figure out what is distinctive about you that the organisation now needs, and make it visible.

Now, let’s see what my Senior Executives make of the advice…

Back London Business School for my Women in Leadership executive program, one of two courses that I kept during my sabbatical year because it means so much to me intellectually, and as an educator.

We kick off today with Act Like a Leader,Think Like a Leader, the banana story and the infamous “what got you here, won’t get you there” conundrum.

I've noticed that my posts about the messy middle of transition consistently get more comment than almost anything else I write.

Perhaps that's because so many of us are living through two transitional periods at once.

The first is personal. More people are rethinking careers, identities, and what they want from the decades ahead.

The second is collective. AI is reshaping professions, organizations, and industries at a quickening pace.

In both cases, the hardest part isn't change itself. It's uncertainty. We know the old way is ending. We don't yet know what will replace it.

Anthropologists call this liminality: being betwixt and between. A state where the old identity or role is ending, but the new has not yet fully emerged.

Thomas Kuhn described something similar in scientific revolutions. Before a new paradigm takes hold, the old one begins to break down, anomalies accumulate, and uncertainty grows. For a while, competing possibilities coexist and nobody knows which one will prevail.

The temptation is to treat uncertainty as a problem to eliminate. 
Yet uncertainty is also what makes transformation possible.

The old rules lose their grip. We enter what I’ve called the "liminal playground," where we can experiment with possible selves that once seemed unrealistic or out of character. A time when we delay commitment to any single course of action in order to explore divergently.

This is why the messy middle is not just something to endure. It is a space to play with possible futures before choosing one.

The challenge is to make good use of the freedom it creates.

One of the unexpected side effects of writing a book about reinvention is that you start seeing its themes everywhere.

Not just in my research interviews or in academic studies. But in art, in novels, in conversations with friends. And, somewhat unexpectedly, on my Peloton bike.

One of my favorite instructors is Robin Arzón. Partly because like me, she's Cuban (well, actually half Puerto Rican and half Cuban) and working out with her gives me a dose of Latina kinship. Partly it’s because she’s irreverent and sassy, and I love her music. But mostly because she talks constantly about personal growth and reinvention.

Robin is known today as a fitness entrepreneur and Peloton superstar. But she started her career as a lawyer. Along the way, she has reinvented herself multiple times, and she often talks about the discipline, discomfort, uncertainty, and experimentation that accompany personal change.

She never talks about reinvention as a big dramatic leap. Instead, she talks about showing up. Doing the work. Training for the self you want to become. Making the identy shift. Getting through the messy middle. Taking the next step. Becoming through repeated action.

That resonates deeply with what I've found in my own research. People often imagine that career transitions begin with a moment of clarity. We discover our purpose, formulate a plan, and then execute it.

In reality, most reinventions don't work that way.

More often, we try things. We learn. We adapt. We become interested in things we hadn't anticipated. We gradually construct a new version of ourselves through a series of experiments and experiences.

In that sense, becoming a leader, changing careers, starting a company, becoming a parent, recovering from a setback, or reinventing yourself in midlife -- all seemingly different experiences -- have a lot in common.

The destination may be different, but the “acting your way into a new way of being” process is remarkably similar.

Perhaps that's why these principles keep showing up in the most unexpected places. Even on the stationary bike in my family room.

No one reinvents themselves in a vacuum. Your significant others have a stake in what you leave behind and move toward. In many ways, explicitly or implicitly, you've already negotiated a deal with those people about who you are and what role you play in your family and community.


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#CareerChange #CareerReinvention #WorkingIdentity #MidCareer #CareerTransition #Leadership #HBR