Who Am I Without the Badge?: Turn the Quiet Crisis of a Career Into Your Next Move, and Help Someone Else Through Theirs

About this book

You were good at it. Maybe you still are. So why are you drafting a resignation in your head?Somewhere along the way the job stopped being something you do and became someone you are. Maybe you are a few months into a new role and already wondering if you made a mistake. Maybe you have been inside for years and feel the ground shifting as machines take over more of the work. Maybe you have already left, and the relief has turned into a grief nobody warned you about.This book is for all three of you. And it is for the colleague or friend you might help through it.Each chapter opens with one honest scene and gives you one tool, one move to make in the next 48 hours, and one way to help someone else facing the same thing. Inside:Voice Before Exit: the three conversations to have before the resignation letterThe Five Returns Test: a clear-headed way to decide whether one more year is worth itThe Badge Funeral: how to grieve your work self on purpose, so it stops ambushing youThe Judgment Stack: where your value moves when machines do more of the workA 30-day action plan and a one-page guide to helping someone through itWarm, candid and practical, Who Am I Without the Badge? is for anyone who has outgrown a title, or is about to, and is ready to act. Read more

About the Author

Theo Marlow spent many years inside large organisations. He was good at the work, proud of the title, and slower than he’d like to admit to notice when the two had come apart. Along the way he watched colleagues and friends in very different industries go through the same quiet crisis, often alone. After leaving on his own terms, he went back to studying, built a small tool of his own, and started writing down what actually helped. Who Am I Without the Badge? is the book he wished someone had handed him earlier. Theo Marlow is a pen name. He writes for anyone who has outgrown a title, or is about to.