HBR Career Resilience and the Name, Frame, Extend Framework

Harvard Business Review published a timely piece by Daisy Auger-Domínguez in March called "How to Build Career Resilience in Uncertain Times." The timing couldn't be better—we're living through what many are calling the most unpredictable job market in decades.

The HBR framework validates a crucial insight: career resilience isn't about having all the answers. It's about building the right practices before you need them.

Let me break down the article, and then show how Name, Frame, Extend plugs into their bigger picture.

The HBR Career Resilience Framework

Harvard's research identifies four core components of career resilience:

1. Identifying Your Non-Negotiables: What matters most to you professionally? What are you unwilling to compromise on?

2. Building Adaptability and Agility: Developing the ability to pivot and learn quickly when circumstances change.

3. Deepening Relationships: Strengthening your professional network and support systems.

4. Creating Your Next Best Option: Always having a sense of what you could do if your current situation changed.

It's a solid framework. But here's what's notable: three of these four components require you to have clarity about your own capabilities and value proposition. And that's exactly where many professionals get stuck.

Where People Actually Struggle

Mid-career professionals often read articles like this HBR piece and think, "Great advice, but how do I actually do this?"

"Identify your non-negotiables" assumes you have clear insight into what you value and why.

"Build adaptability" sounds wonderful until you're asked to demonstrate how your skills transfer to new situations.

"Create your next best option" requires being able to envision yourself contributing value somewhere else.

These are all skills-awareness issues masquerading as strategy problems.

How NFE Creates the Foundation

This is where Name, Frame, Extend becomes the practical implementation of HBR's bigger vision. Think of NFE as the daily practice that makes their strategic framework actionable.

For Identifying Non-Negotiables

When you regularly practice naming the skills that energize you and framing why they matter to you personally, patterns emerge.

You start noticing:

• Which problems you're drawn to solve

• What type of value creation feels most meaningful

• Which work environments bring out your best capabilities

• 
  

Your non-negotiables aren't abstract values—they're rooted in real evidence of what works for you.

For Building Adaptability and Agility

The "Extend" step is pure adaptability training. Every week, you're asking: "Where else could I apply this skill? How could this capability serve different contexts?"

You're literally practicing the mental flexibility that adaptability requires. Instead of seeing your abilities as fixed and context-specific, you're training yourself to see transferable applications.

For Creating Your Next Best Option

This might be where NFE and the HBR framework connect most powerfully. When you consistently practice extending your skills into new contexts, you're not just building awareness—you're building genuine confidence in your ability to contribute value elsewhere.

Your "next best option" isn't a vague backup plan. It's a concrete understanding of how your demonstrated capabilities could solve problems in different environments.

The Daily Practice That Powers Strategic Thinking

Here's the key connection between these approaches: HBR gives you the strategic framework for career resilience, and NFE gives you the daily practice that makes it real. The HBR framework provides strategic gold. But strategy without systems is just sophisticated wishful thinking.

If you read that HBR piece and thought "this makes sense, but where do I start," consider this: career resilience is built through small, consistent practices. That's where Name, Frame, Extend comes in.

Start with ten minutes a week noticing, articulating, and expanding your thinking about your capabilities. The strategic clarity Harvard talks about will emerge from that foundation of self-awareness.

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