Author: LINDA PRINZ

Over the past weeks, I completed the University of Pennsylvania’s Achieving Personal and Professional Success specialization on Coursera—four courses taught by Wharton professors Richard Shell, Maurice Schweitzer and Cade Massey. The course forces you to zoom out, define what success actually means for you, and then zoom back in to the practical tools you need to reach it.

The specialization covers everything from personality and values to communication, influence, teamwork and goal-setting. It’s less about polished organisational theory and more about the personal mechanisms behind effectiveness. Who is successful in your point of view? Who influences you in what way? What are your future goals?.

One of the most interesting parts for me was the self-assessment work. You spend time identifying your strengths, blind spots, motivations and patterns. It helped me articulate my own definition of success more clearly than I ever had before.

Here’s an excerpt from one of my submissions, which captures the core of it:

“For me, success isn’t a podium or a medal, but a lever: the measurable, lasting positive impact my work has on the world.”

Throughout the course, I refined this thinking into something more actionable. I realised that for me, success is not just about delivering strong individual projects. It’s about building approaches that others can adopt, improve and grow. That shift from individual output to collective scalability is exactly what the circular economy requires, and the course gave me the frameworks to articulate and structure that.

I’ve also clarified how I want to pursue this idea of success:

• Work ambitiously on high-leverage projects
• Maintain continuous learning as my operating system
• Set structured goals – define what I truly want 
• Leading and learning from others – communicating clearly across disciplines, building communities of practice

So in conclusion:
I don’t see success as a personal “achievement shelf.” I view it as a network effect: an impact that grows because others pick it up and carry it forward.

This is far more aligned with the challenges of sustainability and circularity. None of us can transform systems alone! Progress happens when ideas spread and become shared standards.

If you’re interested in redefining your goals, understanding your behavioural patterns, or learning to communicate and collaborate more effectively, I can genuinely recommend this specialization. It’s thoughtful, practical, and unexpectedly introspective. And in my case, it nudged me to think bigger. Not in terms of ambition, but in terms of who my work can enable.