By Dan Coughlin
I’ve learned that writing a book is an exhilarating experience. Essentially an author is handed 250 blank canvasses and is allowed to create whatever he or she wants. However, the canvasses do have to fit under a certain theme and the chapters, while being able to stand alone in terms of their uniqueness and contribution, have to connect to one another in some meaningful way.
Your career is like a book where you fill in the blank canvasses.
Writing a book requires a person to both step back and visualize how the chapters fit together and step forward to the keyboard and fill in the words. To build a great career you need to step back and visualize how the various jobs you take on fit together in a meaningful way and step forward to each job and execute your responsibilities masterfully. This article is about stepping back and visualizing how your next job will fit meaningfully within your overall career.
Move within Your Purpose, Passions, Strengths, and Values
You have roughly 1,000 different things you can do as your next job. As a starting point to narrow your job search, I suggest that any job you take on should fit within your purpose, passions, strengths, and values. Take out a sheet of paper and answer these four questions:
- What is the purpose I want guiding my career?
- What gets me excited when I do it?
- What am I good at doing?
- What beliefs determine my behaviors?
After you answer these questions you’re in a much better position to select your next job. Some people might argue that during a tough recession all of those things should be put on the back burner and that making money should be the driving force. In other words, the only question that should be answered is, “How much does the job pay?”
I don’t think that is a good idea. If you take a job just for the money and you find no purpose in your work, you have no passion for doing it, you are not particularly good at it, and the work does not match your values, then you are destined to fail. So how worthwhile will that good paycheck be then?
Put in place the four critical career screens of purpose, passion, strengths, and values first, and then begin to consider various career moves that fit within them.
Career Move #1: Same Organization, Expanded Responsibilities
The grass is not always greener at the next organization. And if you keep chasing greener grass eventually you will run out of grass to chase. Sometimes the very best career move for you is to stay within your organization.
Two organizations I worked with for over a decade as a consultant are McDonald’s Corporation and Marriott International. I admired these two companies long before I worked with their executives and managers, but in being side by side with these individuals I learned one of their most important keys to success: they provide opportunities for people to expand their responsibilities. At McDonald’s USA, many of their top executives started working in a single restaurant. Then the person became in charge of the restaurant, then oversaw four restaurants, then 16 restaurants, then 500 restaurants, and ultimately all 13,000 restaurants. And with each expansion of responsibilities the person’s breadth and depth of leadership and management skills grew and grew. The same pattern is true within Marriott. I’ve seen a bellman become general manager of major Marriott hotels.
Is there a possibility that you can expand your responsibilities within your organization as your next career move?
Career Move #2: Same Organization, Different Responsibilities
I have a good friend who received her degree in Economics from Northwestern University. She started her career in finance at a large national company. After a few years, her boss offered her a brilliant piece of advice: learn different parts of the business and it may help you later in your career. So she went on to take jobs in marketing, sales, and operations. Today she is the Chief Global Marketing Officer of a massive company that spans countries around the world, and she never had to change employers.
If you’ve become a great performer within a particular function in your organization, then your next best move might be to leave that function and dive into a different one. If you know operations, apply for a job in human resources or marketing or sales or business research. What makes Roger Federer such a great tennis player is his mastery of all of the different aspects of the game. Master the different aspects of your organization and make yourself dramatically more valuable.
What function within your organization could you step into to expand your skill set?
Career Move #3: Same Industry, Different Organization
Sometimes you just need to refresh your perspective, opportunities, and relationships. A lateral move to a different company in your same industry may be just the ticket to reignite your career. Like a professional baseball player who finds new levels of success with a different team, you may find that people view you differently when you walk through a different door.
A friend of mine went from a sales manager position at Procter & Gamble, which was his first employer out of college, to a sales manager position at Brach’s Candy. He was still in the consumer goods retail industry, but he was seen in a new light. Instead of bosses seeing him as the 21-year-old college grad with no experience, he became seen as a fast-rising 25-year-old with experience at one of the world’s greatest companies. Suddenly he was given opportunities that he never would have received as quickly at P&G.
Assess your situation. Are you being perceived by your boss and peers in ways that are keeping you from receiving meaningful new opportunities? Is it them or is it you that is keeping you from advancing in the organization? That’s a tough call to make, but it’s a crossroads we almost all face at some point.
Can you leverage your industry knowledge into a new job that may lead to an even brighter future for your career?
Career Move #4: Same Skills, Different Industry
This is the move that opens up your career chessboard considerably. It is where some careers accelerate to new heights and where others crash and burn. Leaving an industry is fraught with challenges. For one you’re leaving your contacts and relationships and reputation behind you. The personal brand you’ve built for yourself is no longer going to win you new opportunities. You have to start over and build a new brand one for yourself. If you’ve been a star performer, this can be a daunting mental challenge to overcome. You also are leaving behind all of the industry knowledge you’ve developed that allowed you to resolve issues quickly and move forward effectively.
However, if you move forward with your enhanced experiences, maturity, sense of purpose, passions, strengths, and values, you may very well build a far stronger brand in the new industry. This is certainly a viable option if you want to create a variety of new opportunities for your career. My friend went from Brach’s Candy to a tremendous opportunity in the medical device industry because he was willing to let go of one industry and step into the challenges of another industry.
Career Move #5: Turn a Dead End into an Eight-Lane Superhighway
Considering the incredibly high percentage of layoffs among white-collar workers over the past 12 months, this next career move might apply to you now or in the near future. Managers and knowledge workers in virtually every industry have lost jobs in huge numbers, and the end may not be in sight yet.
Rather than seeing the end of one job as the end of your career, I encourage you to see it as a valuable time to step back and rethink the future of your career. Go back to the four questions at the beginning of this article and really clarify the purpose you want to fulfill in your work, the things you are most passionate about, the strengths you bring to the table, and the values you absolutely, positively want guiding your life and your work.
Invariably it was the forced stops in the game that caused some of the world’s greatest performers to step back, rethink their next move, and come back with renewed focus that made them vastly more successful in their new job than in their previous ones. In 1981, at the age of 39, Michael Bloomberg was fired at Salomon Brothers. He went on to build Innovative Market Systems (later named Bloomberg L.P.) that today is worth $16 Billion. In addition, he has been Mayor of New York City since 2001. None of this may have happened if he had not been forced to deal with a dead end.
If your career has suddenly run into a dramatic dead end, I encourage you to step back and start over. Go back to the original questions concerning your purpose, passions, strengths, and values. Then go through each of the career move options discussed in this article, and visualize what your next job might look like.
Do you want to seek a different position in your company, possibly in a different function?
Do you want to seek a job at a different company in your industry where you can leverage your industry knowledge?
Do you want to seek a job at a company outside of your industry where you can leverage your passions and strengths while still operating within your purpose and values?
Or do you want to start your own business where you can create an organization that reflects your purpose, passions, strengths, and values?
In his autobiography, The Other Side of Me (Warner Books 2005), Sidney Sheldon, whose books sold more than 300 million copies, told a powerful story. He wrote that in 1934 when he was 17 he tried to commit suicide because there didn’t seem to be any opportunities for him. His father found him at the last second and after a little warm-up conversation said,
“Sidney, you told me that you wanted to be a writer more than anything in the world. You don’t know what can happen tomorrow. Life is like a novel, isn’t it? It’s filled with suspense. You have no idea what’s going to happen until you turn the page. Every day is a different page, Sidney, and they can be full of surprises. You’ll never know what’s next until you turn the page. If you really want to commit suicide, Sidney, I understand. But I’d hate to see you close the book too soon and miss all the excitement that could happen to you on the next page – the page you’re going to write.”
Sheldon didn’t commit suicide. Instead he went on to become a prolific writer of stories in Hollywood, on Broadway, and in his 18 novels.
Your career consists of a series of chapters. Choose each job carefully, execute your responsibilities as well as you can, and take time to step back and visualize your next chapter.
About Dan Coughlin
Visit Dan at www.thecoughlincompany.com. Dan is a student and teacher of practical processes that improve business performance. His purpose is to work with executives and managers so they achieve great performances. He is a business keynote speaker, management consultant, executive coach, and author of three books, including his newest, The Management 500: A High-Octane Formula for Business Success (AMACOM 2009).
I recently read Heather Mansfield’s book, Social Media for Social Good: A How-To Guide for Nonprofits. As I finished the book several thoughts came to my mind:
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Day 2 is down but not out. In today’s line up was 
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