Learn more about my writing- on life, work, and running – and my new book Ten Marathons: Finding the Soft Ground in a Hard World at http://www.dougschneider.net.
I’m also co-hosting The Big Life Questions Show podcast, with Chris Nerney.
Are you feeling stuck in your career? Are you unsure how to get ahead? Are you torn between alternative career paths?
You’re not alone. According to an August 2018 Gallup survey, only 34% of employees report being actively engaged in their jobs – that’s tied for the highest ever in Gallup’s annual survey, but what does that say about the other two-thirds of employees?
13% of employees report being actively disengaged. Which might not be that alarming – perhaps they are self-selecting out and looking for another job.
Here’s the real problem. According to Gallup, “The remaining 53% of workers are in the ‘not engaged’ category. They may be generally satisfied but are not cognitively and emotionally connected to their work and workplace; they will usually show up to work and do the minimum required but will quickly leave their company for a slightly better offer.”
Does this sound like the place where you work? Are you in that 53%?
Think about the loss of productivity to the economy and the loss of human potential when over half of the people working are checked out, but can’t afford to leave their paycheck behind.
If you’re in that 53% and you’re feeling stuck, you’re certainly not alone – but I believe there are more ways to get unstuck than commonly perceived. And your boss is unlikely to solve the problem for you- you’ll need to own your next steps.
Pivot One: Find Your Zone of Indifference
The first thing to ask yourself is usually, “is there something that needs done around here that I’d like to do, and no one else really wants to do it?” I call this a Zone of Indifference.
I found one of these once.
I went to work for a quite successful healthcare information company that had a brand-name customer base. However, before I took the job, I realized that all of their product innovation efforts and resources were focused on incremental improvements for that customer base. No one was working on new products or expanding into new markets.
When I asked my boss if I could create a small group focused on innovation in addition to my day job, she said yes. I was really excited, since the company had a lot of talent and assets. But it was also easy to get permission to do this, since no one else wanted to take the lead on new innovations. Because, of course, innovation is risky and, especially in larger organizations, not always rewarded in traditional ways (like getting paid more). Plus, I had another day job that I had agreed to do.
Over the next ten years, the new innovation part of my job got bigger and bigger and the more-boring day job got smaller and smaller. Refugees from the mainstream organization started asking me to work on new innovation projects. We got better at finding pockets of money for innovation, both internally and from our customer base. Some of our innovations got a lot of market traction, and others did not, but in all cases we learned more about our markets and customers.
I noticed that when I added the word Innovation to my job title, no one challenged me.
There are always more Zones of Indifference around than you think, or than HR can write job descriptions for. Some of them can even provide great work for the next ten years.
Pivot Two: Find Your Flow State
When I work with great people to help them sort out their next career step, I always ask them to create a daily log where they track in buckets how they are spending their time at work. Then I ask them to assess their “engagement level” in each block of time. Once they do this for a week or two, we chat about the Engagement Log.
I am hardly alone in encouraging this practice, but the results are always illuminating.
What is that, when you are doing it, you feel most alive? What is it where you lose track of time and the hours fly by? The answer to this question is different for everyone; some people even like working on finance stuff.
The answer also tells you a lot about what you are great at, or could be great at. Because we’ve always got the “juice” to get really good at whatever engages us.
When you are looking to pivot your career, it just makes sense to try to pivot it towards that which really energizes you. To do that, you’ve got to first make sure you know what that is.
Pivot Three: Re-Energize Your Life
Sometimes you can’t pivot your career until you figure out how to re-energize your life. When I was managing a lot of people, I was always stunned at how much they had going on outside of work. Much of it being stressful indeed.
Maybe you have a health issue that is bugging you. Maybe you have a mother-in-law who is driving you nuts. (I speak from personal experience on both of these topics, but especially the latter.)
Maybe you aren’t getting enough exercise. Or enough sleep.
If your energy is flagging for life, it’s hard to figure out whether or not to take that new job. You’re just not thinking clearly enough to make a big change.
The inverse is also true. Once you re-energize your life, often by dealing head on with your personal energy crisis, you will be amazingly clear-headed about your next career move.
Pivot Four: Refuse that Promotion, or at least Think About That
One time I worked in a place where they kept wanting to promote me to the senior management team. It would have meant more money and more resume-building, both of which I cared about. But more than once I turned down the opportunity.
Why would I do such a crazy thing? Well, first of all, the senior management team was a bit dysfunctional and I knew that. I also knew that being on that team would mean more time in the office in meetings, and less time with working on new product ideas with customers. Which I loved. Plus, my wife had a job 250 miles away and I didn’t want my logistics to get any more problematic.
Looking back, this just might have been the best career pivot I ever made. I used the time to build up my innovation skills, to continue to enjoy my work, and to spend a bit more time with my family. Nine years later, I ended up on the senior management team anyway – after I was really ready- and then spent a really productive four years on it before taking a CEO job.
More is not always better.
Pivot Five: Remember, everything is a Yes or a No
I took a class once called Creativity in Business. Each week, we had a different mantra to live with and journal about. One week the mantra was, “Everything is either a yes or no.”
This one took me a while to get my head around. I’ve always been pretty good at seeing the gray in life, the ambiguity.
The more I lived with this mantra, the more I realized it made sense. When it comes to the big decisions in life – relationships, careers, where to live – I think the people who are either “all in” or “all out” do better. Of course, I’m not saying that you need to make every decision immediately. I’m no expert on dating, but it’s probably not advisable on the first date to try to commit to marriage- nor to decide to move to another city after spending a day there (although I know people who have done both, and gotten great results.)
What I’m saying is that “stuck in the middle” is not a good place to live. You don’t want to hedge on a job that you have for two or three years. Either commit to it and make it work, or self-select out.
Let’s go back to the 53% who are “not engaged” from the Gallup survey. Who wants to live in a state of disengagement and non-committal? Why should you treat yourself that way?
When you get clear on “everything is a yes or no,” you empower yourself. You take ownership over your relationships, your career, your life. You become more decisive and more engaged in the things in life that you really care about.
Pivot Six: Share Your Feelings with Someone You Trust
Most organizations don’t value people showing their weaknesses. It’s too bad. Because when you have the courage to tell someone what you aren’t good at, you are much more likely to end up working on something that you are great at.
But, despite this, there is something that you can do to help pivot your career, and it’s probably counterintuitive. You can be open with someone that you trust about your vulnerabilities and concerns. You might be surprised at what happens next. It turns out that whomever you share your vulnerabilities with also has their own, and they will trust you more when you are open with yours.
You just might find that sharing concerns with someone you trust leads to working together with them on career pivots, and to building your collective courage to make a move. You might find, if you are leading a team, that sharing your weaknesses is actually viewed as an act of courage.
Acts of courage, often starting with shared vulnerabilities, can even lead to great businesses. It happens all the time, it’s just hard to get leaders to talk about it.
Pivot Seven: Ask for a Favor
I’m not very good at this myself, but I suppose I can still recommend it.
Many times, pivoting your career comes down to meeting new people, an inclination that is foreign to people like me. I didn’t do this very often, but I remember one time when I wanted a job with a start-up company. I called a local venture capital guy, who gruffly told me he had only 15 minutes for me, and that would be in about 45 minutes. I rushed to make that 15-minute meeting, he barked out a list of names to call and let me use his name, and two weeks later I had a pretty good job.
The truth is that people like it when you ask them for a favor. They are always flattered. And most people genuinely like helping out other people. Come to think of it, in just about every job I ever got, someone did me a favor to help me land the gig.
Pivot Eight: Get Clear on How You Relate to Money
Money may or may not be important to you, and exactly how important it is (especially relative to time) can change over the course of your lifetime. Either way, at this moment in time when you are trying to pivot, it’s crucially important for you to be honest with yourself about money.
I once asked a friend of mine who is a life-coach to many people about money, and he said, “I can tell you exactly how much money people want – which is a bit more than they currently have.”
Only you can decide – when it comes to money – when “enough is enough.” Don’t let anyone else answer this question for you.
Pivot Nine: Dream Big and Be Bold
When you are confused about what to do next, there is tremendous power in doing something. With conviction. Or, as Yogi Berra memorably said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
Experience suggests that actions taken with conviction and good intentions have a much better chance of working out well, even if you are faking your conviction in the first few steps. Luck always plays a role in success, but it’s amazing how lucky people who work hard and take bold action can be.
Dreaming big goes hand-in-hand with boldness, because big dreams increase our conviction to act. The enthusiasm that comes from people with big dreams and bold actions can be contagious.
Whenever I was interviewing for a job, I always asked the senior person interviewing me what their vision was for the organization. I wanted to make sure that their dreams were big enough to be worthy of my time.
Pivot Ten: Remember, Work is Sacred
Especially when you are working hard but are suffering from a crisis of meaning and direction, it’s important to remember that the work itself – the daily grind – is sacred.
We’ve all had times when we are mailing it in, and while the paychecks keep coming the worst part of mailing it in is this- what it does to you. But work – of all kinds – really matters to people. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t want to find the meaning in their work. The meaning of work is often found in the struggle and sometimes in the joy.
In the second professional job that I ever had, my day ended at 3 a.m. the day after I was supposed to leave the place. Not because anyone else was demanding that, but because I cared.
Gandhi once said, “Almost anything you do might be insignificant, but it may be very important that you do it.”
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