A good part of my own career coaching practice rests on helping clients through their reinvention. What is reinvention? It is taking your past experience in one area and repackaging it in a new and different area using your innate genius as a fulcrum. In my own case I have gone through four different careers, and now I am in my fifth (check out my LinkedIn Profile to see that progression). I have helped my clients move from high-tech to biotech, and from software development to product management. Some of these transitions are more natural progressions and others, quite radical.
One of the key elements needed to execute a successful reinvention is your ability to connect with people well outside your area of work. It is normal for people to join professional associations in their own areas of expertise. It is also easy for them to link-up with those, who work with them. For example, someone who is a project manager may join the Project Management Institute (pmi.org) as a member—a strong link—and hang out with its members during its events to soak in the proceedings. It is normal for professionals to affiliate with their own ilk to expand their knowledge and to keep their network vibrant.
What is not normal, however, is to expand one’s network in uncharted areas of professional expertise. In this case of the person above, if they were to be linked to someone who is an actor and join the SAG (Screen Actors’ Guild) then that would be a weak link. Why is that important? It has been proven that most inventions (fundamental breakthroughs in any area of work) come from people who possess deep-seated expertise in their areas of individual work. So, it would be expected that someone in an area of their expertise would be connected with others, who also are engaged in that type of work.
Major innovations (ways of creating new value from existing inventions), however, come from the outsiders more than they do from the insiders. This is perhaps because the insiders are not able to get past their deeply entrenched paradigms and thinking patterns. True innovations often come from those who are able to think outside the box (the lateral thinkers than deep linear thinkers). As a case in point, recent automobile models that Ford introduced exemplify this. It tapped mothers and parents of kids to get insights into car design and to understand better the everyday use of their cars, instead of talking to design experts, as it did traditionally. Result: They have some car models now that are flying off the dealers’ lots!
So, what does this mean to your career re-invention?
In today’s job market everything is in a flux. Fast-moving technology, global workforce, and shifting consumer priorities have placed new demands on professionals on how they create value. To stay relevant one must learn how to anticipate the trends and how to become a part of that trend to protect their career progression. This means one must always be vigilant in how they look at their career, and what they must do to stay relevant until their retirement. This is not easy. So, what is my prescription to stay relevant? Adventuring to manage change in your own career. Change is hard for most, but the alternative to change is to become irrelevant, which is much harder to deal with!
So, here is my prescription for a radical reinvention:
- Periodically make an audit of your career momentum and see if it is waxing or waning. If you are experiencing good momentum and things are happening for you then it is time to think of the next chapter in your career, while you’re hot!
- It is tempting to continue building this momentum and deal with any setbacks to it by rationalizing them as transitory. This is where your complacency is setting in—a danger sign. This is why you must think of your next step in your career while things are going well for you. You’ll radiate that confidence, which is critical in your reinvention. A little bit of swagger can allow you to overcome a lot of ignorance (I mean this in a good way!).
- Connect with professionals who are outside your main area of work and hang out with them in conferences, meetings, and other events. Read about their work and learn how they practice their trade. Merely learning the language of their trade can give you insights about their thinking patterns and how they “operate” (their OS–Operating System in computer lingo).
- Engage in brainstorming with the outsiders and seek ideas that may help you broaden your thinking. What comes naturally to the outsiders can be a breakthrough for you in your own area of work. This cuts both ways. Cultivate a habit of having such conversations and develop a comfort level in talking a language that may seem strange to you at first.
- Explore how you can pivot your current career momentum in a new direction using some of the insights that you have gathered from one area of work to another. It often entails learning how to translate the language you already know, and ideas from one area to another and communicating those ideas.
- Learn how to communicate well. I often find it disheartening that many people with great ideas lack the confidence to translate those ideas in a language that they can sell. Master your communication skill; it is fundamental to any professional endeavor.
- If you already have a sense of moving your career in a specific direction then find out what resources are available in your destination career so that you can start affiliating with those who already belong to that profession. For example, if you want to move from software development to being a sommelier (wine or beer sommelier) then you must find professional organizations that cater to this community (for example joining the Court of Master Sommeliers, or the International Sommelier Guild), and even getting a certification, which can allow you to work in a restaurant as a sommelier, initially part time, as you are cutting code everyday in your day job! One of my clients actually did this and became a sommelier!
- Expand your network as a habit. In the case of my client, who was a software engineer, and who went on to become a sommelier, initially invited the upscale restaurant’s maître d’hôtel to join his LinkedIn network, during one of his routine dinners there, when his plan to transition was in its early stages. This would have been his weak link then.
- Find out who the key players are in the destination career and field and explore ways to connect with them as a next step.
- If you do not have a specific direction in mind start inviting different professionals in your social network and start hanging out with them to share and exchange ideas. Keep your day job until you are able to build some critical momentum in your reinvention and then take the plunge. You may be surprised how well this algorithm works!
Good luck!