Yesterday's blog challenged the traditional perspective of choosing a career. I pointed out that the traditional way of choosing a career won't fit for the volatile, unpredictable 21st century. You or I do not have one true self. Instead we are a lot of selves. We have identities for the future, some of which we may not even be able to imagine. As my protege, Liam O'Dea, that English major from the University of Virginia put it,
I entered business as a temp in June 2006 because I did not want to work nights waiting tables while I pursued my writing ambitions. I sought predictability in both schedule and income. After a few months I was hired on as a permanent employee for a well-respected financial institution. As an English major, I assumed this would NOT be the environment in which I would thrive.
But thrive is exactly what he has done. He took a job largely for a predictable salary, and started exploring. He has a lot of possible selves competing for his attention and most lack detail and contour. After less than three years, he's found that some appeal to him more than others.
Finding a new self for Liam is not dropping one self in favor of another, but a process of tinkering with a whole set of possiblities. As Herminia Ibarra writes, he's already trying new selves on for size, elaborating on some, dropping others, getting rid of outdated images. Over the past two years he's spent a great deal of time junking a few ways of thinking and acting that he's decided don't fit some of the new selves he's interested in becoming. And he's also trying on new ways of thinking and acting both at work and in his social life.
What's important to understand is that only by testing do we learn what is really appealing and feasible. In that process he and all of us can create our own opportunities.
FYI: The research by Ibarra shows that the traditional career approach of planning and thinking is not very effective. Instead, we adults are actually much more likely to act our way into thinking than to think our way into acting. As she points out, the logical sequence of reflect then act: plan, then implement is reversed in career development because the kind of knowledge we need is built upon real exploration and experience, not upon introspection or planning.
In the 21st century that's far and away the most useful means for beginning the career choice process--no matter at what stage we find ourselves: Gen-Y, Gen-X, Boomer and older.
In the 21st century, we also need to deal with the new economy and the new career environment. Indeed, we need to look at career not from the perspective of banker, marketer, retailer or etc. But instead from the standpoint of criteria that are now valued and will be in the future. That will change the shape of careers.