(Don't) Connect The Career Dots

“Ten years ago, did you expect to be in the job you hold today?”

Well, did you?

One of the greatest popular science books of the last 50 years is The Mismeasure of Man by Steven Jay Gould. Professor Gould was also famous for questioning the popular science hypothesis that evolution was linear. Gould didn't question whether la evolución was real. Instead at issue was whether evolution was a linear progression...or something that sprouted more like a bush:

What's the difference?

Our friend Barry Conchie puts it this way: "For most people, careers are not the result of long-term planning. They are the result of capability, opportunity, and circumstance interacting over time."

The problem with a linear assumption regarding evolution or careers is that progress is some function of earlier investments that results in a later outcome, and so on. The unfortunate fundamental nature of evolution (and careers) though is that they don't always work out; they may dead-end; your species or your career path aren't destined to lead you to a new human lineage or a Nobel Prize or whatever it is that is glitzy for you. 

You may fail. Your species may die out.

But you may succeed in ways that you could not have foretold. As Barry put it: “Ten years ago, did you expect to be in the job you hold today?”

Because you cannot secure the future of your career no matter how neatly you draw it on a chart, Barry gives you four reflections to use in thinking seriously and unromantically about your career. He refers to it as capability strategy:

• What capabilities produce my strongest performance?
• Which capabilities create the most value in my environment?
• Where can I deepen those capabilities through challenging work?
• What experiences will accelerate mastery?

Sometimes, and we've all been there, you work in a place that is out to squash, inhibit, ruin, and otherwise derail your career. Spoiler alert: organizations don't care about your career. It's the organization where your manager innocently enough says "My door is always open" which is like a spider saying "My web has holes." 

Even under the best of circumstances with the world's best boss -- by the way, would someone please note in the comments where this place exists? --  your career is not linear and you need to adapt to where you find yourself. Adaptation means you reflect on what you like doing, what you want to do, what you need to begin (start doing, as we say in leadership feedback), what you're good at doing (keep doing), what you need to do differently (stop doing), and how you could create opportunities to do more of that combination. 

As long as you approach a clear-eyed review of your career starting and ending with the belief that you can be flexible, you'll leverage your capabilities. 

Success is not guaranteed, but you don't have to fail either.

Ask us how you can evolve a career process that works for you.

(forsythia image credit: James G. Howes, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons)