There should be no problem when you wake up each day, all fired up, and the reason is because you’re going to work. The problem starts creeping in when you begin to question if there’s more to life that what you’re currently doing. It could be a result of burn-out or some realization that you can’t quite explain. Whatever the reason is, you seem not to want where you are now (and, no, I’m not talking about marriage, but work and career).

 

You start asking if it’s time to expand your horizons, even start a new career. In the book Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career (Harvard Business School Press, [2003] 1999 pages), Herminia Ibarra presents alternative ways of changing a career.

The traditional or conventional method for a career change is the plan-and-implement strategy: "We start by analyzing, and from that analysis emerges an “answer" that we can plan around. Then we implement the steps that will get us to that answer. Reflect, then act. Think, then do." Perhaps it could be seen that the plan-and-implement method involves first the discovery of one's “true self”.

On the other hand, at the core of the unconventional test-and-learn strategy is the "myriad of possible selves." We all have a number of "selves" or identities. It's "not simply a matter of dropping one self in favor of another but a process of tinkering with a whole set of possibilities: imagining new ones, trying then on for size, elaborating on some, dropping others, getting rid of outdated images, coming to grips with the fact that some might languish. Only by testing do we learn what is really appealing and feasible -- and, in the process, create our own opportunities."

The discovery of the identity we prefer is done through trying out the possibilities before us. It comes from “social interaction and involvement in a specific context and with specific people, not from solitary introspection or abstract information gleaned from theoretical, general-purpose personality profiles.” The test-and-learn method does not do away with "reflection", but reverses the process. It involves "making sense", or the "practice of putting a frame around experience."

While Ibarra asserted that we need a "guiding figure" and a "secure base" during the transition process, she also recognized that it "is nearly impossible to change careers without altering our social and professional circles". The people around us, including our family and friends, don’t want to change the dynamics. I smiled upon reading this part because we had a similar discussion here at Pinoy Entrepreneurs – if you’re a probinsyano, it’s very difficult to go up the socio-economic ladder if you don’t get out of the probinsiya.

Ms. Ibarra has distilled nine unconventional strategies for reinventing your career: act, then reflect; flirt with your selves; live the contradictions; make big change in small steps; experiment with new roles; find people who are what you want to be; don't wait for a catalyst; step back periodically but not for too long; and seize windows of opportunity. These guidelines are discussed in detail in the book.

 

There are so many other interesting points raised in the book and, of course, we can’t discuss all of them here. Ibarra, for instance, cited the "strength of weak ties" study of Mark Granovetter, to the effect that most people find their jobs through personal connections -- not family, friends or close associates, but distant acquaintances.

Ibarra also points out that career change "is not a straightforward process of trading in an old, tired role for a new and improved one; nor can we always make progress along a straight and linear path. Trying very hard to go in one direction can lead us, circuitously, to another." If you know your cartoons, this will remind you of one quote from Master Oogway in Kungfu Panda: “One meets his destiny often in the road he takes to avoid it.”