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The Obvious
Sometimes KPI's are just not promising, despite your individual impact and effectiveness. Your Blackberry keeps posting stock prices and more importantly, oil prices. While you felt 'flush' when a barrel went for $150, there is uneasiness when it dips under $50. Optimistic predictions of price rebounds are somewhat reassuring but perhaps not enough to help you relax. Experience tells you to rely on instincts. Intuition rarely steers you wrong.
So of course at this point it seems prudent to update your resume, refresh your network, and start looking. You would not be surprised to see your function, division, or overall business consider options for -- pick your word -- streamlining, rationalizing, or right sizing. As conditions around you shift, you are logical in your response, doing your homework and taking sensible action to land in a more secure, stable, healthy and advantageously positioned place.
The Less Obvious
High achievers show a fascinating range of career motivations. However, they often give so much attention to the pressing demands in front of them that the picture of what they really want to do the most -- and why -- becomes muddled. At the risk of oversimplifying these drivers, the following general clusters of motives may be useful and perhaps recognizable as you think through your situation.
Relative standing with peers. We naturally compare ourselves with contemporaries and seek a sense of 'equity' based on skills, experience, education and related factors. We each value a unique mix of qualities and rewards (e.g. compensation, meaningful impact, status, power, affiliation). We likewise have a uniquely defined set of self-selected 'peers' and the membership of this group changes. It is unsettling if others with comparable attributes get more benefits and we think 'the grass is greener' elsewhere.
Stimulating, engaging work. Regardless of our compensation and other benefits, most of us want adequate variety and challenge professionally. It is valuable to have a sense of using a full range of our skills and of building new ones and, if we do not, this deficit can be irritating.
Organizational mobility. Related to the preceding point, many of us appreciate opportunities or, at least, the option to move to different roles or functions within our broader organization. While there is value in diversifying and refining new capabilities through lateral moves, this doesn't satisfy everyone. For example, when there are no more rungs in the hierarchical ladder to strive for, it becomes untenable for many of us.
Relationships. A sense of 'community' is now an almost universally sought after benefit -- colleagues with comparable values and goals who offer emotional support and mental stimulation. However certain roles, often at senior ranks, and corporate cultures invite isolation from others. This can be tough for the 'extroverts' among us who need contact with peers for energy and a sense of purpose. In addition, these relationships with colleagues provide candid feedback, helping us confront strengths and weaknesses, and often supplying encouragement we need to consider and then eventually to execute a professional change.
Adult development. Your job may continue offering everything that mattered to you when you first accepted it. However, what is meaningful to us at work can change and, some believe, is bound to change in a predictable pattern. Well compensated executives can be compelled to move from the private sector to service oriented non profits, for example, to more directly assist disadvantaged people in the community. The psychologist Erik Erikson used 'generativity' to describe the stage many of us reach in life when helping others, particularly those in the next generation, takes on substantially more importance.
Organizational scale. Working in huge, global organizations, we may start being attracted to opportunities in smaller firms. These may provide potential for less bureaucratic drag, for more control, autonomy, and responsibility and, psychologically and financially, for a sense of ownership. Conversely, we may see moving from an entrepreneurial setting to a larger firm as a mechanism for sharpening skills, adding to our long-term value and marketability.
Right brain neglect. Embedded in practically all management and leadership responsibilities, of course, are elements of control, analysis, evaluation, assimilation of data, and logical decision-making. Without realizing it, as we become more practiced in, accustomed to and consumed by these 'left brain' activities, our ability to relax, 'let go' and engage creatively is stunted. Left untended, this imbalance can be numbing or even debilitating, encouraging us to consider a new start elsewhere.
Boosting Self-Awareness
You have important responsibilities that confirm your skills and value in the organization. However, these responsibilities also run the risk of limiting the time and energy you take to step back and realistically assess your circumstances. How clearly, for example, could you answer such questions as: What are my immediate, medium, and long term priorities, personally and professionally? Have there been shifts in these priorities? Why? Why not? What trends, if any, are suggested? How well are these priorities met in my current position? Why? What are the implications and what should I do about them?
As we have discussed, what leads you to contemplate professional change can be clear and straightforward (e.g. company performance, economic conditions) or more subtle (e.g. peer comparisons, adult development processes). Recognizing and exploring your particular mix of motives puts you in a more solid position to take sound and proactive steps in managing your professional life.
As you become aware of your unique set of drivers, the next question -- to be discussed in a future article -- is "What do you do?"
