When you make the decision to start something new, first figure out the jobs you want to do. Then position yourself to play where no one else is playing.
Whitney Johnson – Writer
When should you self-disrupt? There’s no easy answer. However, it’s about your personal COVID risk assessment. Do you know your personal value proposition in COVID time? If you don’t, sooner than later you’ll have a work wake up call. You may be part of COVID downsizing. Your abilities, career direction, or work are not aligned with your employer’s business strategies or customer’s market requirements. You may have less authority, new boss, new position, marginal performance review, or even a job loss. Your employer has a new business model. Your employer changed its business rules. Your employer may want to outsource. Your employer may see employees as an expense, not an asset. Your employer may see workers and contractors as expendable. These result in stress.
Each of these is a stimulus to examine what you do right, what you could do better, what you could learn, and what you should do different. Your goal is to conduct an honest career gap analysis and self-disrupt. This is work because you may have to stare at the mirror and conduct an objective analysis. I call this the ‘career ledger sheet.’ What are your work, job, and career assets and liabilities? You want to enhance your assets and minimize your liabilities. It isn’t an easy process to assume new roles, establish new relationships, establish new directions, offer new ideas, be proactive, learn new behaviors, or work effectively. This requires time, effort, resources, and resiliency. All of which take time away from other activities. But, it’s your life and work resiliency!
Mary Lynn Pulley in Losing Your Job – Reclaiming Your Soul called the ability to bounce back from adversity, ‘work resilience.’ You have an inner life force to bounce back and carry on. You become resilient by developing and nourishing positive relationships. You may reach the stage in your career when options are fewer, career choices are limited and you don’t know where to go or what to do. This is a time for reflection, for repositioning yourself if necessary and for learning resilience.[i]
Work Lesson Earned: Address these important work questions: Where are you going? How are you going to get there? Will the journey or the destination make you happy? What are the tradeoffs along the way? Are you willing to make the required sacrifices? What do you need to learn to get where you want?
[i] Losing Your Job – Reclaiming Your Soul, Mary Lynn Pulley, 1997.