contemplating career change?
Around this time of year, people often check their career pulse and, depending on the reading, think about changing jobs or starting a new business. For those in the throws of this regular checkup, Curt Rosengren offers up his new career change quiz. Using a ranked response format, the quiz consists of 15 statements concerning our current job, including: “The work I do energizes me; My work is a good fit for who I am; I would do this even if I didn’t need the money; My work feels meaningful.” Although the statements seem a bit redundant, I think the repetition serves to deepen our self-inquiry and heighten our honesty as we go down the list. Rosengren’s quiz pairs well with this post from a new blog by venture capitalist and author Guy Kawasaki (heads up via Seth Godin and Lisa Haneberg). Kawasaki argues that businesses should forgo mission statements in favor of corporate mantras, simple and direct three or four-word statements that “help employees truly understand why the organization exists.” I like this idea a lot. And it can be tweaked to aid folks contemplating career change. To gage our career satisfaction, we can devise personal mantras that reflect why we choose to help the organization (people or person) we work for exist. To put it differently; in four words or less, state why you expend your time, energy, passion and other resources on the work you now do in the world. For example, my mantra might run something like this: “to extinguish lawyer burnout” or “to optimize client relations.” For more career change insights and tips, you can check out this recent article and this one.
