Uncertainty can make us cling to the familiar — but it’s also an opportunity to expand our mindsets and explore new avenues for growth. Based on their experience as consultants and leadership coaches, the authors offer five strategies to help anyone reinvent their career.
Source: Harvard Business Review – During times of uncertainty, we tend to hunker down and cling to the status quo. A kind of myopia kicks in, and we focus on our most urgent decisions: how to keep our families safe and healthy, how to keep our bosses happy, or, if we’ve lost a job, how to find a new one as quickly as possible. When we’re overwhelmed, it can be hard to find the time, motivation, and mental energy to think about longer-term questions.
But despite the challenges that extended periods of uncertainty present, those periods also offer unparalleled opportunities for strategic planning. Total control and predictability are always an illusion — and when circumstance strips that illusion away, it can open our minds to the wide variety of paths we could take. On the basis of our experience as consultants and leadership coaches, we’ve developed five strategies that can help anyone leverage the power of uncertainty to reinvent their career strategy.
1. Explore a range of options — including the unthinkable.
Anything can happen in uncertain times. The breadth of possible outcomes can be overwhelming, and even when we understand them intellectually, we often avoid confronting our worst-case scenarios. But explicitly considering the most unimaginable of outcomes can actually make them less intimidating, enabling you to think through your options more clearly and to plan more effectively.
One of us, Dorie, worked with an organization that was drafting budgets detailing what it would do if the pandemic led to revenue declines of 5%, 10%, or 20% for the year. Dorie urged it to craft a scenario in which 50% of revenue evaporated. Thankfully, that financial apocalypse didn’t come to pass. But knowing what it would do in that case meant that the organization was prepared no matter what, giving it a far greater shot at success than peer organizations that avoided even considering such a possibility.
Similarly, if you’re looking for work, consider planning not just for the most likely scenarios but also for one in which you’re unemployed for twice as long as you expect, or in which your spouse also loses his or her job. Although such possibilities can be difficult to think about, figuring out exactly how you would handle them — and setting triggers for action, such as “If I haven’t landed a job by February, I’ll move to a cheaper apartment or rent out the spare bedroom” — can help ensure that you don’t find yourself in a more dire position later on, such as having to sell your home or move in with relatives.
2. Imagine your best possible future.
Of course, strategic planning isn’t just about imagining the worst possible outcomes. Equally important is considering ideas and opportunities that might never have occurred to you before. Challenge the assumptions you are making about yourself — things like “I’ve never tried that type of work before, so I wouldn’t be a good candidate” and “I’m just not cut out for management.” Think about different ways you could leverage your skills and fulfill your passions, both at work and in other aspects of your life. Would working a three-day week give you more time for parental care or entrepreneurial ventures? The more you’ve thought through your options, the better prepared you’ll be to act when an opportunity arises.
Although it may sound simple, imagining best-case-scenario futures is sometimes even harder than preparing for the worst. Here are some strategies to help you get started.
- For inspiration, delve into your most vivid difficult moments — challenges you faced during the pandemic, for example — and think about the skills or creative adaptations you drew on to meet them. Perhaps you struggled without the routine of a daily commute but then repurposed your commute time into a new fitness regimen. This could suggest that going forward, you should consider remote work opportunities.
- Construct a personal highlights reel to help you remember the moments when you were at your best. The patterns you discover can serve as clues. If you’ve consistently enjoyed mentoring colleagues, for instance, you might consider how to develop new skills around coaching or look for ways to make it a larger part of your professional life.
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