When you’re pivoting through your career, the order of experiences matter. In the same way that knowing the order of operations in baking, math, law or business matters a lot, the same holds true in your work life. This is a continuation of discussion on career pivots where starts here.
Some things need to be done in a certain order for them to have their appropriate or maximum learning effect. Working as a consultant directly out of grad school is dramatically different from working as a consultant after ten years working as a financial analyst. We end up developing different based on the progression of experiences, and learn different lessons based on the order of the experiences.
A financial analyst who I worked with had previous work experience in the military. Their approach to work was dramatically different from a financial analyst who had a background writing and composing music. Both could excel in their role as an analyst, but the way they approached their work differed dramatically.
The military background had encouraged a hierarchal view of the world, the assumption that there was a policy for most situations. They held extreme personal competency as a core ethic, and were intensely proactive. They were committed to impact, and they had an assumption that the higher-ups had a better view of what was going on than they had at the ground level.
The composer approached their work in a more flexible manner. They explored more before deciding how best to engage. Approaches varied based on the environment, and a cooperative interaction was prioritized over intensity. There was less likely to be a right / wrong analysis, but more of a harmony / disharmony approach to their analysis.
Both were good at their jobs, however they approached their work in dramatically different fashions.
Order of Work Experience versus the Presence of Work Experience
We tend to look at a career as a recipe or a stock graph. Does a person have the requisite ingredients of work experiences, education, background to make them a good fit for this position? Or we say “Has this person shown a up-and-to-the-right meteoric ascent as they work? Constantly moving upward and onwards? Unfortunately, neither of these attributes prove that an individual is an ideal fit for a position.
Trying to view a career as a narrative complete with up, downs, challenges, successes and life lessons can be more valuable. The double-blind test of “this is the perfect workplace” and “I’m the perfect candidate” results in frustration. Transparency is much more effective, but much more rare.
A good exercise to look back at your own work experience and ask yourself what is the story that is unfolding as you look at your experiences. Try to identify lessons learned, both good and bad. The danger of bad experiences is not that they happened, but if they’re not evaluated, they can teach us lies that we internalize. A bad experience, properly evaluated, can be invaluable for our development and progression as individuals.
A Career Advancement Order of Operations:
- Understanding before Vision
- Vision before Activity
- Failure before Success
- Emotional Intelligence before Management Experience
- Self-knowledge before Career Advancement
- Discernment before Judgement
- Understanding Human Nature before Happiness
- Self-Discipline before Success
The presence of the latter before the existence of the former spells trouble. I’ll explore why in my upcoming posts.