There’s a new book out that’s well worth reading. Bait and Switch by Barbara Ehrenreich. There’s a great review (in case you don’t have time to read the whole book right now) In the Chicago Tribune by a University of Chicago Professor of history – Eric Arnesen.
Barbara’s thesis is pretty simple – there are a lot of white collar people unemployed and underemployed. So, as a quasi-anthropologist/journalist she faked up a resume, joined some networking groups and went job hunting. What she found is all too familiar to those struggling with white collar unemployment, and simultaneously insightful.
Barbara learned that unemployed and underemployed people tend to blame themselves for their difficulties. As if they simply didn’t work hard enough, try hard enough and diligently pursue all possibilities. Likewise, the herds of advisors in network groups, outplacement firms, job counselors and authors all put the blame for the unemployed squarely on those without good jobs and looking. Lots of advice is "more, better, faster – and consider making yourself cheaper." The same sort of lousy advice that gets businesses with broken Success Formulas into deeper trouble (and failure).
What Barbara also points out is that this answer is….. well…… insufficient. The economy has changed. The work world isn’t like we were promised in school. Globalization of skills, rapid "boom to bust" lifecycles of companies and wicked swings in market shares have made employment opportunities shorter and underemployment a fact of life. Much of what people are suffering through isn’t caused by them – but rather by a change in the working environment in which we all participate.
I regularly speak to networking groups. I find the same phenomenon Barbara describes. People searching for their "last job", rather than the "next job." Individuals become locked-in to a personal Success Formula developed early in their careers, and they keep trying to find a way to make that Success Formula work. But it won’t. The world has changed. What’s needed isn’t "the old jobs" but rather for those who are looking to realize they really have to change what they are looking for, how they are looking for it and often their own primary strengths. They have to compete in this new, transparent "information economy." And that requires a personal implementation of The Phoenix Principle.
Those who will continue to succeed will be able to understand that the employment market has changed. They must recognize their lock-in to old notions, and they must attack that lock-in so they can open doors to new approaches for developing their careers. They need to disrupt themselves, internally, and create personal White Space in order to find new search processes and improve those strengths which are valuable in today’s job marketplace. The Phoenix Principle doesn’t just apply to industries and companies that lock-in to old competitive structures – but to individuals as well.
Give Barbara’s book a read. And then think about what it will take for you to stop trying to Defend & Extend your career, and instead grow into a whole new set of opportunities. We all have to face the fact that retirement age is being pushed higher and higher, and thus we’ll all have to work longer. We might as well enjoy it – and that means modifying our Success Formulas to fit the working world of the future.