Making change happen

Our current business climate brings a lot of change at the corporate as well as the personal level. They also bring out career development issues that often evolve around what you might call the “professional midlife crisis”. Besides the financial turmoil we currently have, such a crisis can also be caused by situations such as these:

•  Your company is not focused enough on innovation to offer you the types of exciting innovation leadership or intrapreneurial opportunities you desire.
•  You have plateaued in your company with no obvious next step available to you that will move you forward on the career path you desire.
•  Having defined your personal values, you realize they do not match those of your employer.
•   You do not have the flexibility in your current position that will enable you to achieve a greater work-life balance.
•  You would like to like to serve on a board of directors with another company or take a leadership role in an industry organization in order to broaden your impact.

Resolving these situations requires bringing about significant change. Your ability to make the necessary change is usually rooted in two things: perceptions and relationships. Many people think their own perception of who they are matches the way other people see them. It is remarkable how wrong this usually is. And more important, when it comes to making the change you desire happen, it is often the perception by others that matters more than your own perception of yourself. Therefore it is a good exercise to get a better understanding of how other people view you before you lock in on the things you want to change in your life. It might be that it is not you who has to change, but rather the perceptions other people have of you.

That change has much to do with perceptions and relationships can be seen in the cases of two innovation leaders who approached me for help in making change happen for them as they look for new external career development opportunities:

Our first person, let’s call him Peter, is about 50 years old and has spent 17 years in the same company having considerable leadership responsibility. He was seeking new opportunities as the situation with his current company was quite turbulent due to ownership issues. We started a process in which Peter identified his main areas of professional interests (skills, functions and type of companies), his goals for personal development, and his aspirations for a better work/life balance. The next step was to look into his perception balance (own perception versus others perception) and then to look into our combined relationships with regards to a short list of five to ten companies that could be of interest to him.

The other person, let’s call him Simon, is getting close to retirement. He has been with one company for the past 25 years and has seen it grow from a garage to a big business. He has been in charge of business development and is now looking for ways to use his experience by serving as on the boards of growth companies. The main challenge he approached me with was that he did not know how to activate his network. To some extent he hoped people would approach him, which did not happen. Chasing this opportunity required repeated action and persistence from Simon. Unfortunately, we did not get much result as it is difficult to get interesting board of director positions especially in times with financial turmoil.

Neither Peter nor Simon had given much thought to their perception balance–how well their self-perception matches how others view them. Thus, they were unaware of any perceptions by others that might interfere with their ability to achieve their goals. Yet given their ages, they each might well face age discrimination as they try to move toward their new goals despite their personal self-images as men with much to offer. This is just one example of how personal perceptions might differ from those of the people whose help they’re going to need in bringing about change. In addition, neither of them has worked on building and staying connected with his network in a strategic, i.e. goal and action oriented, way. They are not as connected as they thought they were.

You too need to consider your perception balance as well. Take a hard look at yourself and ask yourself whether there are people or incidents that can confirm the image you have of yourself. In my next post, I will give you some ideas on how to bring about change.