Pivot
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“Pivot is a book you will turn to again and again, whether you’re seeking a new career direction, a second career after retirement, or just on the lookout for new ways to use your talents. Jenny Blake takes a strength-based approach to managing the risk that comes with making a change, and provides tons of helpful examples and exercises.”
—Daniel H. Pink, author of To Sell is Human and Drive
“Nontraditional career journeys are not only the new normal, they’re how innovators throughout history changed their world and ours. With actionable insights and lucid prose, Jenny Blake illuminates the path to building your own destiny.”
—Shane Snow, author of Smartcuts and cofounder of Contently
“Wondering what your next move is? Read this book! Jenny Blake is one of the wisest and freshest voices on the subject of career development, and this is her best work yet. In Pivot, you will hear the good news: that you can get paid to do what you love. It may not look like what you thought, and it may require some personal growth, but you can find the work you were meant to do. You just have to pivot.”
—Jeff Goins, author of The Art of Work
“Are the tectonic plates below your sturdy career suddenly splitting into a deep abyss of unknown? Let this book be your rope ladder out.”
—Neil Pasricha, author of The Happiness Equation and the 1,000 Awesome Things blog
“If you think life is a highway, then you’ve got it wrong. It’s more like a winding path through an unpredictable forest. Not only do you have to wade the swamp and battle the beasts, but time after time you come to a crossroads. Left? Right? Straight ahead? Jenny Blake’s new book will help you find the wisdom and resources to make the best choices, move into the sunlight, and end up where you want to be.”
—Michael Bungay Stanier, author of The Coaching Habit and Do More Great Work
“We live in a time of rapid evolution, and we develop skills quickly now by absorbing many shorter term work experiences, so we can become what Jenny Blake calls impacters in our careers. This book gives you a solid roadmap to making the right call about career changes that will help you discover what you’re truly built for. Courage, consciousness, and competence—that’s what Pivot offers you. It’s excellent!”
—Penney Peirce, author of The Intuitive Way, Frequency, and Leap of Perception
“The book is fantastic. No matter where you are in your career, Pivot is provokingly relevant.”
—Dr. Tom Guarriello, founder of RoboPsych and founding faculty at New York’s School of Visual Arts, Masters in Branding
“Today, the average person has eleven jobs and three to six careers, which is why Pivot is essential reading for every professional. Let Jenny be your coach, giving you the confidence and tools required to make your next career transition. Whether you’re an employee, freelancer, or entrepreneur, this book will help you identify the skills you have or need that will lead to your next opportunity. Jenny has been through career transitions and has successfully navigated them on her own, which makes her the perfect spokesperson for helping you do the same. Pivot is the book that you’ll need to read multiple times through your life because change is constant and often times unexpected!”
—Dan Schawbel, author of Promote Yourself and Me 2.0
“Whether you’re considering a career change or job change, or figuring out what to do next, Jenny Blake’s Pivot is the book you need. It’s a comprehensive, practical, must-have guide to your pivot.”
—Susan RoAne, keynote speaker and author of How to Work a Room
Portfolio / Penguin
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2016 by Jenny Blake
Illustrations by ABC Design Lab, copyright © 2016 by Jenny Blake.
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Blake, Jenny, author.
Title: Pivot : the only move that matters is your next one / Jenny Blake.
Description: New York : Portfolio, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016011437 | ISBN 9781591848202 (hardback) | ISBN 9780698406704 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399564383 (international edition)
Subjects: LCSH: Career development. | Career changes. | BISAC: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Careers / General. | BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Motivational.
Classification: LCC HF5381 .B455 2016 | DDC 650.14—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016011437
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To my grandma Janice Deino, who pivoted her entire life at eighty years old with strength and grace. You are an unwavering source of support and inspiration, and the most agile, resilient person I know. Thank you for everything.
How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. . . .
So you must not be frightened . . . if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
CONTENTS
Praise for Pivot
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
INTRODUCTION: PIVOT IS THE NEW NORMAL
Pivot or Get Pivoted
Changing Careers in the Age of the App
Connect the Dots Looking Backward
Pivot Method at a Glance
HIGH NET GROWTH
Career Operating Modes
Trust Your Risk Tolerance
Two (Many) Steps Ahead, One Step Back
STAGE ONE: PLANT
PLANT OVERVIEW
CHAPTER 1: CALIBRATE YOUR COMPASS
What Are Your Guiding Principles? What Is Your Happiness Formula?
Create Your Compass
Identify Your Happiness Formula
Your Body Is Your Business
Reduce Decision Fatigue
Meditate to Activate Your Best Instincts
CHAPTER 2: PUT A PIN IN IT
What Excites You Most? What Does Success Look Like One Year from Now?
Avoid the Tyranny of the Hows
Vision Cloudy? Start Somewhere.
Clarify Your Vision Statement
Summarize Knowns and Unknowns
CHAPTER 3: FUEL YOUR ENGINE
What Is Working? Where Do You Excel?
Identify Your Strengths
Work-History Highlights
CHAPTER 4: FUND YOUR RUNWAY
What Is Your Timeline? How Can You Earn Extra Income?
Build a Solid Financial Foundation
Pivot Finance 101
Income-Anxiety Seesaw Awareness
STAGE TWO: SCAN
SCAN OVERVIEW
CHAPTER 5: BOLSTER YOUR BENCH
Who Do You Already Know? Who Can Provide Advice? What Can You Give in Return?
Expa
nd Your Sphere of Influence
Build a Network of Collective Brainpower
Career Karma: Seek Reciprocal Success
CHAPTER 6: BRIDGE THE GAPS
What Skills and Expertise Will Take You to the Next Level?
Mind the Gap
Learn How to Learn
Limit Linear Thinking
Investigative Listening
Be Discerning About Your Learning
CHAPTER 7: MAKE YOURSELF DISCOVERABLE
How Can You Add Unique Value and Build Visibility?
Define Your Project-Based Purpose
Platform and Leverage
Revel in the Work Others Reject
Leapfrog: Work Backward from Two Moves Ahead
Let Others Know You Are Looking
STAGE THREE: PILOT
PILOT OVERVIEW
CHAPTER 8: GET SCRAPPY
What Small Experiments Can You Run? What Real-World Data Can You Collect?
Aim First for Quantity, Not Quality
What Makes a Strong Pilot?
Incremental Pilots Within Organizations
Reduce Risk with Redundancy
Travel Pilots to Shake Up Stagnant Thinking
CHAPTER 9: PAUSE, REVIEW, REPEAT
What Worked? What Didn’t? What Could You Do Differently?
Pause and Review
Take Incrementally Bigger Risks
STAGE FOUR: LAUNCH
LAUNCH OVERVIEW
CHAPTER 10: BUILD FIRST, COURAGE SECOND
When Will You Make the Big Move? What Are Your Linchpin Decision Criteria?
Identify your Launch Timing Criteria
Pivot Hexagon
Know When to Hold Versus Fold
Your Gut Has a Brain
Pivot Scales: Comfort Versus Risk
CHAPTER 11: FLIP FAILURE
What Will Move You into Action?
Rejection as a Stepping-Stone to Success
Mine Failure for Strengths
You Can’t Make Everybody Happy—So Stop Trying and Start Living
Separate Decisions from Difficult Conversations
Don’t Wait for Perfect Conditions
How Do You Know Your Launch Worked?
The Continuous Pivot
STAGE FIVE: LEAD
LEAD OVERVIEW
CHAPTER 12: ARE YOU LISTENING?
How Can You Facilitate Engaging Career Conversations?
Your Interest Matters More Than You Think
How to Use the Pivot Method Within Organizations
Pilot Creative Internal-Mobility Programs
CONCLUSION: CELEBRATE COMPLEXITY
Checking In at the Last Resort
The Courageous Life
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
POST PIVOT: ONLINE RESOURCES
PIVOT METHOD QUICK REFERENCE
LAUNCH CRITERIA CHECKLIST
RESOURCES FOR COMPANIES
PIVOT 201: RECOMMENDED READING
NOTES
INDEX
INTRODUCTION: PIVOT IS THE NEW NORMAL
Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered.
—José Saramago
“I think I am going crazy.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Am I asking for too much?”
“I just can’t do this anymore.”
“I think I am having a midlife crisis.”
“Will I ever be happy?”
NO MATTER THEIR AGE, LIFE STAGE, BANK ACCOUNT BALANCE, OR CAREER LEVEL, these are the sentiments I hear from people who are looking for more in their lives, even if they have found career success by traditional standards.
Many have perfect-on-paper jobs, but have hit a plateau and feel an inexplicable urge to do things differently. They may be considering walking away from a robust salary, folding or starting their own business, or taking time off altogether. Some are unsatisfied or frustrated with their work for other reasons: they have outgrown their position or business, or they feel drawn to a new area that better suits their values and interests, where they can make a greater contribution.
Through their confusion and self-doubt, one thing remains clear: the way they have been working is no longer working. Maybe you can relate to some of the following stories of people who reached a career crossroad:
Amy Schoenberger had been working as a senior creative strategist in a public relations firm for four years. She was starting to feel uninspired by the work, but had no desire to leave the company and coworkers she loved.
After several tumultuous years in his late twenties, Adam Chaloeicheep hit a point of physical and emotional burnout. He wondered, Is this all there is? Adam needed time to reflect and reset, so he left his lucrative job as creative director of a real estate development firm, sold nearly all his possessions, and moved from Chicago to Thailand to study meditation in a monastery.
Tara Adams had been at Google for eleven years running educational outreach programs when she felt the urge to slow the frenetic pace of her career and start a family, perhaps even take a break from work.
After graduating from UCLA, Marques Anderson spent four years in the NFL as a safety. He started playing for the Green Bay Packers, then after three years got traded to the Oakland Raiders before a final trade to the Denver Broncos one year later. Though he loved his time in the league, Marques also knew that it was important to have a transition plan for what would follow.
Kyle Durand was on active duty in Iraq, practicing international and operational law, when he found out he had been passed over for promotion after seventeen years of service. After receiving the news in a brief phone call with his commanding officer, he left his office (located at the time in Saddam Hussein’s palace) and walked back to his tent in the middle of the night. While he pondered his fate, a rocket suddenly shot over his head, hit a fuel bladder on a nearby runway, and exploded. At that moment, Kyle knew it was time to return home. He was devastated by the phone call, and no longer wanted to risk his life for an organization that did not seem to value his efforts.
As John Hill and Bud Bilanich approached big birthdays—sixty and sixty-five years old, respectively—friends, family, and colleagues repeatedly asked if they would retire. As they considered how the next phase of their careers might unfold, one constant remained strong: neither had any interest in clichéd notions of retirement that involved stopping work completely.
Brian Jones (not his real name) and Julie Clow were executives who had outgrown their senior-level leadership roles at prestigious companies and felt capped in their trajectories. However, with families to support and large financial packages at their current jobs, leaving would not be an easy choice.
I had been working at Google in training, coaching, and career development for over five years when I took a sabbatical to launch my first book, Life After College, in 2011. Even though I loved working there and had a perfect-on-paper role myself, something was still missing.
From the outside, it may have looked like we were all undergoing quarter-life or midlife crises. Onlookers might have wrongly assumed we were falling apart or going crazy for seeming unsatisfied with our current paths and leaving our stable jobs behind.
However, on the inside we all knew we had hit a plateau, or pivot point, in our careers. We were talented, hardworking, and committed to making a positive impact—and yet we all felt called to do things differently than how we had been doing them. Tackling these massive changes felt disorienting but right. For whatever uncertainties lay ahead, each of us knew that staying in the same place would have been the greater risk.
Calling such career aspirations a crisis, shaming and blaming people for wanting to prioritize meaningful work in a volatile economy by saying they are “entitled” or “too picky,” means we are miss
ing a huge opportunity to celebrate and support those who seek to make a greater contribution to their workplaces, society, and the lives of everyone around them.
We do not have a productive description for this type of career transition. Or at least we didn’t, until now.
PIVOT OR GET PIVOTED
People are no longer working at the same jobs for forty years with the safety of pension plans waiting at the end. The average employee tenure in America is now four to five years and job roles often change dramatically within those four to five years. Among workers twenty-five to thirty-four years old, the average tenure drops to three years.
Many jobs that disappeared during the last recession are not coming back. Every day, breakthroughs in technology generate greater automation in the workplace, threatening positions held by hardworking people and the stability of companies large and small. Job security has become an antiquated idea, a luxury most people today do not enjoy, whether they are aware of it or not.
Corporate loyalty has given way to uncertainty; companies that seem too big to fail have collapsed, along with many smaller ones. New ones take their place. With the advent of app marketplaces, crowdfunding, the maker revolution, and sharing economies, we now see billion-dollar valuations for companies that would not have existed ten years ago, and many smaller businesses cropping up in parallel.
To add to the upheaval, a recent Gallup study revealed that almost 90 percent of workers are either “not engaged” or “actively disengaged from their jobs.”
But you do not need to read any of the statistics, books, or articles to have a visceral sense of this volatility. “Virtually everything about jobs and work and careers has changed,” said Scott Uhrig, an executive recruiter for technology firms and author of Navigating Successful Job Transitions. “Just like the boiling frog, we may not fully appreciate the magnitude of the change even though we are completely immersed in it.” Perhaps you are currently experiencing this boiling frog feeling in your career—if you have not already jumped out of the pot.
Some say the word career itself is dead—a throwback to a bygone era—as we move increasingly toward a project-based economy. Certainly, we can expect to experience significant changes every few years, much more often than was socially acceptable in the past. Because our careers are so fundamentally tied to our livelihood and sense of confidence, meaning, and purpose, these transitions can be traumatic without a road map for traversing them.