by Jenny Blake
CAREER OPERATING MODES
An essential facet of the Pivot mindset is self-awareness. How are you currently showing up in your day-to-day work? Are you operating at your desired energy levels, creative output, and impact? I have observed four primary Career Operating Modes among pivoters: inactive, reactive, proactive, and innovative. The first two are impacter stressors, the latter two are sweet spots:
Inactive: Does not seek changes; paralyzed by fear, uncertainty, and self-doubt; covers up career or life dissatisfaction with unhealthy habits, such as numbing out with excessive amounts of food, alcohol, TV, video games, and so on; feels and acts like a victim of circumstances.
Reactive: Mimics others’ models for success without originality; follows instructions to the letter; waits for inspiration to strike; “phones it in” at work; feels unhappy, but does not inquire into why or what to do about it; lets fear overrule planning for the future and subsequent action steps.
Proactive: Seeks new projects; actively learns new skills; is open to change; improves existing programs; makes connections with others; takes ownership even within existing leadership structures; has a giver mentality, willing and interested in helping others. May not be fully using innate talents, but is exploring what they are and how to amplify them.
Innovative: In addition to proactive mode qualities, fully taps into unique strengths; focuses on purpose-driven work and making meaningful contributions; is energized by a strong vision for new projects with a clear plan for making them happen; does not just improve existing structures, but creates new solutions to benefit others.
Impacters thrive in situations where they are able to be proactive and, even more so, innovative in driving their career forward, implementing new ideas and creatively solving problems, stretching to the edges of what is possible for themselves and the companies they start or work for. When impacters find themselves in inactive or reactive operating mode, they look to pivot again toward a new, more engaging opportunity.
Although it is true that some people may work in inactive or reactive mode for their entire careers, this is not a life that impacters can stomach. The boredom, anxiety, and feeling of standing still becomes increasingly intolerable, often manifesting in physical symptoms such as headaches, getting sick more frequently, or worse.
Plateau Versus Pivot
At these critical pivot points, impacters must recognize this tension and take action. Otherwise the unhappiness from staying still for too long compounds, making the career confusion feel insurmountable, and taking it from conundrum to crisis.
Though they may get restless more easily, impacters do have a distinct advantage: by seeing career boosts and setbacks as learning opportunities, all outcomes become fodder for growth. Nassim Nicholas Taleb captures this concept in the six-word title of his book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder.
Antifragile organisms do not simply withstand change and survive it; they become better because of it. A glass is fragile. If you drop it, it breaks. A tree is resilient. In strong winds, it sways but stays standing, more or less remaining the same. Organisms that are antifragile actually benefit from shocks. Taleb invokes Hydra, the creature from Greek mythology: when one of Hydra’s many heads is cut off, two grow back in its place. The tough-times cliché is true: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. According to Taleb, antifragile organisms “thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors,” and “love adventure, risk, and uncertainty.”
Love risk and uncertainty? Huh? Aren’t these things to be mitigated, if not entirely eliminated? Not if you want to be antifragile in a world that is ruled by them. Impacters find ways to thrive in uncertainty and disorder. Rather than merely reacting to randomness or becoming paralyzed by it, they look for opportunities to alchemize what is already working into what comes next.
TRUST YOUR RISK TOLERANCE
After much deliberation, I chose not to return to Google after my sabbatical. That is when I first realized that financial security and great benefits were important to me, but not the ultimate drivers of my career decisions.
I knew it would not be fair to Google or to my book to give both projects short shrift by taking on too much. I also knew that I could not sustain the pace of keeping side projects and a full-time job much longer. I was exhausted and on the express train back to burnout, where I had unfortunately been too many times in prior years. Moreover, I had a hunch that leaving to start my own business would spring me out of proactive mode and challenge me to become the innovative impacter I longed to be. So in July 2011, I became a free agent.
Fast-forward one year and once more I was struggling, racking my brain about what’s next . . . again. I would be turning thirty soon, and although I was proud of Life After College, I did not want to talk about it exclusively for the rest of my career. At the same time, in speeches and interviews, I had become known as “the girl who left Google.” Even during my time there, I often felt uncomfortable with how much of my identity and professional self-worth was tied up in the company’s shadow, and here I was again, facing the same issue from another perspective.
I was defined by leaving things, but wanted to look ahead to a more energizing mission. What did I stand for? What problems was I passionate about solving? How could I build a sustainable business that would help me make a meaningful impact on others’ lives?
For the next two years I wrestled with these questions, this time without a steady paycheck to fund the exploration. It was much more nerve-racking as my livelihood now depended on the answer.
My tireless brainstorming took me further from myself, not closer. I circled around big ideas, big bets, and big leaps. But really, I kept entertaining options out there. Although any one could have been a brilliant idea to pursue over the next six months, they were not going to help me pay my bills this month.
I felt like I was on a spinning teacup ride: I was dizzy, tired of circling vague ideas without a clear way forward, and nauseated about how to support myself. I am a grown adult, I thought. There is no excuse for this.
I understand now that I made the same mistake I see other pivoters making: underestimating what I was capable of, particularly in a sink-or-swim situation, by looking too far outside of myself for answers. I set my sights on next steps that were inaccessible given my starting point and timeline, and that ultimately prevented me from making real progress.
Barring massive events outside of our control, there is a sweet spot for when and how to pivot. You probably won’t know with 100 percent certainty when to make your next big career move, but you can get a lot smarter about how you reduce the risks and potential margin for error—error in the sense that you end up worse off than you are now.
Riskometer
We all have a different risk tolerance. What is risky for someone else may be a snoozefest for you. Take your risk temperature by identifying which of the four zones you currently fall into on the Riskometer diagram below. Keep these distinctions in mind as you proceed with your pivot. Pay attention to when you start playing it too safe (when you might find yourself slipping from the comfort zone into stagnation), when something feels edgy but exciting (stretch zone), or when a next step seems too overwhelming or extreme (panic zone).
Riskometer Reading
Stagnation zone: Restless, antsy, trapped, anxious, or bored. May start manifesting as physical symptoms and health problems.
Comfort zone: Feeling good about the status quo; daily life doesn’t demand much deep thinking about the direction of your career. Work is “fine.”
Stretch zone: Challenged, excited, and motivated to get out of bed every day. Actively learning; work may be unpredictable, but you feel engaged.
Panic zone: Anxiety is starting to dominate your thoughts; you are not able to think long term about the future because you are dealing with things that are “on fire” in your day-to-day life.
Or, if contemplating next steps, you feel so paralyzed by fear that you end up doing nothing.
Career pivots can stretch us to our maximum capacity, and often even a bit further, but they do not have to be debilitating. Working through the four Pivot stages will help you avoid extremes on the risk spectrum: neither taking a blind leap, nor analyzing yourself into the ground by overcalculating every step. The ideal range for change for impacters is in the stretch zone: the place where you feel challenged, excited, and focused, with a healthy dose of adrenaline propelling you forward.
One way to visualize the amount of risk, reward, and work required for your pivot is to imagine plotting your move on a graph. With time on the x-axis, and growth on the y-axis, the degree, or incline, of your next move can be viewed as the amount of resources it consumes in time, money, energy, and effort. A pivot can be subtle, say a 20-degree turn, such as moving to a new team at work. Or a pivot can be sharper, say 70 degrees, such as switching industries or leaving your job to start a business.
Avoid pivots that are too sharp, too far past your stretch zone—what I call 180s. These are dramatic leaps of faith that have little to do with your current role or skill set, which means there are too many unknowns that you would be gambling on when you launch. However, even what sometimes looks like a 180 from the outside might actually be, in execution, a pivot comprising a series of smaller steps that paved the way for larger change.
If your mission makes your heart sing, but the idea of launching into it tomorrow gives you a serious case of anxiety—or agita, as Italians would say—build incrementally toward the final Launch stage by planting, scanning, and piloting.
TWO (MANY) STEPS AHEAD, ONE STEP BACK
Thinking too many steps ahead about how to pivot my career and business in those first years after my book was published sent me into my panic zone. I was choked by fear, which was magnified by not knowing how I would consistently cover the basic practicalities of my life. As they say in the financial world, I was about to “blow up.” If I blew up, it would be time to get another full-time job. There is nothing objectively wrong with that, but every cell of my body told me that it was not the answer for me, at least not yet.
All of a sudden it hit me: not once did I thoroughly examine my existing strengths. My book. My speaking engagements. The websites I had been building for seven years. The work activities I loved, who I knew, how I was already earning income. Any of these assets, if I was to dig deeper into them, could reveal a bounty of ten more related areas to pursue. I was so ready for the Next Big Thing that I shut myself off from looking at what was already working.
I realized I had dozens of apps already downloaded—skills, interests, and past experiences—all working in my favor, but that I had not been fully using. I had been so focused on what was not working, or what I did not yet have clarity on, that my transition turmoil lasted longer than necessary.
I felt tremendous relief when I stopped blaming myself for my career confusion and started taking smarter, more focused steps. Combing my past for clues to my future gave me a sense of buoyancy and relief: I can figure this out.
I started to celebrate the many things I was proud of and began experimenting with small extensions of the strengths and experiences I had been accumulating throughout my career. This boosted my confidence and empowered me to solve the puzzle sitting right in front of me, with new insight into the pieces already at my disposal.
In January of that key pivot year, I questioned how I would pay my rent. By December, my business was in its most profitable year ever. For the first time, I surpassed six figures, nearly tripling my income from the three years prior. I reconnected with an even stronger sense of focus and flow in my work. Not because a lightning bolt of luck struck me from above—though there were plenty of lucky encounters—but because I was determined to do things differently. I did not just happen upon my confidence again, I aggressively pursued it.
This is the book I wish I’d had during that time: A practical, tactical guide for the trenches of answering what’s next. A blueprint for getting unstuck, taking smart risks, and navigating uncertainty now and in the future. A book that would help me, and all of us, stop spinning and refocus all that brilliant energy back where it belongs—on making a positive difference for as many people as we are able to in this lifetime.
STAGE ONE
PLANT
What Is Working and Where Do You Want to End Up?
PLANT
SCAN
PILOT
LAUNCH
LEAD
PLANT OVERVIEW
THE PLANT STAGE IS THE CRUX OF YOUR PIVOT, WHERE YOU WILL DEVELOP THE most leverage for the stages that follow. For this reason I encourage you to spend more time with this stage than you might think is necessary, or than you may have given these subjects in the past.
The primary goal of the Plant stage is grounding. Rather than aimlessly searching “out there” or building from scratch, the most successful pivots start from a strong foundation of your core values, a clear understanding of your strengths and interests, and a compelling vision for the future. Without these critical elements, you will be reading, talking, second-guessing, and analyzing ad nauseum without gaining any traction—a car spinning its wheels in mud. Ignoring your existing assets and looking too far ahead will leave you working hard but stuck in place.
Given that earning a living is so closely tied to our most basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter, one of the biggest constraints on a pivot is money. In this stage you will also set a strong financial foundation to help inform your pivot timeline.
Why Start from What’s Working?
According to Tom Rath, author of the book StrengthsFinder 2.0 and accompanying strengths assessment, only one-third strongly agree with the statement, “At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.” Those who do have the opportunity to focus on their strengths every day are six times as likely to be engaged in their jobs, and more than three times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life in general.
You have probably found this to be true in your own career. When you invest in what comes naturally and easily to you—in work that makes time fly—your ability to make an impact, and enjoy yourself while doing it, is exponentially higher.
I emphasize what is working because I know you are already tired of what is not working. What isn’t working already keeps you up at night. It is what you are venting to friends and family about, and yes, they are getting as sick of it as you are. What is not working is simply not all that helpful, except as an indicator of what you do want. If your mind jumps back to what isn’t working throughout the exercises, follow up by asking what the opposite would be. What do you want instead?
Often the more stuck someone is, the more they tell me what is not working and what they don’t want, even when I ask forward-looking questions such as, “What does smashing success look like one year from now?” They might reply, “Well, I don’t want to feel stuck. I don’t like not having time to myself at the end of the day. I hate feeling so stressed out. I don’t want to feel like that anymore.”
Although it seems like they are clear on some aspects of how to move forward, this information is not all that useful. These are shallow clues that don’t build a life or a game plan. The positive qualities here might be:
Success looks like waking up after a full night’s sleep, ideally at 6:30 A.M. I would love to start my day meditating, reading, or going for a run. Work energizes me, and I am collaborating with people in a dynamic, open environment, on projects that match my strengths. I get along with my team and have stimulating conversations throughout the day. I head out around 5 P.M. to go for a walk and cook a healthy dinner. I wind down for a few hours by unplugging completely from my devices, except for watching a favorite TV show or two. I head to bed by 10 P.M. unless I am going out with friends.
Which future sce
nario would motivate you more?
CHAPTER 1: CALIBRATE YOUR COMPASS
What Are Your Guiding Principles? What Is Your Happiness Formula?
The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value.
—Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
WHEN YOU SEARCH FOR A PLACE TO STAY ON AIRBNB, you narrow down the choices with criteria such as price, location, size, and amenities. Your dream room might be someone else’s nightmare. Think about your values as life filters, the search criteria that help clarify your priorities. They are rules of thumb for what makes you most fulfilled, the core operating principles by which you live your life. Even if you have not yet expressed your values in words, they are already a part of who you are and how you make decisions.
In a pivot, your values create boundaries and benchmarks for big decisions. They distill the possibilities of what to pursue, help determine next steps, and reveal how to structure day-to-day activities for maximum happiness and productivity.
Making choices that are in line with what is most important to you feels affirming and satisfying, even when those choices are difficult. Acting in ways that feel disingenuous or deflating let you know a value is being suppressed or actively ignored. For example, telling the truth satisfies a value of integrity, even if it risks making another person upset. Telling a lie or staying quiet to keep the peace does not honor this value, and you end up feeling resentful for neglecting it.
