by Tina Seelig
Taking this a step further, perhaps you’re passionate about something and are quite talented in the field, but there’s no existing market for those skills. For example, you might be a skilled artist and love to paint, or crave surfing and can ride any wave. But we all know the market for these skills is small. Trying to craft a career around such a passion is often a recipe for frustration. You have two choices: you can think of it as a wonderful hobby and do it on the side, or if you are fully committed to building a career around it, then you will need to build an audience for your work. The latter is described in chapter 8, where Perry Klebahn builds a market for the snowshoes he invented.
Alternately, if you have talent in an area and there’s a big market for your skills, but you don’t find the work satisfying, then that is a great area in which to find a job. For example, if you are an accomplished accountant, there’s always a position for someone who can build a balance sheet. For most people in the world, this is where they live. They have a job that uses their skills, but they can’t wait to get home to focus on the activities they love—their hobbies. They count the days until the weekend, until vacation, or until retirement. The worst-case scenario is finding yourself in a position where you have no passion for your work and no skills in the field and there’s no market for what you’re doing. Take the classic joke about trying to sell snow to Eskimos. Now imagine doing that if you hate snow and are a terrible salesperson. It’s a bad situation all the way around.
The sweet spot is where your passion overlaps with your skills and the market. If you can find that spot, then you’re in the wonderful position in which your job enriches your life instead of just providing the financial resources that allow you to enjoy your life after the workday is over. The goal should be a career in which you can’t believe people actually pay you to do your job.
A quote often attributed to the Chinese Taoist philosopher Lao-tzu sums this up:
The master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is always doing both.
The wisdom of this is reflected in the observation that hard work plays a huge part in making you successful. And the truth is, we simply tend to work harder at things we’re passionate about. This is easy to see in children who spend hours working at the things they love to do. A child passionate about building will spend hours designing amazing structures with blocks. A child who loves art will draw for hours without a break. And to a child who loves sports, shooting hoops or hitting baseballs all afternoon will seem like fun, not practice. Passion is a big driver. It makes each of us want to work hard to perfect our skills and to excel.
It is important to understand, though, that most of us aren’t born with specific passions, but they grow from our experiences. Before something is your passion, it is something you know nothing about. You would have no idea that you were good at cooking and really enjoyed it until you tried it. The same is true with software coding, playing golf, and writing novels. Engaging in new activities is critically important because it opens the door to developing—not finding—a wide variety of passions. Mike Rowe, famous for his Dirty Jobs television show in which he took on tasks that got him far outside his comfort zone, says it beautifully: “Never follow your passion, but always bring it with you.”1
The process of finding the gold mine where your skills, your interests, and the market overlap can take some time. Consider Nathan Furr, who started his academic career as an English major and dreamed of being a professor. Like many English majors, Nathan soon realized that the market for English professors was impossibly limited. And even if he got a job in the field, the compensation would be pretty low. This was going to be a tough way to support the big family he was planning. Nathan spent some time thinking about other ways he could use his skills and channel his passions. After scanning the horizon for other options, it became pretty clear that he would fit well in the world of management consulting, which would allow him to use his research and writing skills, as well as his joy of learning. The only problem was that Nathan didn’t know enough to get that first job in the field. So he gave himself a year to prepare. He joined organizations on his college campus that would allow him to learn more about consulting, and he practiced doing mini case studies, such as those presented during a typical job interview. By the time the one-year mark rolled around, Nathan was ready and landed a prime job as a management consultant for a top firm. It was a great fit in so many ways, tapping into his skills and his passions and providing him with the financial security he needed. Years later, he decided to build upon these interests by earning a PhD in management science and engineering, and is now a business professor at INSEAD in France. So, he started with a dream of being a professor and ultimately got there by finding ways to bridge his skills, his interests, and the market.
I share this story because it is relevant to all of us. If Nathan knew what he would be doing professionally when he was thirty-five, he would have been both surprised and delighted. But he would have had no idea how he was going to get from his starting point as an English major in Utah to a leading business school professor in France. The key is that by setting your intention on larger and larger goals, and taking a series of small steps in those directions, you ultimately achieve more than you could ever have imagined.
Nathan picked a career path after he’d been exposed to a variety of options. But most of us are encouraged to plan much further ahead. People love to ask kids, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” This forces children to nail down their goals, at least in their minds, long before they’ve been exposed to the wide array of opportunities. We also typically visualize ourselves doing the things we see others doing in our immediate environment, which is a terribly limited view considering the world of possibilities. Also, my guess is that you, like me, were heavily influenced by people around you who liked to tell you what they thought you should be doing. I clearly remember one of my teachers saying, “You’re really good at science. You should consider being a nurse.” A fine suggestion, but it is only one of an almost infinite number of things one can do with a gift for science.
It is remarkable how one statement, often from a stranger, can shift the way one sees oneself and one’s prospects. During my creativity course, teams of students each pick an organization they think is innovative. These teams visit the firm, interview employees, watch them in action, and come to their own conclusions about what makes the organization creative. They then present this information to the class in an innovative way. One team picked the San Jose Children’s Discovery Museum. They followed the staff and visitors for days to see what really made it tick. At one station kids were building a miniature roller coaster, changing different variables to see the results, and an eight-year-old girl was experimenting with the equipment. She changed the length, the height, and the angles of the various parts and ran different simulations to see the effect. A member of the museum staff watched her experiment for a while and simply commented, “You’re doing the same types of things that engineers do.” Later that day my students asked the girl what she had learned at the museum. She thought for a second and said with confidence, “I learned that I could be an engineer.”
Like the girl in the museum, we all receive explicit and implicit messages about the roles we’re expected to play. A couple of years ago a colleague of mine, a mechanical engineering professor, told a remarkable story. She has several women friends from her university who are also engineers in different disciplines. They often come over to her house for dinner and socializing. When her son was young, he was usually around, watching and listening to their conversations. As he got older and proved to be good at math and science, someone said to him, “Gee, you should consider studying engineering.” He twisted his face and
said, “No way. Engineering is for girls.” My women friends who are physicians have told me similar stories. Their young sons called discussions about medicine “girl talk.”
We are all subject to these types of preconceptions. Consider the following riddle. A boy and his father are in an accident and end up in the hospital. The surgeon says, “I can’t operate on this boy. He’s my son.” What’s going on? When I told my very progressive women doctor friends this riddle, even they couldn’t figure out that the surgeon in the riddle was the boy’s mother. They tried to come up with convoluted answers to the riddle, all involving a male doctor. Once they were told the answer they were terribly embarrassed that they, too, had fallen into this traditional trap.
When I think back on the messages I received, it’s clear that specific individuals had a big impact—some were encouraging and others were not. When I was about fourteen years old we had a close family friend who was a neurosurgeon. I was fascinated by the brain and finally mustered the courage to ask him about his work. He thought it was “cute” and made a joke. I was disappointed and didn’t ask again.
It wasn’t until college that I found a professional in the field who explicitly encouraged me to pursue my interest in the brain. I was in my first neuroscience class during my sophomore year and the professor gave us an unusual assignment. He asked us to design a series of experiments to figure out what a specific part of the brain does. He told us that nobody knew its role and that it was our job to come up with a set of experiments to find out. When I got my paper back a week later a note written on the top said, “Tina, you think like a scientist.” At that moment I became a scientist. I had just been waiting for someone to acknowledge my enthusiasm—and to give me permission to pursue my interests. We are all powerfully influenced by the messages around us. Some are direct, such as a teacher saying, “You should be a nurse,” or “You think like a scientist.” Others are embedded in our environment, such as years of seeing only female engineers or male surgeons.
* * *
When I was in my early twenties, it was surprisingly difficult for me to separate what I wanted for myself and what others wanted for me. I know this is true for many of my students as well. They tell me they’re getting so much “guidance” from others that they have a tough time figuring out what they want to do. I remember clearly that I sometimes had the urge to quit or to avoid things that others strongly encouraged me to do, just so I would have the space to figure out what I wanted, independent of what they wanted for me. For example, I started graduate school at the University of Virginia right after I graduated from the University of Rochester. My parents were thrilled. They were so proud of me and were comforted that my path for the next few years was set.
But after only one semester of graduate school, I decided that I really needed to take a break from school after visiting a friend in Santa Cruz, California. It was a terribly difficult decision, but I knew in my gut that I needed to be a leaf in the wind for a while in order to understand what was the right path for me. The hardest part of the entire process was telling my parents I was taking a leave of absence from graduate school. My decision was extremely hard for them. I appreciated their endless support and encouragement, but it also made it difficult for me to truly know if being in school was the right decision for me or if I was doing it to make them happy. I drove across the country to Santa Cruz, California, with my cat, with no idea of what I was going to do next.
In retrospect, taking a break from school turned out to be a pivotal decision. My time in Santa Cruz was completely unstructured, and I was ready for any eventuality. It was exciting and scary. It was the first time I didn’t have a specific assignment, a focused goal, or a clear plan. Although often stressful, it was the perfect way to figure out what I really wanted to do. I took odd jobs so I could support myself and spent a lot of time walking and thinking at the beach. After a while I started going to the University of California at Santa Cruz’s biology library to keep up on neuroscience literature. At first it was monthly, then weekly, then daily.
After about six months in Santa Cruz, I was ready to get back into the lab, but not ready to go back to graduate school. With that objective, I tracked down a list of the neuroscience faculty at Stanford University, which was not far away, and wrote each one a letter. I told them about my background and asked if they had a research job for me. Over the next few weeks, I got letters back from all of them, but no one had an open position. However, one faculty member passed my letter on, and I received a call from a professor in the anesthesia department. He asked if I would like to work in the operating room testing new medical equipment on high-risk patients. I jumped at the chance.
Within days I was at Stanford, getting up at the crack of dawn, wearing surgical scrubs, and monitoring patients. This experience was fascinating in a million unexpected ways. Once the project was over, I managed to negotiate a job as a research assistant in a neuroscience lab and eventually applied to transfer to graduate school at Stanford. The admissions committee made me jump through flaming hoops, but I was now extremely motivated and did everything they required. Eventually I was accepted. Honestly, that was the proudest moment of my life. And I was starting graduate school for myself, not for others.
I’ve taken many detours that might look to others like a waste of time. But this wasn’t the case at all. Not only did the twists in my path give me a fresh perspective on my goals, they also gave me time to experiment with options that helped confirm what I wanted to do.
People often feel pressured to make decisions about their career path very early and then stick with them for decades. They want to be a “fire and forget” missile that zeroes in on a target and pursues it relentlessly. But this just isn’t how things work most of the time. Most people change course many times before finding the best match for their skills and interests. This is similar to the process of developing a product or designing new software—it’s important to keep experimenting, trying lots of things until you find out what works. Being too set on your path too early will likely lead you in the wrong direction. A reader of the earlier version of this book sent me a note with a beautiful analogy that captures the essence of this idea. He said that “too often people are concerned about getting on the train at the right time, as opposed to getting on the right train.”
I’ve met many students who literally show me a detailed map of what they plan to do for the next fifty years. Not only is this unrealistic, but it’s sadly limiting. There are so many unexpected experiences ahead that it’s best to keep your eyes open instead of blinding yourself to the serendipitous options that might present themselves. Planning a career should be like traveling in a foreign country. Even if you prepare carefully, have an itinerary and a place to stay at night, the most interesting experiences usually aren’t planned. You might end up meeting a fascinating person who shows you places that aren’t in the guidebook, or you might miss your train and end up spending the day exploring a small town you hadn’t planned to visit. I guarantee that the things you’re likely to remember from the journey are those that weren’t on your original schedule. They will be the unexpected things that jumped into your path, surprising you along the way.
Here’s the secret that few people tell you: there is no right decision. If your first role after school isn’t a good match, try something new. And, if the next one doesn’t fit, try something else. And, if that role sucks, quit! Continue doing this until you find something that is a great match . . . Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. This is similar to dating. It is very unlikely that you will fall in love and get married to the first person you date. The best chance to find a compatible match is to meet lots of people. The dating process is usually filled with false starts and disappointments, but you will never be successful unless you embrace the process of discovery and accept the uncertainty.
I literally changed careers—not just jobs—every two years after I graduated from school until I finally found a car
eer that fit. I was forty-one years old! Most important, none of my prior experiences were a waste of time, even though they weren’t perfect. Each added to my toolbox, providing a wealth of skills that I use every day. Most other people have a similar story, and their career path makes much more sense when viewed through the rearview mirror.
There is another secret that few people share. The uncertainty that we face when we leave school never evaporates. There is uncertainty at each turn of our lives—when we start a new job, launch a new company, begin a new relationship, have a child, or retire. Each of these decisions and actions opens the door to considerable uncertainty—and opportunity!
The opposite of uncertainty is certainty. Would you really want a detailed script for your life, knowing exactly what will happen next month, next year, and next decade? For most people the answer is no. At the core, uncertainty leads to choices. It leads to opportunities. It leads to surprises!
* * *
Most events in your life snap into focus when looked at in retrospect. When you look back on your career path the story makes perfect sense. The road ahead, however, is always fuzzy. It’s easy to get frustrated by the lack of visibility ahead. You can, however, do things to increase the odds that great opportunities will come your way by working in organizations that provide access to a steady stream of new and interesting people and projects.
It’s a mistake to try to manage your career too closely. Consider Teresa Briggs, who leads the entire western region for Deloitte, the consulting firm. She began her career in the audit practice of the company, and after eighteen years in that role reasonably assumed she would be there forever. However, she eventually found herself in an unpredictable situation. New laws required auditors to rotate on and off assignments with individual clients so a fresh set of auditors could ensure the business was being managed legally. Teresa had been working with a very large client, and when she rotated off the team there weren’t other comparable opportunities. But she learned that a new Deloitte group was forming that focused on mergers and acquisitions. While mergers and acquisitions was not her area of expertise, she was offered the opportunity to take a key position. She found that her skills transferred beautifully. Even though Teresa would not have planned this path herself, she realized that her ability to build relationships with clients and lead teams allowed her to excel in this new role.
