Professional Reorientation – Having To or Wanting To

Humans naturally tend to feel resistant towards change, so most of us probably won’t like to hear that we’ll witness a staggering increase in the number of reorientations over the coming years. Either we’ll want to reorient ourselves to keep up with the exponential development happening on our planet. Or, we’ll have to reorient ourselves because there’s no longer a need for our specific position.

In 1998 the amusing fable Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson became an instant bestseller. The book’s core message is that to successfully embrace change, we can simply set out to find “new cheese”. But how does this translate into our day-to-day? Ideally, if we take a really open-minded approach. Kind of like someone just starting out on their career.

Here are some questions that you can use to guide you:

• What would I like to do?
• What interests me the most?
• What kind of work really speaks to me?

 And then, once you’ve gained a clearer idea of what you’d like to do, consider the following questions:

• Which resources do I already have that I can build on?
• How can I get to where I want to go by taking one tiny step at a time?

 A recent study by the World Economic Forum predicted two million new jobs by 2010, but also that seven million jobs would be lost due to the ever-increasing digitalization of our world, especially in the service and administration sectors. Four months ago one of our clients actually stated that this was her reason for wanting to reorient herself.

All of us will have to constantly reinvent ourselves. Let’s keep ourselves flexible and in shape for that by becoming really clear about our interests and needs, translating these into customer benefits, and always having a plan B (or C, or D) at hand.