As I wrote, years ago, one of the motivations for my second book, Invent Reinvent Thrive, published by McGraw-Hill, was to memorialize my thoughts and advice to people and companies who suffered from the 2008 Great Recession. This time, the financial setback resulting from the Coronavirus is different, but some of the lessons are the same. So I am repeating and sharing them.
Change is scary. When change is big, especially when change seems total (i.e., a 180 degree upset such as going from employment to unemployment), people assume that coming back will require similarly total change. In 2008, many appeared to be like deer in headlights. They understood the need to reinvent themselves but couldn’t fathom learning all new skills. Even agencies trying to help the sudden mass of unemployed were focused on total redo’s. Such thinking leads to fatalism. It needn’t be your fate, or as they say in a recent Lexus ad: “It is possible to outsmart fate.”
The fact is that total redo’s are rarely necessary. Certain fundamental skills remain and need to be retrained or refined. A few new skills may need to be learned, but that’s a great deal easier than a total change. You can reinvent yourself by such incremental modifications, and that takes less effort, less time and bears higher likelihood of success.
The keys are (i) knowing your skills, (ii) identifying a new occupation, and (iii) understanding its component skills, so you can determine which of your skills need some rehab and which new skills you must acquire. Knowing what’s needed is a critical step to achieving the goal. It’s always easier getting to your destination if you first identify your destination.
Putting it another way, your job is your quiver and the arrows in the quiver are your skills. To change your job capacity, you need only change or refine some of the arrows in your quiver.
Perhaps a personal story will help. As a practicing lawyer, I changed my specialties and focus over half a dozen times. It wasn’t simple but it wasn’t like going back to law school each time. And since leaving the full-time practice decades ago, I reinvented myself several more times, again keeping most skills intact, modifying a few and adding a few new ones. For example, I represented many family businesses over the years as their lawyer. The skills needed some modification, and I needed new perspectives and understanding. Clearly, some new skills were required to become a family business consultant, focusing on succession, good governance, family employment, smart family shareholding, etc. (Some of my clients feel I must have gone back for a degree in psychology, but it just looks that way. All I did was reapply my listening skills.)
So, stop thinking that you have to totally reinvent yourself, which would indeed be a major task. Instead, figure out what vocation requires the least new skills and determine how you must readapt your old skills and learn the new ones. Then you’ll be moving in the right direction. Oh yes, make sure it’s a job you’ll enjoy.
© Shefsky, 2020