No doubt the news of 700,000 lost jobs can be nerve-wracking. Of course stress levels increase and worries of job security can fill our horizon.
Maybe you have already lost your job. Maybe your nightmare has become your reality.
But what if the current crisis were to present an opportunity? What if that opportunity outweighs the trouble and trauma experienced on the way to it? What if something far better lies on the other side of the muck and mire in which we currently find ourselves?
Do we risk proceeding through the muck, knowing neither its extent nor its resolution? Or do we scramble back to where we were before, reverting to what we knew as safe and secure, (however much we hated our job at the time.)
What if making our way forward involved three components: some creative re-visioning, some relational research and some intensive effort on our part? Would you choose to go forward? Or back?
This month we look at the opportunity that may lie in some creative re-visioning of ourselves and our professional contribution.
The creative re-visioning might be in any of three areas: your role at work, the professional field within which you exercise your role, or you may have an idea that changes how we view or use a product or service altogether.
Maybe your role needs to change. Expand, focus, involve new skills or new responsibilities. Are you learning continually? Always challenging yourself? Do you try to add value to your role each year?
Look around the office and ask yourself which roles and/or tasks are attractive to you. Do you admire Mark’s ability to work with others? Do you come up with ideas that you wish you could implement? Is Sarah overwhelmed by a project with which you could help?
Maybe your skills would be better suited in another professional field. Which of your skills are task-specific and related to your particular job description, and which skills are transferable and applicable anywhere? Knowing how to use a particular contact management/calendar computer program would be an example of the first. Knowing how to make plans, organize events and stay in touch with people is an example of the second.
Make a list of your transferable skills. Get people who know you to help. Transferable skills are the keys to expanding your opportunities to fields outside your own.
Finally, maybe you don’t see the world the way others do. Maybe the source of your frustration is at a deeper, more fundamental, even structural level. A more radical change may be in store for you.
Who would have imagined listening to music in random play lists? Who would have foreseen using a phone for multiple communication and organizational purposes? Maybe you’re like us at Bold Enterprises and foresee a working world where people design for themselves working environments that are worth getting up for and pouring oneself into.
Maybe this economic crisis is your opportunity to take a step forward.
There’s a lot of talk about leadership but not many leaders are making much of a difference.
Enter our guest, Marion Skeete, for a new discussion series on Visionary Leadership.