In
a career-related conversation I got into with colleagues recently, we engaged
on how one gets to the job that they want or would like. More specifically, the
issue was more about how does one deal with the fact that they may not like
their current job, which was a real case for more than one person in the
dialogue.
In
our dialogue, we looked at the implications of focusing on the fact that one
does not like their current job. The danger with this approach, I contended,
was that, in life, when you remove what you do not like, it does not
necessarily mean that what remains is what you want. And thus the difficulty is
figuring out the place that one wants to be, and also the route to get there. I
argued that sometimes, because the future is so far away, it may look
impossible to get to. My advice was to borrow from the concept of Idealised Design, popularised by leading
systems thinker Russell L. Ackoff (1919-2009).
Essentially,
Ackoff’s approach is that the best way to deal with a problem in a system is to
use dissolution, which is to redesign the system that has the problem or its
environment so as to eliminate the problem. This approach was developed to look
at organisations, but I stretched the discussion in our dialogue to get my
colleagues to imagine their individual life as much of a system as an
organisation. In this approach, using an individual’s life as the system, it
would suggest its future trajectory is redesigned, and it would now consist of
those elements that would make one reach that career goal. For this to happen,
though, the precondition would be that those elements that characterise the
individual should be scientifically feasible, capable of surviving in the
current environment and also, be able to get the individual to adapt to
different conditions.
In
this model, it presupposes that the individual’s characteristics as we know
them no longer exist, and the individual now has new characteristics that the
individual would have designed to have they want. In this case, the individual
visualises themselves as if they are already in the job that they want, rather
than think about how to get to it. They would think about what they would have
as characteristics in this idealised future job state. This approach would
firstly simplify thinking about how to get to the future as the individual
would work backwards from the idealised future state. Secondly, because one
would not be constrained by the challenges they see in getting to that future,
the individual would see an enlarged concept of what is possible or feasible.
Thirdly, and no least important, this process would enable creativity.
I
argued with my colleagues that if all of us spent more time doing this, than
worrying about the difficulty of getting to the future we want, we had a better
chance of defining the things we need to do today to get to that future.
This
approach, however, does not mean one’s mind needs to only stay at the ideal
state. My advice was that this should be married with a real focus on what
would need to be done in the present to enable that future. Because the
individual is already engaged in some form of work, how do you ensure that you
remain energised to pursue this ideal? In that instance, rather than focusing
on the fact that you may not like the current job, maybe if one spent their
energy practicing those elements of the current job that relate to the
characteristics of the ideal future job, then they are preparing themselves for
that future job.
One
of my colleagues then indicated that this makes absolute sense for her because
of the saying from the Laws of Attraction that Energy Goes Where Attention Flows. This is also the beauty of a
systemic approach, as it allowed for mutually reinforcing approaches to be used
in looking at the problem. Through the idealised design approach, we had been
able to get to a point where the individual sees their future state today, and
also starts to practice the characteristics of that future state in their current
job. She argued that by focusing on the positive aspects of the current job
that relate to that future, than focusing on the negatives they do not like,
then they are building faster to that future ideal state. They would attract
the necessary positivity that would potentially attract to them those who could
enable that future job.
Anyone
can define the right future for themselves, without being constrained by the
challenges of the present.