Leaving the Field: An Idiosyncratic Guide to Reinvention Part 2
Search — A Critical Activity for Reinvention
Idiosyncratic indicates “a way of thinking or a mode of behaviour limited to a particular person, people, or type of person; an individual mental characteristic; a view or feeling identified with a single person or people.” In crafting this primer to reinvention, my observations and experiences and those related by others frame the argument and inform the advice. Some aspects do align with important research findings such as the criticality of conscientiousness in life success, the useful employment of failure, etc., but this guide is offered without any pretense of having emerged from more rigorous empirical testing.
Therefore, my biases are all over these suggestions like a toddler’s fingerprints on a sippy cup. My particular path is not particularly interesting. One of the advantages of age is to realize that although everyone is interesting few of us are that much more interesting than anyone else. These notes first emerged many years ago when someone asked me to describe how I had become a Chief Learning Officer. They surfaced again and again especially when encountering the reinvention tales of friends and colleagues: the henna artist who became a popular radio personality, the data analyst who returned to songwriting, the teacher who became an executive at a Fortune 500 firm. They were all successful in their particular field, and then they left it to dare formation of a respected identity in a new field. These reflections also came to me as younger folks asked me about making shifts in their career. I realized from their subsequent feedback that there are some lessons that appear to work for others as they worked for me. Therefore, the practices followed each time I was ‘leaving the field’ are captured here.
(The phrase ‘leaving the field’ was first applied to me when I managed to step away from a successful career in behavioral health in the 1980s. ‘Field’ is one of the oldest words in English language. A piece of open land which is used, or has been designated to be used, for a particular purpose. and that purpose was often warfare as in ‘field of battle’, a context in which leaving the field might indicate surrender or victory. That same ambiguity applies to its metaphorical use here.)
The purpose of these notes is to leave for others the answers to the questions that come to me more and more often:
Ø How do I switch careers?
Ø How do I break into a different discipline, craft, or occupation?
Ø What is the best way to become better known among the experts in a particular domain?
Ø How can I figure out where my talents would best fit?
Ø What worked for you?
Ø What told you that you were headed in the right direction?
The first step in getting at all of these questions is to search. The search is for knowledge, not data. Larry Prusak and Tom Davenport pointed out the crucial difference in their book Working Knowledge: “Knowledge seekers are looking for insights, judgments, and understanding.” Data gives you long lists and copious details, but it takes work and even wisdom to turn that into knowledge.
So what kinds of insight, judgments, and understandings are sought? First, the ones that relate to yourself. Before steaming ahead with the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of reinvention, we must probe the ‘why’. “Wherever you go, there you are” as the 1972 People’s Guide to Mexico had it. In the addictions field, which I entered as an alcoholism counselor in 1976, a similar wisdom was present. Newly sober clients would plan to travel to new destinations or (metaphorically) to different identities but experienced counselors would advise them against these ‘geographic cures’ (as the AA Big Book termed them) because such trips were undertaken without lucidity and often ended in another catastrophe. Samuel Johnson nailed this truth for all other kinds of reinvention in the 18th Century: “The general remedy of those, who are uneasy without knowing the cause, is change of place; they are willing to imagine that their pain is the consequence of some local inconvenience, and endeavour to fly from it, as children from their shadows; always hoping for some more satisfactory delight from every new scene, and always returning home with disappointment and complaints.”
If we don’t acknowledge why we are reinventing, then some of the same conditions we face currently (and which may be the real ‘why’ of our efforts) will follow us to this new enterprise dooming it to early failure. Making sure that we are not launching reinvention prematurely or precariously doesn’t indicate a lack of confidence, but rather an abundance of caution. Unlike some other guides to reinvention, this guide does not assume that “you are remarkable” because we don’t know that, do we? The smartest thing we can do with the start of reinvention is to search ourselves and our motives carefully.
One way to begin the search inside ourselves is to ask what’s missing that we believe reinvention will supply. There are no wrong answers to this question. Some of them may be shams we play upon ourselves, but that doesn’t matter at this point in our journey. What counts is the search — listing all the possible answers to ‘why’ we wish to reinvent. Answers heard frequently to this question involve resources (e.g., more money), self-image (e.g., more status and/or satisfaction), and destiny (e.g., who I’m really supposed to be). Answers heard less frequently but nonetheless relevant are escaped (e.g., tired of being me), despair (e.g., the ship is sinking), and boredom. Remember that in this exercise there are no wrong answers, just answers that may make reinvention more or less difficult and/or fulfilling. ‘Wherever you go there you are’ applies to that second set of submerged reasons. The same forces inside of us will obtain in any new effort at morphing identity.
‘Why’ matters is during the real work of reinvention we need to return to that ‘raison d’changer’. It is our justification. Examining this at the outset influences many other decisions and actions starting with the question of whether the ‘why’ is worth the work, the view is worth the climb. There are no true easy reinventions. They are all arduous. With that in mind, to gain clarity write down one night why we will pursue a new embodiment. To gain validation, return to that list the next day then show it to a friend unafraid to ask questions and unburdened by prejudices. If we lack such a friend, we find the next best person — a cleric, an old teacher, a coworker. Someone roughly neutral must react to our ‘why’. If worse comes to worst, send it to me. As part of the obligation of writing a guide like this one.
And this is just the first part of search! This idiosyncratic guide treats the whole process of reinvention as requiring significant time and attention. This is NOT ‘30 Days to a New You’. In the next installment, we will plumb the ‘what’ and ‘how’ sections of search and that takes time too. But absent a thorough probing of why we crave a different identity, why we will dare to leave one field for a new one, reinvention will fail. Why is that? Because as Stephen Covey reminded us some years ago, we must begin with the end in mind. The ‘why’ of our desire is the foundation of that and. Flawed or false or worse missing, it will cause the entire enterprise to topple — possibly right on top of us.
