Chapter 4
Taking Charge of Your Career
Now that you know more about the current realities of training, HRD, and workplace learning and performance and the career opportunities that exist there, how can you take advantage of that knowledge? Here we'll gather the information presented in the first three chapters into the Career Opportunities Model, a graphic tool that presents your potential career moves holistically—as interconnected options. By offering a wide-angle perspective of the choices you have for identifying and taking on exciting and challenging work within this field, and depicting the fluidity with which you can exercise several work options simultaneously, the model can help you make some career-direction decisions and prepare you for the practical career-moving exercises presented in the second part of this book.
To make the most of this tool and the possibility thinking it engenders, adjust your thinking in three ways:
The model incorporates the following elements:
Brought together into one cohesive piece, this model portrays opportunities in the field and offers you a way to visualize yourself operating in it in a way that is meaningful for you and improves the lives of the workers you serve.
The Career Opportunities Model
Let's take a look at the model (figure 1) and see how you can use it to propel your career forward. The model comprises five sections hinged by arrows that depict connection and movement. Overall, the model emphasizes fluidity. First, note how the sections of the model interrelate with one another. You'll find that this “model reality” actually does reflect your experiences in the field. Next, look at the arrows. Some are single-tipped and identify how the contents of one section flow into and affect another section. Other arrows are double-headed to depict the fluid movement among opportunities within that section.
Now we'll consider the five sections—what they represent and how they relate to you in your search for career direction.
Case Examples for Applying the Career Opportunities Model
How does this model work in the real-life decision making of professionals in our field? Here's how it helped Sam and Amelia.
Sam's Story
Sam has been a trainer in his organization for the past seven years. He has enjoyed his work but he's been complaining recently of being rather bored by what he describes as “delivering the ‘same-old, same-old’ over and over again.” Lately he's been wondering what his options are. Although he doesn't want to leave the field, he knows he needs to do something to reenergize his career. So Sam makes a plan. He decides to attend the next meeting of his professional association because it is going to focus on e-learning and e-training (Trend), and there he learns about some of the exciting possibilities in e-training. Armed with some facts, some ideas, and renewed energy, he schedules a meeting with the head of his department. Sam knows his company has begun investigating e-training, but he hasn't been in on planning when and how it's going to happen.
Sam explains to his department head how much he enjoys training (Practice Area) but also how ready he is for a new challenge. He outlines his ideas, emphasizing that he'd like to be part of the team that puts together the company's e-learning initiative. He also makes it clear that he really wants to be one of the new e-trainers. Because he's done his homework, Sam is able to explain what skills he'll need and how he hopes to gain them. He shares his ideas for how e-training can make a difference to individual workers and teams located in some of the company's more remote settings (Client Bases Served).
The result? Sam recently was named to the company's e-learning initiative. He's getting the new skills he needs through a certificate program that focuses on delivering distance learning (which he's accomplishing online). And although his job title remains the same (Work Setting), he's taking his career in a whole new direction. Because of Sam's work (Successful Outcome), remote learning has started to make a huge difference to his company's workers who haven't the time to come back to headquarters each time they need to gain some new skills. Clearly, Sam's career move has been a win-win situation for both him and his organization.
Amelia's Story
Amelia has been working as an OD consultant for almost seven years and she's been employed by organizations in engineering and information technology. For quite a while she's been interested in the shift to globalization and its impact on organizations and the workforce (Trend). Looking to challenge herself and try something new, Amelia is considering a career move. Friends and colleagues have been supportive and, after some brainstorming with them and a lot of soul-searching, Amelia begins to develop a strategy for herself. She admits that she really does love the OD work she's been doing (Practice Area). She decides that she wants to continue working with large-scale team initiatives, but she also wants a chance to work with individuals and smaller groups (Client Bases Served) where she feels she can make a difference.
After exploring different ways she can use the skills and expertise she's gained, Amelia begins teaching half-time in an innovative MBA program that emphasizes small-group work and gives her a chance to do some mentoring with students (Work Setting). At the same time, Amelia decides, with her company's blessing, to leave her full-time position but continue to work for the organization on key OD projects on a contractual basis (Work Setting).
The result? Amelia is thriving. She's challenging herself to grow and her students and her employer are benefiting from her renewed commitment to her work (Successful Outcomes).
How You Can Use the Model to Take Your Next Step
How can you use the Career Opportunities Model? Your options are wide open. As a first step, look over the career options you've read about in chapters 2 and 3. Open yourself up to exploring all the practice areas our field has to offer. Don't limit yourself to the areas you're most accustomed to thinking about in terms of possibilities. Stretch yourself and learn all you can about newer areas like work-place learning and performance and the other positions that are now emerging in our field.
Second, ask yourself what client bases you'd really like to work with—which ones might offer you new chances to grow and contribute.
Third, investigate all the different work settings that appeal to you. Just because you've been in one setting for the last seven years doesn't mean you must stay in that setting to remain in the field. Stretch your thinking.
Fourth, decide for yourself what being successful means to you. Does it mean helping individual workers attain a better balance in their lives? Does it mean helping teams reach new levels of performance? Or does it mean helping newly merged organizations work together in new ways? If you're using your strengths, skills, and expertise and doing work you believe is important, then both you and the client or organization you work for will have a successful outcome.
The Career Opportunities Model is meant to illustrate the full range of options you can choose from to pursue and attain career satisfaction and success. Your own career move may mean changing your area of practice, or changing the client base you serve, or changing the setting in which you accomplish your work—or it may involve a change across all three areas. The decision is yours. To help you make that decision, the chapters that follow will give you direction, support, and ample opportunity to reflect and choose the move that's right for you.
3.133.122.127