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:

1. Think of job fluidity and dynamism rather than static roles and job titles.
2. Think creatively of where work is needed and what client base you can serve.
3. Think entrepreneurially about how you can strengthen and package your skills, education, and experience to do that work.

The model incorporates the following elements:

• ways that trends, issues, and workplace realities affect the field
• types of opportunities for doing work that needs doing
• how, where, and by whom the work is accomplished
• client bases served by the work
• purposes accomplished by the work.

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.

1. Trends, Issues, and Workplace Realities—You learned about these trends in chapter 1 of this book. These are contemporary facts of American work life that are changing the way business is done and changing the needs of organizations and workers.
2. Practice Areas—Here are the principal areas of work in the field. Trends, issues, and workplace realities have a strong influence on practice areas. For instance, the trend toward technology has an impact because innovations like the Internet, intranets, and distance learning will require more trainers who are skilled in creating e-learning initiatives.
3. Client Bases—This section highlights the audiences served by professionals in the field. Trends, issues, and workplace realities also make a difference when it comes to who is being served. Let's look at the trend toward nonstop learning, for example. Nonstop learning means that you may have the opportunity to work individually with people to help them shape a learning plan that will bring them up to speed in their jobs. But nonstop learning also means that you may be called on to deliver just-in-time learning to new teams that have been formed to launch a new product or serve a new customer base.
4. Work Settings—This section presents the key ways in which the work of training, HRD, and workplace learning and performance are accomplished.
5. Successful Outcomes—Here are the reasons you're doing this work. All of the decisions you make to involve yourself in meaningful work culminate in what you accomplish—success for yourself and for your clients.

Figure 1: Career Opportunities Model

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.