Labor Day and Investing in YOU

We’re in an era of constant change. As soon as you buy one thing, there’s a newer version. In the old I Love Lucy television show, Lucy asks the question: “If everything now is new and improved, what was it before? Old and lousy?”

In the same way store shelves are continually restocked with the “new and improved,” we need to think of our skills and talents this way, too. You have no doubt spend time and money on knowing what you know, doing what you do, and becoming who you are. This human capital – you – needs on-going investment and care to stay in top form.

Keeping your tools sharp helps you jump on a new opportunity or take on a new role, and it’s important because sometimes the decision to make a change may not be yours. As the prospect of a recession looms, you need to be able to recover quickly if a downturn affects your job, or company or your industry.

A career transition expert tells me that while this is good advice, you’re not likely to move on it now, even if you’re in a bad job. Like being in a dead-end relationship or on the brink of needing to think seriously about a long-term care plan, no one likes to think about the possibility of future misfortune — job loss, break-up, or broken hip. And yet, now is the best time, when you don’t have to make a reactive plan, but can craft a proactive one.

If you think you can skip this step if you’re retired, you might want to think again. Whether it’s serving in a volunteer role, re-entering the workforce, or keeping up with the grandkids, you’re still going to benefit from learning something new. (Your brain will thank you too – more on that in another post!).

Think FaceBook, Instagram, Slack, Evernote, the newest shiniest iPhone…Continual learning is a habit all of us need to develop, not only to recession-proof your income-generating capacity, but also because the way we live will continue to change at an ever-increasing pace.

Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, co-founders of the Life Design Lab at Stanford and recovering techies themselves, argue that much unhappiness comes from an unsatisfying work life, and by designing your life you move into a mindset to constantly evolve who you are and what you can do.

There is no better time to start than right now.

Make it Personal
If it sounds daunting to tackle “how to keep up with an ever-changing world,” literally take it personally: think about what you’d like to do that you’re not doing now, and identify how you can add to your tools and talents in those areas.

You can use this exploration to think about career or industry changes, in addition to getting to the next career step. Yes, you need to pay your bills, and you’ll spend 2,000 hours this year working that 40-hour a week job to do it – you may work more. Life is short, but workdays are way too long to not like what you’re doing. Thinking about what you’d like to learn next could take you in a satisfying new direction.

What’s the next step? Do you want to move to the next rung on your career ladder? Pivot into a new function? Make a move to a new organization? Attract a new opportunity? This might mean thinking big, and sometimes that means making big changes. But this is your life, after all. What skill, experience or quality lights you up when you think about adding it to your toolbox?

When you do this, your values and personal strengths naturally enter into the mix. And when you align what you’re doing at work to what you value, you do better work, are more likely to be inspired and happy.

Shifting your thinking from “what skill do I have to have to keep my job?” to “what can I learn that will help me do my best in my career?” changes your focus from thinking about working in a job to thinking about working on YOU.

Make it Portable
It’s not only about what your organization needs next, it’s about what you can learn that you can take with you. In the work world today, you want and need to be able to jump into a new role, or to a new company, when you want to – and even when you don’t.

In her book, Radical Careering, Sally Hogshead explains portable equity this way:

Portable Equity is personal capital that boosts your long-term career opportunity and market value far beyond your current job: your experience, skills, network, reputation.

The portable part of this is important. Many covet the equity compensation that comes from working someplace that pays employees in some form of company stock. But that kind of equity can dissolve overnight based on the fickle nature of financial markets, and it can get left behind if you don’t stay long enough. Portable equity moves with you. It IS you. As Hogshead rightfully points out, “You can be fired from a job, but you can never be fired from your career.”

When you develop a mindset of continual improvement in yourself- in all the things you know and can do and can offer the world – you’ve made the leap to thinking about building your portable equity. It’s not a machine you leave on the shop floor, it’s not a proprietary software system your company built for internal use. It’s the skill you have to use that machine in any shop, the knowledge of a system that is like many other systems.

The Three Pieces of Portable Equity
Your human capital consists of skills and experience, your network, and your reputation. Start by choosing one thing to work on next, and write it down. Plans that you write down have a 42% better chance of being achieved:

“I will learn python.”
“I will understand tax reporting for Americans overseas.”
“I will learn canine CPR.”

One: Skills and Experience
Picked a skill or experience to target? Once you have your target, research resources to help you get it:
• Places – Classrooms, on-line learning, local workshops, your organization. Where can you find the resources to learn what you need to know or do? EdX, Coursera, your library, YouTube – there are more ways to connect with your interests than ever before.
• Funding – Check to see whether your company offers financial assistance for what you’re planning, or if your boss will approve funds to pay for it. The thing about investing in your human capital is that while you’re going to benefit your company as long as you’re there, it doesn’t mean you can’t take it with you when you leave. Barring a corporate budget for development, think about setting aside your own reserve for career investment.
• People – Who already has this skill you’re after? Who is doing the job you want? And how did they get it? Perfect questions for your network.

Two: Network
Decided to expand or engage your network? Just like getting a loan from a bank, it’s easier to connect with your network when you don’t need anything from it. A network, a real one, is not just 500-plus connections on LinkedIn. It is a living thing, and you need to participate. You are connected to these people for a reason.

• Find a cohort – another person or small group of people you know who might be interested in the same thing. Early in my career, I wanted to learn SAS and gathered two other colleagues to take a weekend course.
• Find an accountability partner and schedule regular coffee or lunch or exercise class. Even if you’re working on different next steps, you can encourage each other.
• Don’t overlook the social part of your network. You never know what you’ll find when you speak from the heart about what you want next. A recently laid off woman in my book group found a connection to her next step, a career pivot, just by letting us know what was going on with her. Most people want to be helpful.
• Update your connections – all of them – Keeping your network up-to-date isn’t about just asking for something. Your posse knows about your successes already; let your broader circle know what’s new. It might be as simple as turning on alerts in LinkedIn. Or when your brunch buddies are checking in since your last get-together, give yourself some snaps: “Things are good; had a few forgettable dates, still enjoying my yoga class, and took a class to learn python/taxes/canine CPR.” You never know who or where opportunities to use your new skills might pop up.

You don’t have to do this alone. And you shouldn’t. Find friends, colleagues, family who can help you. You don’t need a lot of people, but you do need people. They listen to your Big Idea if you have a major transition to work towards, they offer feedback, they refer you to others who can help, they are a shoulder to cry on. Sometimes just getting the word out to that first person can get the ball rolling.

A SPECIFIC CHALLENGE FOR WOMEN: Women are usually more than willing to offer help someone else. When you help another woman, and that woman asks “if there’s ever anything I can do for you,” ask her to pay it forward: when she has an opportunity to help another woman, ask her to commit to doing it. Imagine what we could accomplish if you knew that every woman you helped would help another, and that when you needed it, that huge network would be there to help you.

Three: Reputation
Want to ensure that your best self is what recruiters find when they go online? It’s super to have learned a new programming language, added another certificate in your field, completed a project that stretched your skills and knowledge. Don’t keep it to yourself.

• Clean sweep your social – Whether you love social media or hate it, it has become a necessary tool of work life. A recent CareerBuilder Study found that 57 percent of hiring managers are less likely to interview a candidate they can’t find online, and 70 percent of employers use social media to screen candidates. More than half of managers have decided not to hire a candidate based on their social media profiles. Think about online complaints about your job, or photos from a late night out. Check your online reputation through the channels you manage yourself; do a Google search to see what else turns up about you. The rest of the world is going to see that too.
• Update your “Atta Girl” file – We live in a culture that requires both competitive engagement and for women, modesty. Ladies, let’s get over that last part. If you can’t get comfortable using your own words, use someone else’s. You will need to sing your praises. On your resume, at your next performance review, at the interview. You need a file or e-folder where you keep track of every compliment, each piece of positive feedback, or stat showing successful outcomes that you receive or contributed to. And when a crap day rolls around, you have a secret weapon to remind yourself what you can do.
• Update (or create) your LinkedIn profile – More than half of employers won’t hire a candidate without an online presence, and employers are increasingly looking online to check up on current employees. If you’re planning a career change, be smart about whether you want to advertise that you’re “looking for new opportunities”. Think about whether your online profiles reflect where you are – and where you might want to go next. If you’re enrolled in a class, add it to your profile. Your online profile becomes another accountability partner, and you’ll have another update for your circle once you complete your new thing.

Make It Happen
Other than a haircut, change doesn’t happen overnight. But it can look swift and feel effortless if it’s aligned with what you love to do.

Reframe how you look at your talents not as what you need to do for someone else, but with an eye to what really floats your boat. Pick one step or all three, and get to work. Vocation or avocation, you’ll invest the majority of your time in it. Make sure it’s serving you and what you want out of life – and make sure you can take it with you.