Page 14 - Dainfern Precinct Living Issue 6_2023

Business

THE BUSINESS OF

You

f the CEO of a company had no vision
for the direction of the business, and
had no grasp on the resources at hand
Ito achieve that vision, the business
wouldn’t go very far, would it? It might
manage for a while, but at some point it
would probably come to a grinding halt,
with the CEO possibly taken by surprise.

Yet I see so many of us treating our
careers that way – including myself a
few years back. I recall believing that,
because I worked hard and had been
fairly successful in moving upwards in
my career, this would continue and that
I would feel fulfilled. I took opportunities
where they presented themselves (in
retrospect largely when no one else
wanted the opportunity), but with no
particular strategic vision of where my
career was headed. And at some point I
started to feel really stuck.
It was in a moment of feeling particularly
disgruntled that I had an enlightening
conversation with a very wise friend. The
conversation started off with how I was
feeling so stuck and feeling like I had no
options. My assumption was that I was
stuck in a silo, where I could continue
upwards, but couldn’t branch out, that I
would do what I was doing, where I was
doing it, forever.

My friend saw things quite differently
though. At the end of my rambling
she identified a number of different
directions she thought I could go in,
and they had nothing to do with my
qualifications. It was the start of a
process for me that was mind-shifting
and ultimately led to my taking control
of my career as my business again. The
mind-set shift had a lot to do with seeing
my career as a collection of experiences
that had been building on each other,
rather than a chronology of upward
progressions.

14 DPL issue 6 2023