Herminia Ibarra’s book “Working Identity” - Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career

For anyone considering reinventing their career, or a business coach working with a client contemplating a career move, Herminia Ibarra’s book “Working Identity” is a useful read.  Through telling the stories of 39 people who changed careers, it draws out “unconventional strategies” for achieving a successful transition.  The  people in the sample had all invested at least eight to ten years in their previous career paths, and ranged in age from thirty-two to fifty-one.  

Having recently embarked on a new career chapter myself, a few insights from the stories which particularly resonated include:  

·       A successful way to make a career change is to start by envisioning options, and testing possible futures by just trying them out. Don’t over analyse or plan your way into a new career. This moves away from the traditional thinking where you need to have a grand plan, and know exactly where you are going before you take a step. 

·       Identify projects that can help you get a feel for a new line of work or style of working. Try to do these as extracurricular activities or parallel paths so that you can experiment seriously without making a commitment.  

·       Break out of your established network. Look for role models who are living examples of different ways of working and living.  

·       Small wins can produce much bigger results than a grand strategy. Defining a problem as “big and serious” can elicit a less creative (i.e. more habitual) response.  

·       If thinking of a change in mid-career, fast forward to the vantage point of your older self, and reflect on what the advice would be.  

·       Major career transitions take three to five years. What you make of events is more important than the events themselves.