Changing jobs – how to decide when

Changing jobs – how to decide when

Note: Names and some event details have been modified to protect identities of the real persons and organizations.

‘Do you think I should change my job?’

Pooja, by all conventional definitions, is a successful media executive. She is heading national sales for a leading television network and has reached this position at a comparatively young age. We were meeting because she wanted to talk about her career.

As the inevitable question surfaced, I spotted, as I have during many such conversations over the years, the familiar conundrum:

1. The question has to be answered by the one asking, and,
2. The one asking does not have the right set of questions that will lead to an answer.

I knew it was time for me to make an attempt at articulating a framework that may be of use to others in a similar situation.

Question 1: Where are you?

Fig 1 displays a construct (borrowed from Marshall Goldsmith) that looks at job change along two dimensions:

• Direction (Y-axis): You make a change either on your way up OR way down. This UP or DOWN is as perceived by your colleagues and you will need to be completely honest in your judgment of this. This is shown along the vertical axis of Fig1.
• Action (X-Axis): You either jump or are pushed out to make the change. Jump is in your hands, push is not. This is shown along the horizontal axis.

1. When you are on your Way UP and a better opportunity comes along – JUMP to it. The key thing to ensure is that it should take you closer to your ‘goal’ (whatever that is) than your current job could. You have to be absolutely clear and objective about that.Somesh was doing very well in an HR Consulting firm. He enjoyed the daily challenges of consulting, leading a team and was well rated by his clients and colleagues. He had lots of independence and could pretty much decide on business priorities and budgets. He was clearly on the Way UP. He Jumped to join a large organisation’s L&D function in a role where he was reporting to the CLO and was one amongst five other direct reports. Somesh wanted to be the Chief Learning Officer of a large corporation and drive the growth agenda on a large scale.  That was his goal. This was, for him, a ‘Better Job’.
2. Sometimes you know you are on your Way DOWN. Performance is dipping, the job seems to be a drag and getting to work each morning is increasingly difficult. If you encounter this you, can either try and reverse the situation, or JUMP and ‘Save Yourself’  rather than be PUSHED (Fired). In the next question, we will examine some ways by which you can confront the reasons why you have the Way DOWN feeling.
3. The one situation that is difficult to understand is when you are on your Way UP but still get Pushed. This is a reality in today’s context. Seema is doing an outstanding job running a division for a large advertising agency. She has really turned it around and the division has stopped bleeding. Now is the time to invest to make it grow and count. The advertising agency has lost two of its biggest clients over a period of 3 months that accounted for almost half the revenues. The thinking is obviously to cut costs and the strategy being adopted is to rebuild the advertising business, which is the largest entity in the group. Seema will be an unfortunate victim of circumstances not in her control. She could get PUSHED even though she was on the Way Up. ‘What just happened here?’ is an understandable question from Seema.

Where you are in the grid may change fairly regularly.  Maintaining a constantly updated status creates a nice review mechanism and allows one to objectively contemplate whenever the question pops up in your mind.

Question 2: Why do you have the ‘Way Down’ Feeling?

Three years before I quit advertising and started my own venture, I had a particularly good year at work. My boss applauded me in the Executive Committee meeting and bestowed the tag of ‘Manager of the Year’. It was a high point but that evening the nagging feeling of discontent and restlessness refused to leave me. I was on my Way UP but feeling on my Way DOWN. I did not spend too much time thinking it through or doing something about it at that point.

That feeling stayed with me and two years later the same boss was having conversations of a totally different nature. This time I was unequivocally on my Way DOWN. My lack of motivation was showing in my work. I was closed to getting PUSHED.

The time to ask yourself some hard questions is when you are not ‘feeling good’ about our job. Make no mistake, even if you are doing well in others’ eyes, it will catch up and you will soon find yourself on the Way DOWN.  Fig 2 presents a construct that you could use. Ask yourself:

• Direction (Y-axis): Is it because of ME (Inward) or is it the ENVIRONMENT (Outward).  ME relates to reasons that can be directly attributed to one’s behaviour, attitudes, beliefs and goals. ENVIRONMENT is all of the reasons other than ME. This is not as easy to answer, as it seems, primarily because of the human tendency to put blame away from ourselves.  We will delve on it more in the last section.
• Action (X-Axis): If the reason has been identified, can you make the required CHANGE so that the feeling changes to Way UP? The horizontal axis looks at the two possibilities – CAN CHANGE and CANNOT CHANGE. Again these require careful thought as we often underestimate what we can change and overestimate what we cannot, as we will examine later.

Question 3: ME or ENVIRONMENT?

Let us examine the human tendency to put blame elsewhere.

Arvind was extremely talented and achieved great results. He had spent about 8 months in his current job, a challenging assignment but was not feeling good – feeling WAY DOWN, a precursor to being WAY DOWN.

He had changed 2 jobs in the last 3 years. When I asked him why, it emerged that he felt that he was unlucky with bosses, he got ones who did not understand him. When I probed a little deeper, I realized that Arvind wore his intellectual arrogance on his sleeve and was not averse to letting his bosses know that he was way smarter than them. In my book that was a more ‘ME’ reason than the ENVIRONMENT.

If Arvind had to avoid becoming a frustrated, cynical, underachieving person, he had to learn that pissing your bosses off was an immature strategy that was bound to fail sooner or later. He had to make the CHANGE, difficult as it may have seemed and in his current job to realize his professional goals.

Question 4: What can we change? What are those that we cannot or do not want to change?

1. Here is another example about bad bosses; after all it is quoted as the single biggest reason for people quitting.  Pravash was a rising star, one of the youngest to have made it to General Manager in an MNC agency. His boss Aveek Singh had promoted him– Pravash had been a direct report in Aveek’s previous assignment.

6 months into the assignment, Pravash wanted to quit. When I asked him why, he said it was because of his boss. Aveek kept loading various special projects and Pravash was snowed in under, hardly able to create any impact in his new job. He thought he was not good enough for the job and resented Aveek for putting him in that position.

In this case, Pravash’s reasons for feeling Way DOWN were outside of him, it came from his boss loading too much work. Pravash was encouraged to speak to Aveek about it and to his credit Aveek understood his mistake and stopped the overloading. Pravash was able to CHANGE the ENVIRONMENT and hence stayed back in the job.

2. When I quit my job and started this venture, I was very clear that I did not want to be responsible for managing people any longer. I opted to GO because I did not want to make the change. BullzI has evolved as a partnership of very talented professionals who run their own lives and share in the earnings. To my surprise I have discovered that there are a number of others who have felt this way before embarking on ‘consultant’ careers.

Tailpiece

There are many of who have changed jobs just by listening to the “inner voice”. An inner voice that was not necessarily so articulate – but nonetheless correct.  Against every one of them, there are at least a dozen who agonize over this question without the  benefit of unerring instinct. Using these constructs as guidelines, it should be possible for you to decipher the ‘inner voice’ better when pondering this question, ‘Should I change my job’?

What do you think?