Strategy: Understanding the External Environment
To plan strategy on any level, you need to understand your company's external environment. In fact, your level of understanding can impact hiring, budgeting, marketing, or nearly any other part of the business world. Want to learn how to do all that? This course from GLOBIS Unlimited is the perfect first step!
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Want to leverage Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as a leader? Try this short course to see how the theory can be applied in practical work scenarios.
Career Anchors
What drives you to be good at your job?
Career anchors are based on your values, desires, motivations, and abilities. They are the immovable parts of your professional self-image that guide you throughout your career journey.
Try this short GLOBIS Unlimited course to identify which of the eight career anchors is yours!
Leadership with Passion through Kokorozashi
The key ingredient to success? Passion.
Finding your kokorozashi will unify your passions and skills to create positive change in society. This GLOBIS Unlimited course will help you develop the values and lifelong goals you need to become a strong, passion-driven leader.
There’s an 87% chance that you’re in the wrong job.
Research by Gallup shows that only 13% of employees globally are engaged in their work, are motivated, and are passionate about their jobs. In the US, the situation is better (but not great) with about 32% feeling engaged. In Japan, the situation is even worse, with only 9% feeling fully engaged in their jobs.
You may be good at your job. You may be skilled and experienced. You may even produce value for others. But if you’re one of those 87%, you’re also unmotivated, lacking passion or a personal mission, and underperforming and under-contributing. That low engagement goes beyond the office. It can also lead to depression and health problems.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Want to leverage Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as a leader? Try this short course to see how the theory can be applied in practical work scenarios.
Is there anything to be done?
Yes. Make a career transition.
Next Article
3 Steps to Make a Career Pivot
Kokorozashi: Find Your Passion for a Meaningful Career
Is NOW the Right Time to Quit Your Job?
Signs That You Need a Career Transition
Now when you began your job, you probably were excited. You did have passion. You were ready to change the world.
Like a clumsy cheerleader, you had high passion and energy, but low skill. You began your career on the top left of the below matrix:
I created in 2013 to help me visualize my career anchors when I was thinking about a career transition, and the clumsy cheerleader was my starting point.
Career Anchors
What drives you to be good at your job?
Career anchors are based on your values, desires, motivations, and abilities. They are the immovable parts of your professional self-image that guide you throughout your career journey.
Try this short GLOBIS Unlimited course to identify which of the eight career anchors is yours!
If you’re like me, over time you got better at your job. Your skills improved as you gained experience.
But then something strange happened. That original passion started to decline.
Hay Group collected data on millions of employees, and that data shows that most of us are highly motivated and engaged when we start a job. But after a period of time (usually two-to-five years), our engagement bottoms out, never to regain that initial peak.
Our passion career becomes just a day job. We end up in careers where we’re skilled, but under a grey cloud. That 87% of us end up at the bottom right of the matrix: low passion, high skill. We’re creating value for others, but are not very engaged or happy.
This is when we start to wonder, “Is now the right time to quit my job?” Do you stay in a work environment where you’re unmotivated? Or do you take control of your career and move on?
The top right of this passion-skill matrix is where we all want to be: the sunshine spot, where high passion meets high skill and value created for others meets satisfaction for you.
But how do we get there?
How to Find Your Passion Career: 2 Paths to the Sun
A career transition should be driven by your passion, and that starts with courage. If you’re unfulfilled, leave the old job behind. Be brave.
But also be strategic.
Strategy: Understanding the External Environment
To plan strategy on any level, you need to understand your company's external environment. In fact, your level of understanding can impact hiring, budgeting, marketing, or nearly any other part of the business world. Want to learn how to do all that? This course from GLOBIS Unlimited is the perfect first step!
Your career transition doesn’t need to be a huge leap across industries or a dramatic international relocation (though it can be). It could be a new role in your current organization or a decision to start your own business.
Whatever you’re planning, there are two paths to the sunshine spot.
Raise your passion where you are.
If you’re lacking in passion, an injection of passion may be all you need. You could take your current skills and set out to rediscover where your enthusiasm fell away. Regaining your passion for your current job is possible, though easier said than done.
Leadership with Passion through Kokorozashi
The key ingredient to success? Passion.
Finding your kokorozashi will unify your passions and skills to create positive change in society. This GLOBIS Unlimited course will help you develop the values and lifelong goals you need to become a strong, passion-driven leader.
Pivot to your passion.
The other type of career transition puts your core passion front and center. That starts with a map.
Map out your career transition using the passion-skill matrix. Start from the clumsy cheerleader. Identify your career passion and plot your career pivot from the top left quadrant.
How to Plan a Passion-fueled Career Transition Practically
Passion should absolutely guide your career transition—after all, it’s why you’re looking for a career change in the first place. But remember that passion alone isn’t enough. It’s very hard to create value for others with high passion and low skill. And it’s equally dangerous to plan a career around that.
To move into a career that puts you in the sunshine spot, you also need high skill. Almost certainly, you have some existing skills (this is, after all, a career transition), but if you’re making a radical career pivot, you may need to gain new ones.
Improve yourself through education. Build new networks. Gain new experiences.
As your make your career transition, you’ll pay the bills with skill, experience, accumulated career capital, and passion. And your success at doing so will shows your value to others.
Mapping Your Career Transition Works
This idea is not just an academic exercise. I’ve done it.
In 2011, I was working in Toronto doing business development and managing external relations for a research lab of the Canadian Department of National Defense. Now I live in Tokyo leading global HR projects at a Japanese multinational and lecture at GLOBIS University.
That radical career pivot took me two years to accomplish.
I started by identifying my passion. That led me to enroll in the GLOBIS MBA program, which helped me build the networks and skills I needed to land not one, but two new careers.
If I did it, anyone can.
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