Smart Lemming Diary: What’s My Identity? What Do I Want?
June 18, 2005
Director of Marketing Job Prospect
This weekend I have three things I need to do for the Director of Marketing position job prospect:
- Update my resume for the Director of Marketing position
- Use the demo user ID and password on the prospective company’s website, so I can play with their Web application
- Prepare new documentation and update my portfolio
I’m not ambivalent about seizing this job opportunity, like I was earlier in the week. After my layoff in April, I became attached to the idea of not working for another employer this year; however, I realize that I can’t control timing of when good opportunities come around, so I’m committed to pursuing to its conclusion. I thought I wanted out of healthcare technology, but it appears that I’m still interested.
June 20, 2005
New Career Changes Book at the Right Time
A friend recommended the book, Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career, by Herminia Ibarra, so I picked it at Borders right away and read it today. Rather than work on the new Web site documentation, I thought I should focus on the Director of Marketing position by reading this book, in case it could help me understand my motivations. Working Identity allowed me to understand why I’ve been feeling odd lately, answering, “Who am I, if I’m not working full-time for the startup?”
Identity in Transition: I Dislike Being Fragmented
Basically Ibarra’s framework is centered on three major themes:
- Identity in transition, identity in practice, and putting the unconventional strategies to work.
- Identities in transition outline how the reinvention process unfolds.
- During the identities in transition phase, we explore our “possible selves” by asking “Whom might I become? What are the possibilities?”
While I enjoy the idea of thinking about the possibilities of what I could move onto, it still stresses me out. I like being focused, I like having a target to shot at. Having two too many options or aspirations makes me feel fragmented, but it also feels like I don’t have an identity.
Possible Paths: Consulting or Entrepreneur
I’ve wanted to transition into consulting, wanting to get away from product marketing and product management in technology companies. Then something happened. I hadn’t intended to work full-time in the startup, but being “eliminated” from my last employer put me in this position. My skills were needed in my LLC to develop a new database driven Web site. Hopefully, we’ll get it done (if we can find the right contractors at the right price). All of a sudden, I’m an entrepreneur, who’s in a holding pattern that most likely won’t happen in consulting.
Pulled Back into Healthcare
Right after I get attached to the idea of the startup, an unexpected job opportunity crossed my path right, when I thought I was done with marketing for technology companies. It pulled me back into my old work identity: a knowledge worker that aspires to run a marketing department for a small tech company. It appears that my old identity is still entrenched in me.
A Great Book for Career Changes
I like Ibarra’s model of based on identities in transition (how the reinvention process unfolds) and identities in practice (actions that promote change). I understand the Ibarra’s reinvention process; it’s just a process. Here are the two major aspects of the framework:
1. The Identities in Transition is a circular process that:
- Exploring possible selves: asking “Whom might I become? What are the possibilities?”
- Lingering between identities: testing possible selves, both old and new.
- Grounding a deep change: updating priorities, assumptions, and self-conceptions.
- Outcomes: (a) External change - changing careers; (b) Internal change - greater congruence between who we are and what we do.
2. The Identities in Practice: Actions that Promote Change
Aspects of Working Identity
- Working identity is defined by what we do, the professional activities that engage us
- Working identity is defined by company we keep, out working relationships and the professional groups to which we belong
- Working identity is defined by the formative events in our lives and the story that links who we have been and who we will become
Strategies for Reworking Identity
- Crafting Experiments: Trying out new activities and professional roles on a small scale before making a major commitment to a different path.
- Shifting Connections: Developing contact we can open doors to new worlds; finding role models and new peer groups to guide and benchmark our progress.
- Making Sense: Finding or creating catalysts and triggers for change and using them as occasions to rework our story.
Fragmented, but Happy
So where does this leave me? Fragmented. I have at least three things that I want to pursue. But which path? At least, I have a framework that I can use. Either way, I’m still a happier person than when I was at my last employer.
The Smart Lemming Diary is a series that chronicles a journey of laid-off worker, who becomes a Vice President of Sales Operations & Marketing for a small entrepreneurial healthcare technology company.
Check out “Pushed in a new direction” series on career change due to layoffs: http://www.boston.com/jobs/news/articles/2009/05/10/pushed_in_a_new_direction/