Working Identity Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career By Herminia Ibarra Ibarra's approach to career transition goes against conventional wisdom. Career counselors tell us that successful career change happens in a linear process that begins with first knowing what we want to do and then using that knowledge to guide our actions toward the one "right" job. This method just doesn't work in real life, says Ibarra. There is no one perfect career waiting to be discovered. Instead, there are many possible selves we might become-and finding the one that fits is the result of doing and experimenting-trying on possibilities through a process of trial and error.

Based on her in-depth research on how people from all professional walks of life make career transitions, Herminia outlines a three-part process of career change: experimenting with new professional activities, connecting with new social networks, and working and re-working the story we tell ourselves and others about who we are. This model is presented through the engaging stories of thirty-nine men and women who made radical career changes successfully, including a literature professor turned stockbroker, a psychiatrist turned Buddhist monk, and a tech manager turned executive coach. Ibarra distills their common experiences into a set of unconventional strategies that others contemplating a career change can use to their advantage.

Switching careers means much more than changing what we do from 9 to 5; it means redefining ourselves. Working Identity helps us along the crooked journey of finding out what we want to do and who we want to become.

Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career
While there isn't one set path for making a career change, some general guidelines emerge from the experience of those who have made successful career transitions. In this excerpt from
Working Identity, Herminia Ibarra distills those guidelines as a set of nine unconventional strategies for reinventing your career.

ACT, THEN REFLECT
You cannot discover yourself by introspection. You must act your way into a new way of thinking and being. Start by changing what you do. Try different paths. Take action, and then use the feedback from your actions to figure out what you think, feel, and want. Don't try to analyze or plan your way into a new career. Conventional strategies advocated by self-assessment manuals and traditional career counselors would have you start by looking inside. Start instead by stepping out. Be attentive to what each step teaches you, and make sure that each step helps you take the next.

FLIRT WITH YOUR SELVES
Stop trying to find your one true self. Focus on which of your many possible selves you want to test and learn more about. Reflection is important. But we can use it as a defense against testing reality; reflecting on who we are is less important than probing whether we really are who we think we are. Acting in the world gives us the opportunity to see ourselves through our behaviors and it allows us to adjust our expectations as we learn.

LIVE THE CONTRADICTIONS
Allow yourself a transition period in which it is okay to oscillate between holding on and letting go. Better to live the contradictions than to come to a premature resolution. The years preceding a career change necessarily involve difficulty, turmoil, confusion, and uncertainty. One of the hardest tasks of reinvention is staying the course when it feels like you are coming undone. Unfortunately, there is no alternative but foreclosure-retreating from change either by staying put or taking the wrong next job. Watch out for decisions made in haste, especially when it comes to unsolicited offers. It takes a while to move from old to new. Those who try to short-circuit the process often end up taking longer.

MAKE BIG CHANGE IN SMALL STEPS
Resist the temptation to start by making a big decision that will change everything in one fell swoop. Use a strategy of small wins, in which incremental gains lead you to more profound changes in the basic assumptions that define your work and life. Accept the crooked path.
Almost no one gets change right on the first try. We need many small steps, not one big step. Assess the mundane acts and small steps, letting what you learn inform your next steps. You will know if you are learning at a deeper level when you start to question what other aspects of your life, apart from your job, might need changing as well.

EXPERIMENT WITH NEW ROLES
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. Start small. Think in terms of side projects and temporary assignments, not binding decisions. Pursue these activities seriously, but delay commitment. Slowly ascertain your enduring values and preferences, what makes you unique in the world. Just make sure that you vary your experiments, so that you can compare and contrast experiences before you narrow your options.

FIND PEOPLE WHO ARE WHAT YOU WANT TO BE
Don't over focus on what kind of work you want to do. Find people who are what you want to be and who can provide support for the transition. But don't expect to find them in your same old social circles. Break out of the old circles. Branch out. Look for role models--people who give you glimpses of what you might become and who are living examples of different ways of working and living. Most of us seek to change not only what we do; we also aspire to work with people we like and respect and with whom we enjoy spending our precious time.

DON'T WAIT FOR A CATALYST
Don't wait for a cataclysmic moment when the truth is revealed. Use everyday occurrences to find meaning in the changes you are going through. Practice telling and retelling your story. Over time, it will clarify. Major career transitions take three to five years. The "turning point," if there is one, tends to come late in the story. In the interim, make use of anything as a trigger. Take advantage of whatever life sends your way to revise, or at least reconsider, your story. Practice telling it in different ways to different people, in much the same way you would revise a resume and cover letter for different jobs. But don't just tell the story to a friendly audience; try it out on skeptics. And don't be disturbed when the story changes along the way.

STEP BACK. BUT NOT FOR TOO LONG
When you get stuck and are short on insight, take time to step back from the fray to reflect on how any why you are changing. Even as short a break as a day's hike in the country will allow you to remove yourself from familiar people and places. Don't stay gone too long, or it will be hard to reel yourself back in. Only through interaction and active engagement in the real world do we discover ourselves.

SEIZE WINDOWS OF OPPORTUNITY
Change happens in bursts and starts. There are times when you are open to big change and times when you are not. Seize opportunities. Windows of opportunity open and close back up again. We go through periods when we are highly receptive to major change and periods when even incremental deviations from "the plan" are hard to tolerate. Take advantage of any natural windows like the period just after an educational program or assuming a new position. Watch out for the insidious effect of old routines. Progress can be served by hanging in limbo, asking questions, allowing time and space to linger between identities. But don't let unanswered questions bog you down; move on, even if to an interim commitment.