Overcoming the Fear of Change

You and I are lucky -- we live in a world rich in possibilities. Besides being able to select from an unlimited variety of occupations, we also have the right to find happiness in our daily work.

Naturally, everyone has a different definition of job satisfaction. For example, the job that seems fine to you may not be of much interest to your best friend, and vice versa.

The fact that you live in a free society gives you the privilege to decide your own fate. You have as much power in determining where you work as you do in selecting a spouse, a home, a car, or a pet. Your choice of jobs really depends on how much you want to shape your career, and how much effort you’re willing to spend to make the necessary improvements in your life.

Personal -- You want to change your relationships with others. For example, you may have discovered that you’re incompatible with the people in your company. Perhaps they have different interests than you; or they communicate differently or have different educational backgrounds.
Professional -- You’ve determined the need to advance your career. For example, you’ve found that you won’t reach your professional or technical goals at your present company or that your advancement is being blocked by someone who’s more senior or more politically oriented. Or that you’re not getting the recognition you deserve or that you and your company are growing in different directions. Or that you’re not being challenged technically or you’re not being given the skills you need to compete for employment in the future. On the other hand, you’ve simply lost interest in your assigned tasks.
Situational -- Your dissatisfaction has nothing to do with personal relationships or career development; it’s tied to a certain set of circumstances. Maybe you’re commuting too far from home each day, or you’re working too many hours, or you’re under too much stress; or you want to relocate to another city (or stay where you are rather than be transferred).

Whatever your personal, professional, or situational reasons may be, you’re motivated by the desire to improve your level of job satisfaction and make a change.

In order to translate your needs into results, let’s begin by evaluating your present position -- it’s the first step in any job change.

What are your daily activities? That is, how do you spend your time during a typical day?
What are the measurable results your company expects from these activities? In other words, how does your supervisor know when you’re doing a good job?”

Sometimes we discover that people are hard pressed to come up with solid answers about the specific nature of their work. They’re not exactly sure about their job responsibilities and their lack of focus results in stress or counter-productivity.

While a little bit of stress is natural in any job, a steady diet of it can destroy your incentive to work. In fact, a recent study indicates a direct correlation between a person’s lack of task clarity and their level of job dissatisfaction.

Try this exercise: On a sheet of paper, write a complete, current job description in which you list your daily activities and their expected, measurable results. This exercise will not only help you clarify your own perception of your work; it’ll be useful later on when you begin to construct a resume and communicate to others exactly what you’ve done.

Once you’ve described all the facets of your job, the next step is to understand the relationship between what you do and the way you feel.

We use the term values as a descriptor of personal priorities as a yardstick to help you:

Understand what types of work-related activities you really enjoy;
Determine which goals or accomplishments are important to you and give you a feeling of satisfaction; and
Evaluate whether your personal priorities are in balance, or in harmony with your job situation.

Although it’s simple to decipher which daily tasks you really enjoy, the task of scrutinizing your personal priorities can be tricky. That’s because there are often factors unrelated to your job that can come into play. We all have highly personal motivations that guide our career choices.

Now that you know how to clearly define your values, the next step is to describe the changes you’d like to make in your new job. As any advocate of goal-setting will tell you, the more specifically you’re able to communicate what you’re looking for, the faster you’ll be able to get what you want. Naturally, you’ll want to be realistic with your expectations, and think like a grown-up when considering your gripes

If you were to look at your career from a purely strategic point of view, I could give you four good reasons why it makes sense to change jobs within the same or similar industry three times during your first ten years of employment:

Changing jobs gives you a broader base of experience: After about three years, you’ve learned most of what you’re going to know about how to do your job. Therefore, over a ten-year period, you gain more experience from “three times 90 percent” than “one times 100 percent.”
A more varied background creates a greater demand for your skills: Depth of experience means you’re more valuable to a larger number of employers. You’re not only familiar with your current company’s product, service, procedures, quality programs, inventory system, and so forth; you bring with you the expertise you’ve gained from your prior employment with other companies.
A job change results in an accelerated promotion cycle: Each time you make a change, you bump up a notch on the promotion ladder. You jump, for example, from programmer analyst to senior programmer analyst; or project manager to MIS Director.
More responsibility leads to greater earning power: A promotion is usually accompanied by a salary increase. In addition, since you’re being promoted faster, your salary grows at a quicker pace, sort of like compounding the interest you’d earn on a certificate of deposit.

Many people view a job change as a way of promoting themselves to a better position. In most cases, we agree. However, you should always be sure your new job offers you the means to satisfy your values. While there’s no denying the strategic virtues of selective job changing for the purpose of career advantage, you want to make sure the path you take will lead you where you really want to go.

For instance, we see no reason to make a job change for more money if it’ll make you unhappy to the point of distraction. The “best” job is one in which your values are being satisfied most effectively. If career growth and advancement are your primary goals, and they’re represented by how much you earn, then the job that pays the most money is the “better” job. Your responsibility when contemplating a change is to evaluate what’s most important to you. Whether you focus on a single aspect of your job or on the overall nature of the job you’d like to improve.

The more clearly you connect your values with your work, the greater the potential for job satisfaction.