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As you start to review what you want out of your working going forward, consider what is most important to you.
Are you keen to have more learning and development opportunities? Are you keen to have more responsibility? Are you looking for more flexibility in the way you work? Do you want to be able to give more back through the work you do? Is it important to work for an organisation whose values and culture support your own values and culture?
For many of us, as we get into our 2nd Half Careers, we find that the assumptions and the ethos, that we carried in our earlier career, starts to shift. What we want out of our working lives, and what we want out of the rest of our lives, is beginning to change.
I suggest it’s important to reassess your own personal priorities and your own work priorities. Then test whether your current employer, and the current career ladder you’re on, is really meeting your needs.
Many of the people I talk to, tell me that the gap between what they want out of work and what they are getting out of work, has been widening in recent years. But they feel that they just have no choice but to stay on staying on.
As I write this in January 2023, I see that we are in a place of economic uncertainty. There have been significant job cuts in what, in the past, was the booming tech industry. There is increasing pressure within organisations to do more for less. Many people are not seeing the career advancement or the salary increases that they might have expected in previous years.
Any transition requires planning and preparation. The saddest thing that I see is individuals who come to a point where their employment ceases and they’re not ready for what’s next. Sometimes they have had a personal crisis. Sometimes they have been reshuffled out. Sometimes they have new, unexpected, family responsibilities such as care for frail parents, sole responsibility for children or serious illness of a partner.
Whatever has forced the transition, there is a powerful alternative workstyle that you can start planning for now. If you take your 20 or 30 years of professional experience working for one employer at a time, you can plan to transition to an adaptable portfolio of part-time roles.
This will give you the flexibility that you want and enable you to continue to develop and grow. The variety of work and the challenge of leading through influence rather than position and direction will stretch you. Importantly, you will set yourself up for sustained longevity in your working life because you can flex up and down the number of days a month you do indefinitely.
I urge you to recognise that uncertainty is only going to increase. Review the musings from your post recent holiday or be intentional about re-evaluating what matters to you on your next break.
I urge you to investigate the Portfolio Executive workstyle.
Check out this short video, sign up for the on-demand webinar at 2ndhalfcareer.com and look at PortfolioExecutive.biz.
If you want to get in touch then drop me an e-mail at charles.mclachlan@futureperfect.company and I can tell you more.
Charles McLachlan is the founder of FuturePerfect and on a mission to transform the future of work and business. The Portfolio Executive programme is a new initiative to help executives build a sustainable and impactful second-half-career. Creating an alternative future takes imagination, design, organisation and many other thinking skills. Charles is happy to lend them to you.