Career Pivot – My Journey  

Summary

I’ve been a project manager for a very long time. It has been a rewarding career thus far, and I’ve managed to help deliver some cool projects over the years. I had an epiphany while on a run one morning that what I really liked about my job was helping people navigate the winds of change that inevitably come with working on complex projects. This is when I decided it was time to take a bit more control of my life and career and do work that I am genuinely passionate about, that can make a difference in people’s lives, and will provide me with personal satisfaction. Cue what we can now call the career pivot. I started by asking myself a question that I could answer honestly, and in doing so I would have tangible information to help determine my next steps: “What do I enjoy about what I currently do for a living?” Once I locked in on the answer, some internal blockers were removed and I had information from which to build into clarity and awareness of the opportunities open to me, where I could potentially excel, and what the journey would look like. You can do that too.

Background

I’m a project manager and have been in a variety of project management roles since the mid 1990’s. I’ve been a Project Management Professional (PMP®) since 2007, have taught and developed curriculum at Mount Royal University () since 2008, and have talked at Project Management Institute (PMI) () conferences. I don’t have a great memory at the best of times, but not once do I recall little Gary sitting down and saying to anyone “When I grow up, I want to be a project manager.” In fact, I stumbled into the ‘trade’ by a bit of a fluky accident that’s likely a different story for another day.

I left school not long after my 16^th birthday and started my 4-year apprenticeship as a painter & decorator (as we called it in Scotland). Here’s an important interlude – I became a painter as I left school with well below average grades as I was basically a lazy and (mostly) absent student. I wasn’t insolent or badly behaved – school just didn’t fit in with my interests at the time.

Anyway, I completed my apprenticeship hating pretty much every day of my working life (most definitely another story for another day) but found salvation in the educational component of the journey. I realized that if I was interested in the subject matter, I was quite an astute student. That manifested itself into further education in the evenings, eventually leading to Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, and a few academic awards along the way.

I moved to Canada in 2004 and have been fortunate to have project managed in a variety of industries from telecom, oil & gas, academia, construction, retail, to utilities. That all sounds great, and I must acknowledge I’ve been very fortunate to have worked with some spectacular people in a variety of exceptional companies, deliver some cool projects, have some laughs, and make a friend or two along the way. There has been the odd rough spell, but for the most part I’ve been very happy with the work I do.

During the pandemic I took a casual hobby of running to a new level (for me) and really invested in it. I find it gives me think time I don’t get anywhere else in my life. Over the course of a couple of days I started to ask myself what I really enjoyed in my job(s). After many fluffed attempts and lame answers, I had the mini epiphany that the part I enjoyed the most was helping people. Whether it was on rescue projects, or other stressful project-related circumstances, I always loved the opportunity to work with people to help them navigate whatever challenge they were currently wrestling with. I thought “I think I would like to be a coach. I think I’ve actually been coaching most of these years, without actually knowing it.” Now, my subsequent coaching studies dispelled that thought quickly (I now say “I just told people what to do with a smile on my face”) and I realized that I was more mentoring, listening, ideating, and supporting, than truly coaching. So, I conducted some research, picked a brilliant coach training provider, the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC), and my journey truly began.

Why now…

The decision to pivot in 2021 was not a midlife crisis (wait, is that what everyone in a midlife crisis would say?), in direct relation to the pandemic, or related to any other life event. It was just time to take my 30+ years of life and professional experience and try to put it to good use for the benefit of others. I didn’t have to write a pros and cons list, or consider the dangers associated with trying something new; I just knew what I wanted to do and knew that the time was right for me to do it.

As I’ve mentioned, one main learning for me upon reflection on this decision was that it was not made under duress, nor was it made in reaction to an emergent circumstance. In fact, a career change was far from any conscious radar, so the lesson for me here is that I had created a condition of clarity for myself by asking myself a simple yet specific question. It wasn’t grandiose like “What do I want to do with the rest of my life?”, or prophetic such as “How do I want to be remembered when the human experience part of my journey has ended?” I started with “What do I enjoy about what I currently do for a living?”

It wasn’t the discipline or mechanics of project management – I knew that for sure. But why not? Where I landed when answering that question is that almost anyone could learn the practices and principles of project management. So, what was it then? In my experience, the biggest variable in any complex process or organization is people. We humans are kinda funky and complex and weird and fascinating. That’s the hook for me. Caring enough to try to meet everyone where they are and doing everything I can to help them move forward to where they want to be. The stunningly beautiful imperfections of every single human being makes life way more fun, interesting, complex, and fascinating to be part of.

It’s Important Because…

Career pivoting is not new. People have been doing it for centuries. It was important for me because I was in the fortunate position to be able to consider it, analyze it, and build into it. I’ve been so fortunate in my career to have had a couple of pivots already (of course, not realizing that’s what I was doing at the time), and have been an absolute sponge each time, soaking up as much as I could at every available opportunity. I think answering the question of why it’s important is more about demonstration that people in today’s workforce across the planet have more choice than has ever been afforded to our predecessors. Transferrable skills, globalization of industries, and the geographic flexibilities evidenced through the lockdown periods of the pandemic are all platforms from which people can and did observe that things are not so stead as they were before.

So, I would say it’s important because every single person should understand that they are at choice every single day. If you don’t like something, you can change it. If you absolutely love something, you can raise its prominence to the fullest to extract every single ounce of goodness from it. Quicker than ever before, the feeling of being ‘stuck’ or in some way restricted to make choices that are the best for you, your career, and your existing (and future) relationships, are morphing into an abundance of opportunity. You will be restricted in your consideration of and to potential opportunities by your own internal limitations placed on you, by you.

Why Write About This…

The main and best answer to this is to allow yourself to understand where you’re at, and what is holding you back from moving towards a path more along the lines of what is truly, deeply meaningful to you. When I emigrated from Scotland to Canada, I lost count of the number of people who had lamented “We thought about doing that but (insert here a variety of very valid and understandable restrictions that people place on themselves).” At the time I found myself realizing how fortunate I was not to be burdened by the restrictions that others had described. It buoyed me to realize that I was part of a very select group of people who had somehow fashioned themselves into a position that when opportunity knocked, I might, just might, be able to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime choice that was afforded to me.

Then I started to truly pay attention and realized that I was no more fortunate or lucky than the next person. What I had done was taken an ambition and turned it into a reality by refusing to allow seemingly insurmountable challenges to deter me from knowing what I needed to know to then allow me to truly be at choice and make an informed decision.

Everyone can pivot. Limitations are placed on us by our own internal reality blockers. We dare to dream, then talk ourselves out of it just as quickly, because quite simply good things like that (our dreams) are not for people like us. We made our beds, and we’ll just have to lie in them and watch as other more fortunate, less constrained people get to live their best lives. This is a completely uninformed position, and unfortunately is very common.

So, why write about this? Because I firmly believe that every single person has more opportunities open to them than they allow themselves to believe. By exposing the restrictions you operate under, and the internal stories you tell yourself, you will move closer to a position of genuine conscious awareness that will allow you to decide what you want to do next. That’s the key – you decide what you want to do next, not your internal storyteller.

Ok, Now What…

The ‘now what’ for this topic centers around a bit of a guide on how to build into raising your awareness of your current and future opportunities. A career pivot is a conscious decision to change the direction of your career, often in response to changes in your personal goals and circumstances, the job market, or the winds of change. Below is a sample strategy you can use to successfully start your journey towards understanding whether a career pivot will get you to where you want to be: