5 easy, but easily failed, professional choices

As our career unfolds, every now and then we are at a crossroads. Sometimes we immediately feel it is a key choice. Sometimes we don't, but with hindsight it was. Sometimes we take the obvious path and never reflect back on it, but if we would we'd realize it was a momentous decision. And sometimes as well, we think it is not even a decision and make a big mistake…

Can we anticipate this? Recognize the high stakes situations? Find the right criteria? Avoid the missteps? Actually I'm not sure 😅. But we can try!

1. Compliance or creativity?

The extra mile is not just about the workload, especially in the 21st century's global economy. Many people think they deliver beyond expectations when they bring work home for the weekend or stay late at the office. This is productivity. Companies appreciate but today it is just a staple in their performance. Those who go down that road are labeled "hard-worker": the kind of people who display nice awards in frames on the wall behind them, in the office they will call theirs for decades.

Doing what you're told, or even more, helps you to stay where you are. Why would I replace or promote an excellent engineer, lawyer or salesperson if they do such a great job in their current position? From a manager's standpoint, having the right person in the right place is a problem solved, so no need to change anything. Note that there's nothing wrong here: if you love what you are doing and dislike change, this is a permanent handshake with your organization.

But if you are not so fond of routine, there are other paths. For this you will have to demonstrate that you are different from the person they think you are. You'll have to show the potential in you for other positions or responsibilities. You can start by challenging expectations, rules and instructions. Not that you want to be different at all costs, but you need to use your skills and imagination to provide innovative solutions, display an unexpected understanding of the context, improve a procedure or a process, or add more value to the deliverables. Just asking questions can do the trick: you're not a mere biological robot, you have your own internal engine and abilities to evolve. Let them know.

But remember then that you tread on an uncertain road, because even if you have a plan, change can be initiated but hardly controlled.

2. Work of life?

You may have noticed that it is work-life balance and never life-work balance, and always from the professional perspective, not the personal one. The underlying assumption is that work is essential and central, and that finding some room for life is a nice-to-have. Now maybe this is because in English the American debate is overwhelming, and the US is a place where indeed work is central. The debate in French doesn't sound quite the same, because work there seems to always have been nothing more than a necessary evil…

Don't expect me to have the answer to this one, of course, if only because it is a different one for each person. But I have found 3 tips, that maybe we could call the MOE rule: moments, opportunities, experience.

Although the issue is eternal and will apply during your whole work life, there are moments when you must decide to go north or south. There will be this decisive meeting at the wrong time, or young children putting pressure on your professional ambitions, or this job offer in an awful place, or the urge to do this personal project that requires more time than your employer is keen to allow you. Each of these situations should be assessed as such, not with a general approach that you have established in high school. There will be options, consequences, upsides and downsides, and possibly long-term ripples. Pause and think.

You will be offered professional opportunities at a cost to your personal life. Again it is up to you to ponder them. But keep something in mind: in the 21st century's global economy, there will be other ones. And there will be even more if you are used to look for them. So you can drop things. Plenty of them. You might never find the same opportunity, right, but you might find better ones! Trust our crazy world to care about what you can do for it.

Scientists studying happiness have found that nothing concrete can beat what you experience. You might not remember what your bonus was 5 years ago, but you will treasure forever that hug your daughter gave you after she'd won her high school championship. So if there's money on one side and love on the other, think twice. Put another way, if what you experience at work is making money, you might want to rethink your professional project.

3. Expertise or exploration?

In jobs requiring knowledge and know-how, there is often the same inevitable question once you have reached a certain status. Should you become a specialist, or expand your professional skills?

After 5 years doing something day in and day out, you know what you are talking about. So you could do it for another 10 years and become a referent. You will be respected, in your zone of comfort, but it will be difficult to pivot thereafter, and if your expertise is no longer needed you will be in hot water.

Conversely you can change jobs and go for management, sales, or any adjacent department where your profile is handy. And then change again. After a while you will be able to talk about everything but not to do anything specifically. You can work with experts, and even manage them, but not have a work conversation: they would summarize it for you.

Again there is not a good or bad choice. The problem is that you can't have your cake and eat it. Trying to go both ways would be the worst, because you would still be a half-baked expert or a narrow-minded executive. Companies need both profiles, so trust your instinct.

4. Conformity or freedom?

At the beginning of this article I used the word career out of simplicity. Yet some people wouldn't even know how to use it in a conversation. For them, the corporate world is a parallel universe. They can be immersed in it but not connected to it. And they might be your colleagues.

Think of this guy who comes every single day at the office wearing a bow tie and singing opera songs. Or your classmate who took a gap year to sail around the world. Or this top lawyer who dropped it all to become a baker.

Some of us start their professional life with cast-iron guidelines that they never challenge. They want to make at least this much a year. They would never be unemployed. They would work in a large company, or a small one. They would have a 2-week vacation in August. Well, others just make it up as they go along. And there is nothing wrong with that! Even companies don't mind, there is enough complexity in the world for them to accommodate to weird workers.

Freedom is always an option, because you set the rules. Money can be your reference, and then you can change your mind. You can build yourself a comfortable cage, but you will always have the key. So when the going gets tough, or anytime, you can always sit down and think of different plans. I mean really different.

5. Tasks or responsibilities?

Should you take ownership of what you're doing at work, or just be a cog? In the global economy this is a starker choice than in the past, because companies need employee engagement in order to survive much harsher and unpredictable business conditions.

If you're an executive it is even worse, because you are supposed to be a leader or whatever your college claimed you would become. There are expectations from all directions.

But we all know you don't have to play the game. It is easy to just do what you are told and leave the responsibility to your boss, if only because they are usually so willing to wallow in power. If you bow your head, there's not a lot of things they can do about it.

Of course don't expect promotions and business class plane tickets, but the silver lining is not negligible: you will sleep at night. Like an angel. You did what you were told, so nobody can blame you. You are reliable, predictable, and there will be scant reason for anyone to bark at your tree.

So one of the key pitfalls in this question and the others above is that you can be led to make a decision because of dynamics or other people's systems of value. It's easy to accept that success is what all your colleagues and neighbors see as success. Or to think that because you've invested years and money in a degree you need to reap the dividends by staying in your job. Or that because you have decided you would be a financial analyst when you were 16 this is final.

If you think the answer to these 5 questions is obvious to you, then think again. Maybe it shouldn't be 🧐.

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