Career shifts - adjacent space technique
When you head towards the big 40 or sail some way past it, it’s normal to think of the life you’ve lived and what’s to come.
It’s also normal to wonder “is this it”
And with your achievements come responsibilities. Do you
Be daring, throw caution to the wind, be radical, do something different
You’ve a good life, don’t throw it all away
To achieve a midlife career change, the techniques that have got you jobs so far are not likely to work so well. Until now you’ve been climbing a ladder either within a company or within your expertise. It’s incremental development but it keeps you in the same space, more or less.
And here’s the dilemma. How do you get to do something different if you have no experience of it.
Look for the adjacent space
We can often get trapped in a problem of our making. We’re keen enough to achieve a mid-life career change. We convince ourselves nothing other than radical change will do.
There’s nothing wrong with radical change but it’s not the easiest or first way to pull off career change.
A simpler and easier way is to audit or review what you love, like, tolerate and detest in your current role.
Then start to play in the margins of redesigning — the adjacent space.
For example Adam is a senior finance manager for a major international corporate. He loves the rigourand truth in numbers. He tolerates the internal politics and slow pace of corporate life. He has a team and like working with them but truth be told he’s done with the big team leadership thing. He doesn’t like the way he’s detached from actually making a difference in what he does.
Adam can use this to redesign an adjacent space. He’s not going to give up on all that financial knowledge and become an artist. So he sets about designing this adjacent space based on what he loves, loathes and tolerates.
He loves the rigour and truth in numbers. He wants to get closer to the action as he did when he first started out. He’s happy to trade off a big team. He’s delighted if he can trade out organisational politics. And would like shorter clearer lines of responsibility.
Adam uses this new criteria to find his adjacent space. Ideas start to emerge. Finance Director at small family businesses. Burser for a school. These roles pay less than Adam’s on now. But that trade off — money for quality of work-life is down to Adam to decide.
Using adjacent space logic, Adam’s now able to see opportunities that were always there, he just wasn’t looking in the right direction.
Simple actions you can take
Keep a five day journal of your working week.
Create several columns
· love — these tasks make your energy levels rise
· tolerate — you’re competent at these, you just don’t love them
· loathe — these drain and sap your energy
· missing — things you see others doing that you’d like to try
At the end of each day in each column write examples of what’s come up during the day.
Write down things you’ve done against each column. With tolerate do be honest with yourself. Most jobs have at least a few things that just have to get done, not the most thrilling, just necessary.
Be honest about the role of learning and training here, whether a bit more learning might make you happier about these tasks.
At the end of the week
You can start to turn this into the beginning of your adjacent space career change.
You should be able to describe to yourself, what I’d like is a role that has:
- lots of the things I love
- quite a bit of the things I’ve spotted missing from what I do now
- less of the things I tolerate
- a lot less of the things that bring my energy down
Using this in career change
Now you have your list you can start to look at roles in this adjacent space. You’re not burning every bridge. You’re looking to take with you all the things you do well now.
Use the list when talking to people about opportunities.
these are the things I love doing, I’m looking for a role that will make the most of these skills and the opportunity to get into (these things that are missing)
Sometimes mid-life career change looks an impossible ask. Adjacent space technique is just one way of breaking through.
