Thought #1: You Can Go Home Again – Suppose the grass isn’t greener in a different career. There are few one-way tickets, unless you do something really stupid on your way out. Think no one will remember that you didn’t finish that last project? Think again. Keeping up on developments in your old industry tends to happen almost unconsciously. It’s like travel – once you’ve been to the Grand Canyon, when you see an article about it in your local newspaper, you’ll read it. Of course, it goes without saying that maintaining relationships with former colleagues doesn’t hurt. The key, as in any job transition, is to be able to explain how the experience you gained in the last position can add value to the next one.

Thought #2: There’s No Right Way to Determine What’s a Stupid Risk or What’s a Calculated Risk – But if you are trying to figure it out, try following these 5 steps:

1. Determine the worst-case consequences of taking the risk. If you can’t live with the consequences, then it’s probably a stupid risk and you need to develop a contingency plan or retool the risk so the possible results can be downgraded.

2. Research the risk you want to take as much as possible. Wise job seekers look, or at least glance, before they leap.

3. Seek advice. Whether you hire a career coach, discuss the risk with your spouse, or talk it over with a friend, get some feedback.

4. Ask yourself: “Will I lie awake at night for the next several years, wishing I had taken this risk?”

5. Now ask yourself this question: “Is not taking the risk a bigger risk than taking it?” If the answer is yes, then what are you waiting for?

Some job seekers will plunge forward and some will tiptoe cautiously. Neither approach is right or wrong. But if you tiptoe at a glacier’s speed, you could be missing out on a number of great opportunities.

Thought #3: Live Your Life on a Want-to, Choose-to, Like-it, Love-it Basis, and You Will Be Drawn Like a Magnet to the Things That Matter to You – The most obvious way to fit more than one major interest into your life is to concentrate on one at a time and do them one after the other. People who change careers in mid-life – for example, giving up an executive job to open a bookstore in Vermont – are following this kind of life plan. I’m impressed when someone does that only because we’ve bought into the foolish notion that it’s “normal” for people to make up their minds once and for a lifetime. There are many people for whom switching horses in midstream comes much more naturally, who change goals whenever they need to. I can’t think of a better philosophy to live by than to do something till you’re bored with it and then move on to something else.

Thought #4: Being Untruthful Is Like Buying On Credit - They’re Both Addictive. - Any addictive behavior offers a simple, short-term escape from a problem, but that escape becomes more and more complicated as time goes on. Lying can get extremely complicated. You really need to have an outstanding memory to be a good liar because you always have to create more lies consistent with the ones you told in the first place. Shakespeare had it right all along: “What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”

Am I really saying that you always have to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? If somebody asks me “How are you today?”, am I supposed to say, “Well, I’ve got to be honest with you, I have a sore finger, a headache, and my foot hurts a little”? No, that’s not what I mean. Outright lying, however – planned lying, lying with an ulterior motive, lying for personal gain – is definitely something to be avoided.

Thought #5: Set a Good Example - When you’re in a leadership position, whether it’s in a business or as the head of a family, honesty and integrity are as important as having air, food, and water. As a manager, do you think there’s anything your people don’t know about you right this minute? If you haven’t been totally aboveboard and honest with them, do you really think you got away with it? Not too likely – but if you’ve been led to believe that you got away with it, this poses a major problem in its own right since there’s a good chance people are afraid of you.

But there’s another side of the coin too. In any organization, people want to believe in their leaders. If you give them reason to trust you, they’re not going to go looking for reasons to think otherwise – and they’ll be just as perceptive about your positive qualities as they are about the negative ones.

Thought #6: It’s Impossible To Be All Things To All People - One of Winston Churchill’s favorite quotations, which he hung in his study, reads as follows: “If I were trying to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might well be closed for any other business. I do the best I know how, the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing it to the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me will not amount to anything. If the end brings me out all wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”

The quotation is by Abraham Lincoln and was given to Winston Churchill as a 70th birthday gift by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It’s the sort of quotation people should keep handy if they’re frustrated by trying to please everyone. One of the most difficult lessons to learn, and one that must be learned the hard way, is that it’s impossible to be all things to all people, that it’s impossible to please everyone.

Thought #7: There Are Two Ways to Safeguard Your Ideas at Work – Say nothing to anybody. Or tell everything to everybody. In theory, either strategy will save you from getting ripped off. If no one hears your thoughts, then obviously you’re safe. If you sing your ideas from the rooftops, probably no one will have the gall to later claim them as their own.

Both the no-disclosure and the full disclosure tactics need to be applied with great sensitivity. A subordinate, after all, can’t simply refuse to talk to the boss. Then again, there’s no rule saying a subordinate has to share his or her brightest ideas in one-on-one situations.

Realistically, there will be one-on-one exchanges and there is no such thing as absolute assurance that some of your insights won’t be misappropriated. But save your pet ideas for larger meetings – for opportunities when you can impress people two or three levels up and when you will get full credit. Later, you can always smile and say, “Gee, I guess I just think better in group situations.”

Joe Hodowanes, a career strategy adviser in Tampa, Florida, offers a free resume and career analysis. Fax your resume to (813) 936-0201 or email it to jmwanes@jmwanes.com For questions, call Joe at (813) 936-0091 or visit www.jmwanes.com on the Web. All Job Search Advisor articles on this website are the property of www.jmwanes.com (J.M. Wanes & Associates). You may download
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© 2005 J.M. Wanes & Associates.