MICHELLE GIBBINGS
First published as Career Leap in 2018 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd
42 McDougall St, Milton Qld 4064
Office also in Melbourne
This edition first published in 2020 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd
Typeset in 12.5/14.5pt Arno Pro
© John Wiley & Sons, Australia Ltd 2018
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-730-38207-2
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above.
Cover design by Wiley
Printed in Singapore by Markono Print Media Pte Ltd
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Disclaimer
The material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate, before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the author and publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.
To Craig for helping me with my homework, and to Barney for not eating it.
Foreword
About the author
Acknowledgements
Preface
Get career fit online
Introduction
Phase 1: Assess
1 Check: Are you future fit?
2 Realise: What is your potential
Phase 2: Architect
3 Explore: What are your options?
4 Choose: What will you progress?
5 Construct: What plan will you follow?
Phase 3: Activate
6 Shape: What is your new career identity?
7 Influence: How will you enter the market?
8 Focus: How can you make each day matter?
Phase 4: Accelerate
9 Launch: How will you transition and land?
10 Advance: When will you celebrate and what will you do next?
A message from Michelle
Sources
EULA
The great challenge of the modern workforce isn’t so much finding work, although that can indeed prove difficult for the young and the non-skilled workers. It is steering a way along a tricky pathway that presents many twists and turns along the way.
Work was a straightforward concept in the twentieth century. Everyone was scooped up by the globalisation of the great manufacturing companies both in Australia and abroad. There were jobs aplenty. All you had to do was learn the rules, put your head down, and work day-in and day-out for the whole of your working career.
And that is precisely what many workers did for their entire working lives, whether it was for a car manufacturer or for a professional services firm. It was a process that delivered prosperity but it also set up expectations about how work should be, and that needs to be unravelled by workers in a post manufacturing world.
In Get Career Fit author Michelle Gibbings shines a light on the way forward for workers in the twenty-first century. Gone or going are the great global manufacturers. Long gone is the idea of working in one job for the entirety of your working life. Now in are bold new concepts like digital disruption, globalisation, mechanisation, artificial intelligence and, perhaps most powerful of all, the desire for personal growth and development.
Working on an assembly line might have delivered an assured job from an early age but, gosh, it wasn’t exactly a personally fulfilling use of time. The next generation of workers see work differently, and indeed they have to see work differently. The skills now required are far more complex including agility, sociability and self-confidence, and this on top of the need for technical and entrepreneurial skills.
In this masterful and engaging work Gibbings is a bit like the conductor of an orchestra. She draws on research evidence here, on the experience of notable individuals there, on her own insights and experience and even on quotes from famous people in history. Aristotle gets a mention. I even saw a quote from Geronimo.
In many ways Gibbings has constructed a how-to book on career growth and development for the twenty-first century that mirrors the way careers must unfold in the twenty-first century. A bit of this, a bit of that but always with an underlying theme, a rhythm if you like, of personal growth and development and with a watchful eye on prosperity and commerciality.
This is a complex story well told by an experienced story-teller and conductor who adroitly brings in different players to add just the right note at just the right time. I loved this book, not just for its insight into navigating the modern career, but also for the way Gibbings pulls everything together for the reader’s engagement and enjoyment.
Congratulations Michelle. Get Career Fit is a great leap forward for anyone navigating work in the twenty-first century!
Author, columnist, speaker, corporate advisor Melbourne, December 2017
The idea for this book had a long gestation period, with many people I’ve met throughout my career influencing it. It is by seeing what others have done, and through my own experiences, that the ideas in this book have come to life.
A book is never written alone, and this one wouldn’t have been possible without the many generous people who helped along the way.
To Ann Crabb, thank you for listening to my early ideas and helping to constructively challenge them.
Thank you to Alicia Beachley, Andrew Wiseman, Christine Bartlett, Christie Kerr, Glenn Brennan, Julian Fenwick, Peter Griffin, Robyn Weatherley and Russell Yardley, who all, without hesitation, reached out to people in their networks to help me secure interviews for this book.
A massive thank you to all the people who so readily shared their thoughts, ideas and experiences about their career and career leaps, including Andrew O’Keefe, Aneka Manners, Anna Jenkins, Dr Bronwyn King AO, Christine Bartlett, Clare Payne, Gorgi Coghlan, Helen Silver AO, Janine Garner, Jessica Watson OAM, John Bertrand AO, Layne Beachley AO, Dr Lisa O’Brien, Marc Alexander, Nigel Matthews, Rodney George, Sandy Hutchison, Simon Madden and Steve Bracks AC.
Your generosity in sharing your ups and downs, and your wisdom, have made this book rich with real, tangible and practical insights.
While it was an idea for a long period, the manuscript itself was written in super-fast time. Thanks to Kelly Irving for her amazing work in keeping me on track and making sure everything came together.
Thanks also to Adam Matthews and Drew Blatchford, two amazing osteopaths, who made sure my wrists and forearms survived the writing onslaught, and to Chris Nikola for the PT sessions that helped keep me physically focused.
This book wouldn’t be the same without the advice and efforts of the Wiley team. To Jem Bates, Lucy Raymond, Ingrid Bond and Chris Shorten, thank you for helping bring this book to life.
A special thanks too for Bernard Salt for writing the Foreword for this book. His expertise and forward thinking approach to the world of work has influenced many — including me — and I am very grateful to him for sharing his thoughts on Get Career Fit.
Most of all, thanks to Craig for putting up with the many weekends when I was bunkered down in my study writing. You really were the best decision I ever made!
My first career ambition was to be a member of Charlie’s Angels — that’s the original 1970s TV show starring Jaclyn Smith, Farrah Fawcett and Kate Jackson. As I grew up, at different times I thought I wanted to be a librarian, a teacher, a journalist or a lawyer — though I never did get a degree in education (well, not yet) or take the bar exam.
Like many of my friends, after high school I enrolled in a course at university (a Bachelor of Business Communication) because, well, back then it was what you did. You’d do a trade apprenticeship or go to university, which is still very much what happens today. I had no idea where it would take me.
It ended up being the start of a 20-year career that involved working for six different companies, moving to a different geographic zone nine times, getting promoted 10 times, working in seven different functional areas, completing three degrees and eight certifications, being a member of six professional associations, and holding three board positions and one advisory role.
Throughout this time, I took what seemed like large leaps as I moved from one discipline to another, one industry sector to another, one career field to another. I moved from politics to mining to banking, from being a company spokesperson to working on a large project, from working in corporate affairs to working for the CEO.
Often people would ask me how or why I did this. One friend once remarked, ‘Michelle, your career terrifies me.’
For some of us, these leaps are scary. They seem not just impossible, but implausible. I mean, how on earth do you move from being a teacher to a state premier, a lawyer to a TV personality or a banker to a fashion designer? (All are completely possible progressions, as you’ll soon see.)
Yet for others, like me, these leaps are born out of a love of learning and challenge. Sometimes our needs or interests have changed or we simply feel we are in the ‘wrong role’.
Over time, I have come to realise that making these leaps has actually helped advance my career. I learned to take advantage of opportunities as they arose, and to sustain my career when times were tough or challenges arose.
This attitude and approach is, now more than ever, something we all need to embrace.
In this age of robotics and automation, work roles that were once seen as ‘secure’ over the long term are disappearing faster than new and different roles are being created. The number of us facing redundancy or being forced to move on to new roles continues to increase.
It is up to us to take our future into our own hands.
The upside of all of this change is the new opportunities it brings.
There are amazing opportunities for you to embrace a role that you love, that inspires you, that makes you want to get up for work every day. Perhaps it’s a role that uncovers a hidden talent, or provides you with the chance to do truly meaningful work that makes a difference on either a local or a global scale.
If you sit back and wait, these opportunities will pass you by and go to someone else, so it’s up to you to do something about it, which is where this book comes in. It will help you:
assess where you are in your career now
architect where you want to leap to
activate how you get there
accelerate how you leap successfully.
This book does not set out to assess artificial intelligence and its impact on the world, or to offer an in-depth critique of changes to today’s workforce — there are plenty of books in the market that do that. Rather, I want to offer an incentive and a source of inspiration that will challenge you to make deliberate decisions in your career, as well as a practical guide on how to take advantage of what the future brings.
I’ve helped countless people transition into new careers. In Get Career Fit, you’ll hear about these people. You’ll read their stories and those of others who have successfully made leaps in their careers — for example, from banking to fashion, sport to corporate or public to private sector.
But there is a catch. The strategy I will outline is only effective if you actually do the work, and complete the exercises contained here. They require deliberate time, deep thought and reflection, potentially with the help of a trusted adviser, partner or colleague.
That’s why I recommend you print out the exercises and complete them in your own time, and not just once but at different stages in your career.
All of the exercises can be downloaded from: michellegibbings.com/resources
Career success and ongoing employment require you to actively manage your career each and every day. You can’t afford to play safe, to stay small, to not take risks, to not change or position yourself effectively. You must continuously develop yourself, constantly look ahead and actively plan your career.
You can jump over a little stream or you can leap tall buildings in a single bound. It’s just a question of how high and how far you are prepared to go, and how much risk you are willing to take.
So as you embark on this quest and leap into your brilliant future consider the words of the inventor Thomas Edison, a man who was famously dismissed by a teacher as ‘addled’: ‘If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.’
That’s what happens when you get career fit and learn to leap.
Whether you are a hard copy or digital book reader, it always helps to have additional online resources to read and refer to along the way. Scattered through the book are many exercises and checklists to help you progress through the Career Reinvention Cycle (which you will learn about shortly) and get career fit. Supporting these activities are a selection of online resources including worksheets and tips, which you can also download from:
michellegibbings.com/resources
Getting and keeping career fit takes focus and effort, and you will need to do lots of thinking and planning. The exercises in this book will help you do just that. If you skim through them, you aren’t likely to make as much progress as you would like. By keeping them as a handy reference, you’ll be able to refer back to them and track your progress throughout your career leap adventure.
As you’ll soon see, making a career leap isn’t something you do just once. You’ll leap multiple times during your career, at different stages and ages, and for different reasons.
Keep the work you do for this leap easily accessible — it will help you next time, and the time after that. It will be interesting to see what has changed for you each time too.
Enjoy the experience, get career fit and make your career leap count.
Michelle