Learning To Decipher Situational Career-Life Aspirations
Edition #105
Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
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The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best and enables you to draw a blueprint on what it takes to get extraordinary things done. Please share your valuable thoughts and comments and start a conversation.
Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession to drive peak performance.
Career Transitions: A Step-By-Step Framework - How To Figure Out Your Next Move
In this article, Stella Garber has beautifully codified a set of critical questions to ask yourself, especially when you are contemplating a career transition.
When planning a career transition, determining what kind of company, role, etc., is vital, as the move you want to make is not an easy decision. Here are some key questions Stella has put down, making the process very thoughtful and valuable. The framework contains five key questions when you are considering a career transition:
What is my season in life?
What is most important to me right now?
What am I trying to optimise for?
What are my options?
How can I try things out in a low-risk way?
Read the entire article here.
Karthik Raman On The Computational Future of Biology And The Researcher-Entrepreneur
Dr.Karthik Raman, who is a Core Associate Faculty, School of Data Science & AI, IIT Madras(IITM); Professor, Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta School of Biosciences, Department of Biotechnology, IITM speaks to Vigesh.S on The Inductive Economy Podcast.
Here are some key topics that were discussed during the conversation, which provide new perspectives to think and reflect:
Computational Biology is at an interesting intersection of computer science, biology and chemical engineering that throws up new opportunities to make new predictions about genetic sequencing and cell populations and help discover new biology.
When you deal with complex systems, the interconnection and the impact between the various parts of these systems may not be fully known. It requires strong hypothesis-building and curiosity, as no straight answers exist.
You require strong experimentative thinking in these areas and must be willing to generate as many questions as possible, test, fail, and learn continuously.
Unlike typical IT systems where data can be mostly standardised and made predictable, biology throws up data that may not be standardised and tends to change or transform continuously. Studying how they build models in such transitionary data sets can provide some interesting insights into how the noise around the data is homogenised and used for drug discovery.
The importance of interdisciplinary knowledge in areas of fundamental research is paramount and vital.
The 3Ps drive fundamental scientific research areas - Process, Patience and Passion. Enjoying the process is vital.
Listen to the full episode on:
Apple Podcast | Amazon Music | YouTube
Ricardo Semler: Radical Wisdom For A Company, A School, A Life
In this TED talk, Ricardo Semler, who is the CEO and majority owner of Semco Partners, a Brazilian company best known for its radical form of industrial democracy and corporate re-engineering.
Here are some brilliant ideas and thoughts shared by Ricardo for you to reflect and think about:
In the periods when we have a lot of money, we have very little time. When we finally have the time, we have neither money nor health!
The opposite of work is not leisure because leisure is a very busy thing! It is idleness!
Building a company with a culture embedded with radical rules which other companies do not follow requires guts and conviction. For example, one of Ricardo's ideas was, “We will sell back your Wednesday for 10% of your salary to follow your passion!” It is quite an incredible thought that is not run-of-the-mill.
It is essential to question and change every premise and practice them assiduously if you want to radically alter your company's thinking and culture. Ricardo shares an example from his company on conducting interviews - “Why should interviews be done the same way that has been done for over many decades? Allowing the candidate seeking a job to spend time in the office, for half a day or full day, or talk to anybody they want is another radical thought he implemented.
In his company, anybody could only become a leader if they had been approved and interviewed by their future subordinates.
Many more nuggets are hidden here, which you can discover by clicking on the above video and watching it in a relaxed manner.
Learning To Decipher Situational Career-Life Aspirations
Career transitions are a significant change in one’s life, requiring more profound thought and introspection. It’s pretty shocking and sad that most people pay peripheral attention to this. Maybe that’s the true reason for the resignation tsunami that hit companies and the working population.
The hard truth is that career transition is not always as simple as ‘ I got a better offer.’, ‘I am getting a better role.’, ‘Gives me an opportunity to travel and work abroad.’, ‘This is a new project or an exciting area I will be working on.’ etc. Some of the questions, articulated by Stella Garber, are often never asked by the person looking for a career transition. If not deeply contemplated, this leads to dissatisfaction from the candidate and the company’s side, leading to quick attrition.
All the questions outlined by Stella are essential to consider, and the person needs to look for answers as any new job role will sound exciting and attractive. However, the person’s current family situation may not allow the person to do justice to that role. The reasons could be a recent addition to the family or an ailing parent who needs attention, which demands disproportionate time at this stage in life for that person. However, the person still takes up the job only to get frustrated due to the inability to balance the new responsibilities and family pressures.
Another one is a mismatch between ‘organisational maturity’ and ‘leadership maturity’, which is often not given enough thought. If the person comes from a large, well-organised set-up to a start-up, where there is chaos and volatility every day, not enough thinking is done to evaluate whether the person is mentally ready to handle these situations. The intensity of such an effort would be phenomenal, which is not factored in, or one is not genuinely prepared to go through it daily. Then, taking up that role will lead to unhappiness and dissatisfaction.
When people feel a learning plateau in their current job, they seek a career transition. The person may feel there needs to be a change in the industry, a change of city, a change of country, or a change in the size and scale of the company to work for, etc. If the person is trying to change too many of these levers, it leads to severe stress in the new job. Imagine going to a new industry in a new city or country. The person can take up this career transition if there is enough family support, as there is a need for a rapid learning transition. Moreover, this requires a significant investment of time from the individual. It’s essential to talk with the family about this career transition, and aligning them is necessary.
Companies often don’t do enough diligence on these - about a person’s ‘seasons of life’, ‘life priorities’, risk appetite’, etc., as they want to fill the job role quickly. It may be worthwhile to spend time on these first for some time and then see if there is an actual ‘Life-Career Priority fit’ for the role the person is applying for. Very often, the person is too optimistic about the opportunity and overestimates how they are good enough to handle or balance their situation. It’s also for the company to decipher if the person has exhibited this ability in their previous experience or roles and if they will be ready for the transition if they decide to join at the end of the hiring process.
Successful career transitions are not just about competency-capability fit - life’s priorities and aspirations also play a significant role in ensuring the person is successful.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
Successful career transitions are about more than competency-capability fit.
Interdisciplinary collaboration is at the heart of innovation and breakthroughs in pure science research.
If companies want to shed the old ways of getting work done, radically new work rules must be embraced and adopted.