Trends affecting career change and influences from 2020 and how to leverage them for working lives will be the key themes from @HerminiaIbarra #DOPConf

Longevity, technology, work change and social expectations are the four major 2020 trends in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. #DOPConf
Previous ideas about longevity of careers and how we think about work are no longer valid with the changes in life expectancy. #DOPConf
Technology change entails fewer jobs, and corporate change brings cost reduction and higher unemployment, with gig work on the rise. #DOPConf #2020
Social change has driven "portfolio careers" and the pursuit of "passion" and worklife meaning and well-being. #DOPConf
From @HerminiaIbarra 's research, more meaningful work has emerged as the primary career driver. However, there are fewer clear career paths or trajectories, leading to questions regarding this paradox of choice and what this means for defining "success".
She talks about transition periods, which take longer than anticipated, are non-linear and under-institutionalised and therefore driven by individuals and more difficult. #DOPConf #2020
Answer-driven plan and implement approach is no longer helpful, but process-driven (experiment and learn) approach is harder and longer but more fruitful, leading to plan. #DOPconf
.@HerminiaIbarra talks about the increase in urgency which sparks this change, with both dissatisfaction and "pull" required for progress, with some relying on "saviour or bolt of lightning". Jolts in the form of major life events may be prompts but plan still required. #DOPConf
Working identity is a key factor, with "possible selves" enaction needed for movement. These selves include desired, "ought", ideal and even feared possible selves. #DOPConf
Period of liminality between old and new, with no clear identity, an unanchored sense of instability, with sense of "fertile emptiness" and risk of unwise decisions. @HerminiaIbarra identifies this stage as important for development of new identity and direction. #DOPConf
She explains that this liminal phase should be endured and not abandoned. Constraints are lifted, allowing for creativity and possibilities, leading to divergent exploration and delayed commitment. #DOPconf
This allows individual to try on possible selves and compare/contrast and leads to finding good fit, despite being an aversive process for some. #DOPconf
End of process hard to pinpoint, but has clarity of destination with a crystallisation of personal career story that begins to make sense. #DOPconf
This inner turning usually occurs in mid-life, early parental/peer pressure gives way to individuation. Mid-life brings sense of mortality, pressing search for meaning with increased longevity, better self-knowledge, revision of earlier goals, unexpressed facets of self. #DOPconf
Two patterns to this: younger changers have longer exploration period before embarking on one direction (external drivers prevalent); older changers have crystallise/exploit pattern who can express clearly what they have to offer (internal drivers prevalent). #DOPconf
Levers for change are same across age groups. Side projects are major motor, shifts in network to cut binding ties, "making sense out loud" with self-reflection are all consistent and critical levers. #DOPconf
Concluding, @HerminiaIbarra says that motives and drivers may differ across life span but identity building blocks are key levers and the process should be embraced. Thank you for a fascinating key note. #DOPconf

More from Economy

1/ To add a little texture to @NickHanauer's thread, it's important to recognize that there's a good reason why orthodox economists (& economic cosplayers) so vehemently oppose a $15 min wage:

The min wage is a wedge that threatens to undermine all of orthodox economic theory.


2/ Orthodox economics is grounded in two fundamental models: a systems model that describes the market as a closed equilibrium system, and a behavioral model that describes humans as rational, self-interested utility-maximizers. The modern min wage debate undermines both models.

3/ The assertion that a min wage kills jobs is so central to orthodox economics that it is often used as the textbook example of the Supply/Demand curve. Raise the cost of labor and businesses will buy less of it. It's literally Econ 101!


4/ Econ 101 insists that markets automatically set an efficient "equilibrium price" for labor & everything else. Mess with this price and bad things happen. Yet decades of empirical research has persuaded a majority of economists that this just isn't

5/ How can this be? Well, either the market is not a closed equilibrium system in which if you raise the price of labor employers automatically purchase less of it... OR the market is not automatically setting an efficient and fair equilibrium wage. Or maybe both. #FAIL

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