“How does someone who is mid-career pause, stop and take it to the next level?”
– Melissa, Tampa
For anyone working today, whether you’re just starting out and you want to get that first job, or you’re mid-career, or you’re an executive trying to get the most out of that top-level opportunity, if you approach it the way most people have, traditionally, they believe that they go to an organization right out of school, and then it’s 40 years of show up, shut up and do it our way. We’ll give you a gold watch and a pension. Right?
Well, we know the pensions are gone, the gold watch has gone, and very, very few people are in a career for 40 years. As a matter of fact, the length of a career is shortening and shortening with each passing decade. For my grandparents, in their careers, they were flighty if they had three or maybe even four jobs, but today the average worker that’s graduating college will have 12+ jobs in their career. So you’re not going to be around long enough to be in a program that’s going to drive your career for you. You’re going to have to take charge of that yourself.
It reminds me of a story that really brought this home for me. When I was in my doctoral program, there were two parts to it. The first part is the normal classwork, which you do just like in any other high school or college experience, but you write your dissertation in the second half of your doctoral program—and you do it alone.
It’s the last night before we were going to go off and write our dissertations, and I was with my learning team. That’s when somebody asked that whole team a very interesting question. They said, “Why are you here getting your doctoral degree? It’s expensive $70-80,000. The divorce rate amongst people that get post-graduate degrees is over 50% because there’s so much pressure, why are we here?”
When I heard that question, a chill went down my spine because I had never really thought about that. At that point, I had been living my life like I was riding a bus. I would just get on at certain points. You get on, and the buses drop you off at junior high. I remember thinking, “Oh, I can’t do this. I can’t compete at this level. They’re bigger than me. I have no reason to be here.”
But somehow, you make it through, you get back on the bus, you go to high school, and you repeat the process. And if you choose to go to college or start your career, the same thing happens again and again. The bus takes you to that next destination. We need to figure out how to stop riding that bus and start driving that bus.
When the conversation came around to me, I didn’t really have an answer as to why I pursued this degree, and my response surprised even me at the time.
“I’m in this program because of the only time I ever saw my father cry.”
– Dr. Jeff Kaplan
My father was a salesman, an in-home seller with a high school education. We didn’t have a traditional bank account because our bank account was his front right pocket. Our savings account was a jar of change on a table, and that’s how I knew how well we were doing. If there was lots of silver in that jar, we were okay. If we were down just to the copper pennies, we would probably need to move next month.
The one thing he had was his sales ability. He was so proud that he was still able to provide for his family with that sales ability. But, when he had a dry spell for a few weeks, he was told by the boss he wasn’t worth his draw.
When he retold that story to my mother and me, it was the only time I ever saw him cry. I don’t remember that because seeing a man cry is so impactful. But it was that I saw someone’s identity crumble before me. I thought right then that work should never, ever have this kind of control over an individual. So, I set my sights on creating a career where we can make it better. And that’s really what this is all about.
