Our careers have a melody

First published in the Mandarin

What is a career?

The list of jobs I have had might describe my career. However, it does not assume continuity of effort or coherence in approach. This is the broadest possible definition of a career.

For most of us, a career includes progress in competence and advancement in hierarchy. In this light, a career might be a pattern of related roles and knowledge through which I have deliberately moved throughout my working life. Success might be measured by how far I have climbed the greasy pole of the organisational hierarchy.

These definitions are not a flattering or inspiring view of a career.

An unusual way to think about a career is that it is an experience we have that is somewhere between understanding and imagination. This is a way to understand a career not as a set of jobs designed to serve an organisational outcome but as an everyday human experience. However, in experiencing a career, the roles of manager, worker, and team member become blurred.

The relationship between individual and organisation can be indistinct and impermanent. When, exactly, did I become a leader? Was my experience of that role defined by being in the role or the knowledge I had accumulated that made me eligible for the role?

We sometimes refer to the ‘art of management’, but our conversations are dominated by the ‘mechanics of management’. We should think more about the ‘art of career’ and less about the ‘mechanics of a career’. The following four thoughts offer a place to start thinking about a career and what it could be.

A career is indivisible

We think about careers as a series of movements between jobs. They are a stop-start thing rather than a continuous, always-in-motion thing. So, we think about a career as something that can stop at a time of our choosing.

But a career does not stop. It persists. It is continuous. If a woman leaves the workplace to have a family, has her career stopped? If I retire, will my career stop? Is a career defined by having a job for which I am paid? If not, what distinguishes a career from ‘life?

Does the organisation define my career because it gives me a job, or is a career something that I am living and therefore indivisible and continuous? If a career is indistinguishable from ‘life’, are the organisational structures defining a career even relevant or important?

They are if I believe I become stripped of my ‘life’ when I go to work. For the time I am at work, I am a creature of the organisation, provided with the mindsets and tools to do the job. I shed my work persona and re-applied my ‘life’ on my way home.

Reducing a career to a series of jumps between jobs makes it easier to act on but reduces the possibility for speculation and imagination about a career because we get locked into a mechanical (and limited) set of options.

If a career is inseparable from my ‘life’, how would that change how I approach it, and how might organisations structure careers differently?

Careers have melody

Where does that leave us if we abandon the need to ‘manage’ a career through a series of job jumps?

Music can be a series of notes. I can learn to read notes, but musicians reading the same notes hear the music. They hear the melody; they see the notes not as individual parts but as a continuous whole.

The same goes for language. You can see and read the words, but you know what they mean beyond the sequence that makes up a sentence. You are hearing the whole idea that is made up of words. If I included an unfamiliar word, you would still get its meaning because you could see it in the context of the whole.

So what? The only place we see the continuity of a career is in our heads—through the way we bring coherence to our experiences. This is where we hear the melody of a career. This is where we see the idea of a career.

A career is not ‘out there’ externalised in the world but rather ‘in here’ (I’m pointing at my head) as something only we can see and understand as more than the sum of its parts.

Are organisations, then, another player in the orchestra of our career rather than the conductor they are often perceived to be?

Careers change when we shift our attention

When considering careers as a series of jobs, we focus on the present. This limits our ability to see the relationships between things—the continuity or discontinuities.

Looking back (into the past), we can see the notes that make up a career, allowing us to hear the melody to that point in the music. The present (my current job) is about the ability to act, and my past experience is a memory.

But forgetting, revision, and reinterpretation are also memories. You do not remember a series of perfectly captured moments. We interpret, extrapolate, question, and imagine. It is the same with careers. We constantly reinterpret our experiences and bring them into a coherent whole that shapes how we think and act in our current jobs. All this is mapped as the pattern of an internalised career.

Our understanding of our career is not a map of reality but a continuous part of our identity. A career is indivisible from how we see ourselves. We understand a career through our emotions and perceptions and what we pay attention to in a role.

What we pay attention to when playing a role shapes what we learn and understand. We constantly filter our attention through our understanding of who we are—our identity. When we shift our attention or attend to something different, we shift our understanding of a career.

Careers are intuitive

Careers are not a set of pre-planned actions. We often cling to this belief because it gives us a sense of control. Careers are more intuitive and imaginative.

What if we saw a career as a collection of lucky or spontaneous moments? Mistakes would be inevitable and acceptable. But sometimes, a ‘mistake’ can open new doors. Why? Because a career is indivisible and continuous.

The real art of a career is not in planning every step but in embracing the possibilities and making the most of each moment.

Reflection, honesty, and courage are the keys to a career that is part of a fulfilling life. Embracing a career’s intuitive nature might empower us to make confident and informed career decisions.

Reflecting on an inflection

The shock of the pandemic brought us to an inflection point as individuals. Many people reconsidered their relationship with work, reflected on their careers, and, in some cases, saw the boundaryless nature of work and careers for the first time.

We continue to experience the aftermath of the pandemic, which is evident in the workforce through phenomena that have been variously termed the great resignation, the great reshuffling, quiet quitting, and the endless ‘return to the office’ controversy.

We are in the midst of change, which allows us to think and behave differently. It may be a good time to question whether our understanding of ‘career’ improves or undermines individual and organisational performance. To do that, we need to start from a different place.