“PURPOSE” – THE Lynchpin to Career Transition Success?
William E. "Bill" Kieffer
Career Transition Coach | Best Selling Author | Executive Director, Veteran Career Journey | Coach & Faculty Member, The Honor Foundation | Strategic Talent Management Advisor | TEDx Speaker | 4X LinkedIn Top Voice
“Purpose” has long been a hot topic in military veteran career transition.
Veterans have a high sense of “Purpose”.
Lack of “Purpose” (perceived or real) is often a major challenge to career transition and satisfaction once veterans land in the workplace.
Harvard Business Review’s September/October 2019 edition has a great article entitled “Put Purpose at the Core of Your Strategy.” written by Thomas W. Malnight, Ivy Buche, and Charles Dhanaraj.
While the article focuses on how successful companies redefine their businesses, it has important ideas that are helpful to anyone in career transition, especially military veterans.
The article roots from the authors’ extensive, long-term study regarding high-growth companies and their strategic drivers. One of the unexpected results was the critical importance of “Purpose” as a driver.
The article reveals that “Purpose” drives three important results: generating sustained profitable growth, staying relevant in a rapidly changing world, and deepening stakeholder ties.
Relevance to your career transition? Getting clear on your “Purpose” will focus you and help optimize your transition. It will:
- Help you build a better network.
- Begin to clarify how you fit and can add value to a new, dynamic work world.
- Lead to higher-level results (e.g. landing a better job/career sooner; greater success/satisfaction on the job once landed, etc.).
The article goes on to report that “Purpose” plays two important strategic roles: redefining the playing field and reshaping the value proposition (which includes responding to trends, building trust, and focusing on pain points)
Relevance to your career transition?
- Getting clear on your “Purpose” broadens your view by considering the entire career playing field not just a narrow environment with which you are familiar.
- It helps you clarify your “elevator pitch”; your answer to the dreaded “Tell me about yourself” question. This clarity is critical beyond the simple act of responding to specific questions. It helps others understand who you are and where you are going, and thus enables them to better help you along the way.
- It also helps you to prioritize your efforts. The unfamiliar world of career transition is full of new, unknown challenges and opportunities. Clarifying your “Purpose” gives you a centering point upon which to focus and select high-payoff actions to optimize your search.
As with so many things in life, this “Purpose” work is only valuable if translated to action. The article suggests both retrospective looks inward and back, and prospective checks forward/externally.
Relevance to your career transition? In large part, career transitions happen at the speed of your activity. The more you do, the sooner you do it, the more transition success you will see, sooner.
- Looking backward to identify where you’ve been, how you got here, and what makes you unique, helps to clarify “who you are and what you are bringing to the party”.
- Looking forward gives you a better view of the terrain you are about to enter and the various challenges/opportunities it holds.
Optimizing your transition is hard work. It takes dedication, effort, reliance on your existing capabilities, and a willingness to push yourself beyond what you’ve known for years. It takes humility and vulnerability to open yourself to new people, new perspectives, new challenges, new opportunities.
Invest in yourself. Take the time and the effort to define your “Purpose”. Find a partner, coach, or other that will help. The upside will be well worth it!
Copyright 2019 William E. Kieffer
Diversely accomplished professional in defense, private, public, NPO sectors | Compulsive servant | Achiever leader | Project and Operations Manager, Instruction developer | U.S. Navy Mustang (Ret)
5 年A terrific fresh look as transitioning Veterans can struggle with answering "what do you want to do." Working through one's purpose can help over come that mindset as well as workshoping through their Value thru their impact. Thanks, "Bill"?
Benefits Advisor
5 年Great article, thank you for sharing. Without purpose there is no reason to do anything.
Counselor, mentor and coach. Empowering others through training and development.
5 年William I concur with your article. Purpose is something every service member has while serving. Upon transition it makes sense that some lose themselves and fail to find a new purpose. I have always made the attempt to help Soldiers, Veterans, Spouses, and People in general to realize that we all have a purpose to serve each other. The difficulty is to find or simply realize how our current positions provide purpose to others. This is further compounded by individual needs to maintain a status quo. Service members become accustomed to living at a certain quality of life, while veteran unemployment is declining, underemployment is ever increasing. How can we find purpose in what we are doing 9-5 if we are too concerned on our financial situation? Sometimes purpose is simply outweighed by life’s stressors. I’m forever thankful to all the talented veterans that have come full circle to offer their experiences in transitioning to help us become successful out of the gate as we begin our transition.
Building "Multiplier" Leaders Who Engage Employees to "Stay" Versus "Exit"
5 年?You know you are speaking my language Bill!? Thank you for your thought filled article .? Everything we do in our lives requires energy- and when you are in your "purpose" you energy- can win people over to ideas- to a new position - to a new friendship or even a life partner. Without purpose there is no meaningfulness - without meaning there is no energy. We in HR or Leadership development support influence-? which comes from purpose - laced with energy which in turn fosters others energy? and? connects with others.? Purposeful energy is what we look for when we hire.? Imagine a workplace or place of worship - or a committee or board- where everyone lived their purpose and respected the others around them- purpose.? I have lived in those kinds of team- it amazing! You don't just want to get out of bed - you want to change the world-? together.... for? a greater good - with everyone-? on purpose!?
Organizational Coach & Passionate Youth Sports Advocate "Take care of your people first, they will take care of the problems"
5 年Great correlation from the article to what military in transition are facing.