So you’re thinking about leaving government / military / public service and you’re looking at what you might do next??

How to know it's time to go

Be clear about your motivations to go. Do you want to change role / department rather than totally leave? Also be clear on what’s good about your role. You may have flexi time, you may have a good pension, you might have an amazing training budget that you’ve never used, or you may find that at the end of the year everyone doesn’t use their allocated spend and can put in a business case to do something relevant to your role that’s very expensive. Lots of reasons to stay but if you’re sure it’s time then you should think of it as a process to educate yourself and deinstitutionalise. My reasons for moving on in 2020 were principally about learning; I have an anxiety about 'you only live once' that sometimes overwhelms me and I worry I’m missing out on interesting and exciting things elsewhere. I moved on after a decade in government, but I hope to go back some day.?

What you’d like to do next is limited by what you know?

Beyond meeting the basics of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (having enough income etc.) what are your real needs? Do you still need a sense of ‘mission’? Because often the more money you take in salary, the less mission you might have in your life. Do you need flexibility in the role? Because not all employers can be as flexible as some parts of government. What is the identity you draw from your work today (‘what is it you do’ tends to be one of the first things people ask us socially, what do you want to hear yourself saying next? And does that provide for all the needs of you and those around you? Does it need to?) If you’re relying on searching for job adverts then you’re going to limit your trajectory to the roles you can find, and understanding how to translate your experience into what the role is looking for. You can end up going in the wrong direction when leaving. The trick is to approach this educational exercise as a networking process that takes time, care and attention. You’ll want to get out there, meet new people, and find out what creates value, and how you can create value.?

Growing your network before you jump

Take your time if you can. Networking 101: start working on some short pitches about yourself and your capabilities. Share these with friends. Ideally in a document you can all edit and keep updated, e.g. a google doc. Or if you’re feeling really brave, record a loom video. Get them to red team your notes. Everyone can be too nice. It’s only when friends start forwarding your notes that it forces everyone to start to get real. Make it non-personal so that the feedback doesn’t hurt as much, if that’s a fear. Talk about what needs to be true for a CV to be attractive. Phrase it in terms of ‘what creates value for this industry’ and ‘what is it I need to show experience of that maps across to these sorts of roles’. Get the hard truths from those closest to you first and ideally convert the people helping you into the people who’ll start growing your network alongside you. It's easy to forward a well-written pitch email seeking to find out more about a sector or role. Make it as easy as possible for people to quickly grow your network. Read about sales funnels. You’re building your career funnel now. Start wide before you get too fixed on qualifying opportunities and down-selecting into what you might like to do. Networking starts, it doesn't stop. And the more you can help others with their networking the more the virtuous cycle creates value for you.?

Don't be to too quick to decide what’s in / what’s out?

Speak to a few people about roles before you start ruling things out. For example, you might not like the idea of academia but speak to a few people and invite them to persuade you why you should care. You might want to work in a corporate because it might feel more ‘secure’ (more on this below), but do speak to a few startup founders. You might not like the idea of being part of The City and money flows, but do speak to a few people who manage money. You may look for a sense of ‘mission’ by looking to charities, but see if you can challenge the assumption that there are no ‘missions’ worth going after in the commercial sector. I believe you can do good things while doing good business.?

Job Security?

When I talk to Pivot Labs candidates about job security they can usually rule themselves out of doing a startup as it is ‘less secure’ than a salaried job. I find this a curious statement and I am delighted when people say it out loud as it’s an opportunity to compare the security of being a startup founder vs having a salaried job. With Pivot Labs we work with candidates to create their own business opportunity before they quit their day job by helping them build a startup. We help them find the right investors who believe in what they’re doing. And once that investment is made, that is money the founder will draw on as described in their business plan for the length of time that money was planned to last. Meanwhile, working in a large corporation you cannot guarantee you have employment as it is not within your control. Founding a startup isn’t for everyone, that’s fine, but it could certainly work for more people than currently consider it.?

One role vs many roles?

You might want to do a few things for a while before deciding which one to go all in on. Or you might want to go ‘portfolio’ and have a range of things you are involved with. I personally found consulting, while keeping some dedicated time for pivot labs, to be a great synergy. I’d discussed with my wife if we were happy with the financial hit of time without a salary, and less holiday, and we felt it was worth the ‘investment’.?

Mission

Another way to scratch the itch of having a sense of ‘mission’ is to keep some dedicated time for volunteering (and therefore allow you to focus more on salary and benefits for your main hustle). In my case, I volunteer as a research team member at the National Cyber Security Centre as part of their industry 100 scheme. This allows me to contribute back into government, as a volunteer team member, and also hopefully keep the door open if I want to go back into government again fully one day (this is my plan, and to be totally honest, going out into industry to come back in is the faster route I could see to promotion. The trick will be whether I can get back in at the right level.) I have friends who spend a huge amount of their spare time volunteering e.g. driving ambulances with St Johns, dealing with Friday night city centers as Police specials. It’s incredible the things people do as volunteers. And indeed another option is doing some mission activity as a paid reservist e.g. the military have all sorts of awesome reservist roles which can be a way to serve while still having another career.?

Value

A thing that might be obvious to some, but wasn't to me, is ‘what is valuable’. Not just how much can I charge for my time (which I had no idea about) but what creates value outside of the public sector. Crudely: how might an employer think about what something is worth? Because it changes based on the sector. A programmer will be worth more in finance than in a university for example. My conclusion is we could analyse sectors, and look at wages, and saving people time doing something is value that you can charge for, but my conclusion is that it can sometimes be so wonky that it isn’t worth spending too much time calculating beyond considering that you might be looking at the ideal role, but in the wrong sector. And only by speaking with lots of people, looking at roles in different contexts, can you start to appreciate what is valuable, where, and what you might want to do.?

Final destination

The first thing you jump into is unlikely to be the last move you make. So what’s going to maximize your learning and trajectory to get you towards what you want? If you’re like me in the year 2020, I had no idea what I wanted. I wanted to learn about startups and an opportunity came up to have a role in helping to make some. While doing that I volunteered as a mentor on other innovation programmes (CyberASAP, ICURe, Hacking4MoD) and started to fill gaps in my knowledge by doing, reading, listening etc. I made my first angel investment, I sat on some boards and from there I jumped to a consultancy that works with government on all the stuff I care about. I did not know the plan when leaving gov in 2020 but each incremental step has helped me to increase my learning and earning potential while also keeping me in orbit of all the things I value. I now fill my time working on what I see as ‘mission’ things: working with defence and security parts of governments in the UK and allies, learning about startups and investment, and helping bring all of these things together to help the UK meet its science and technology ambitions.?

Final thoughts?

Take your time. Be curious. Speak to lots of people. Really allow yourself to imagine what the next phase of your life could look like. And make the changes that make your life, and those close to you, better. Beware ego. Don’t think about job titles and what you’re going to say at social events when people ask you to define yourself by a job description, take the opportunity to talk about the things you care about and what you’re doing - who cares what your job title is?