And when is it time to leave?

photo by Erik Charlton

In my post about Pepper Grinders, I talked about the effect of change when you haven’t thought it through… acting out of pure emotion.

One of my joys in social media is continuously meeting new people who inspire me.

One of those new people is Reeta Luthra. Yesterday, she wrote about Successful Choices when I was writing this:

Frequent career moves, especially in this economy, can damage your resume.

Reeta coaches people on ways to better manage their stress. As important as my caution is, Reeta’s advice is also very important:

“It’s important to remember that success is not an end result. Much like happiness, it’s a process and it occurs through the choices we make. Because we build it in this way, it’s part of our personal development”

Reeta and Robin Dickinson discussed why failure is not so bad.

Go read her post and the comments when you are done here. Robin said:

“Why does failure have to feel bad? Failure can be the fast-track to success; Failure teaches patience; Failure stimulates creativity; Failure honours humility; Failure reveals my whole-self; Failure contains the ego; Failure is the sweetener of success.   To fail is to succeed. “

Both are right. There are times when you are being stifled by your environment and you need to move on. I still contend that you need to think this through, use your team of Trusted Advisors like I do whenever I make a major decision. Talk to them and note their advice.

Weigh the pros and cons

As I suggested yesterday, use a spreadsheet, pad of paper or whatever works best for you, but write it down. There is power in seeing your list. To take that one step further, put a value on each of the items. Using a spreadsheet would let you sort by the value you gave it. This is your list. You get to move things around, re-prioritize and re-rank according to your set of values.

An Example: Changing to another company or position or role:

Pros:

1. More authority over decision-making
2. Better work environment (could be your own office versus a cubicle or just a more profitable firm)
3. Better Technology
4. An openness to try new idea
5. Increased salary

Cons:

1. longer work hours
2. more travel
3. less staff members and staff support
4. Commission – less certainty of income
5. lesser opportunity to move upward
6. more autonomy, meaning if you make a bad decision you will be accountable

You can prepare your own pros and cons and move the numbers up and down. Maybe more travel is a plus for you or maybe it is just not as bad of a con. Maybe your list would have totally different components.

When I tried to find balance for my Design Resumes business with my role supporting non-profits, I tried to ease out of the non-profits to see if trying to have fewer of them helped.

A few years back, I resigned my QuickBooks accounting support role with different groups and continued with the Kiwanis Club of Wausau and Wausau Whitewater.

I resigned Kiwanis in March 2008 thinking that would lessen my load. My focus changed to Wausau Whitewater. As much as I loved non-profits, I found that even one was too many. The story of my leaving Wausau Whitewater is here.

It truly was the end of an era for me and one I still reflect on. I will never lose the passion I had for all the good all of them do, but it was not where I needed to be.

My passion for helping the job seeker is greater… for helping people in general. Helping people find success would be on the top of my Pro list… Also on my “pro” list would be using all of the communications tools that I use every day. I love this new era we have entered into. I love talking to people on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn… not just to talk but to learn and grown and expand my horizons.

You can see my enthusiasm building as I write this. If you were here, you would see my fingers flying across the keys trying to verbalize the excitement and joy I now feel in my adventure.

You have to know when it is time to leave…. because sometimes it is.