Stepping Back

The French phrase reculer pour mieux sauter literally means “stepping back to better leap forward.” It expresses how much we need perspective to arrive at the novel recombination of existing elements that defines an invention or creation.^[17] Jane Stevens, a thirty-two-year-old with an M.B.A. in finance, knew something was wrong in her life but could not put her finger on it. Awareness clicked during a solo, ten-hour drive to a college friend’s wedding. Five years earlier, while working on her master’s degree in international development, Jane had gotten a dream offer, a project with a young firm doing pioneering lending work in Latin America. The project led to a country-manager role, then a position as regional director creating institutions that served the needs of craftspeople known as “microentrepreneurs.”

I was doing something I really believed in, using a business model that works, and the results were spectacular. But I had stopped feeling fulfilled. Being in consulting was no longer gratifying. And the calculus of my professional and personal lives was changing. I was on the road all the time and wanted to put down some roots. I was not developing my own life and knew I had to invest in myself differently to have a family. And I was working very long hours for nonprofit wages.

All these things lurked in the back of her mind, but Jane had not had the time or psychological distance to analyze all these elements in tandem. “I was in cognitive dissonance for six months, caught between the growing realization that I wasn’t happy and my belief in the vision of my firm.” During the ten hours in the car, however, she put together the pieces in a way that led to an obvious conclusion. After that, things happened very quickly. Two weeks later, at her five-year M.B.A. reunion, she reconnected with two former classmates who had acquired a group of firms in the telecommunications industry. By the end of the weekend, they told her they had a new company and they wanted her to run it. A week later, she accepted their formal offer.

Jane was lucky. A relatively short time-out allowed her to break frame; it also enhanced the probability that when something new “drifted by,” she would have courage enough to go for it. For others, like Brenda Rayport, the realization that one has been stuck for quite a while in an ill-fitting career provokes a desire for a longer moratorium, a break from active decision making and job hunting. Like so many other people we have seen so far, Brenda only knew what she didn’t want to do and that she needed time. When she got married and moved to Chicago, she used the move as an excuse to step back.

The big decision wasn’t moving to Chicago. It was deciding not to go back to my firm in a comparable position. I could have done that, and they encouraged me to, but I really didn’t want to. I was headhunted by everybody for jobs close to what I had done before. But I didn’t want to be part of a company. It was too similar. I didn’t see any advantage to it. The problem was, I didn’t have a forward trajectory, I couldn’t see where I was going. I really wanted a time-out at that point.

Taken From: Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career