Are blinkers narrowing your career options?

6 April 2020

I often speak with people who are waiting for a specific opportunity to open up:

• "There is a role in x department that is coming up..."
• "Joe Blogs is about to retire..."
• "My manager say's I'm next in line..."
• "The promise is..."

This lure of the one possibility can narrow the breadth and range of options that you look at.

It may be that there is a fabulous opportunity opening up in the team you are a part of, but is that the only possibility open to you?

There is an opportunity cost of having a single minded focus and dedication to this one opportunity that it is worth being aware of.

Perhaps your blinkers are not as narrow as that.  Maybe your frame is a little wider and you allow yourself to see the possibilities in your Division.  If you can do that then you are probably open to considering career moves across your whole organisation.

Of course, once you consider the whole organisation, you may as well consider other organisations.  Or possibly other industries.  If you are in government you might consider other levels – local, state, commonwealth – or you may consider private, or not for profit…

Take care that you don’t have artificial blinkers on, causing you hang on, too tightly, to just one narrow opportunity.  That one opportunity may have a high level of probability attached to it, but then again it may not.

If you are ideal for the opportunity that is going to come up in your team in the next year (or two), you are ideal for so many other avenues.  Explore the fertile ground, shift your energies, become more agile, build a sense of adventure into your career, garner hope and bolster your confidence.  Carve out a space for things that may just be as equally (or even more) rewarding.

You can always come back to the sure thing.

As always wishing you a flourishing career.

Katherine