Herminia Ibarra Wrote THE BEST Career/Life Transition Book I’ve Ever Read

This is from the opening to Herminia Ibarra’s masterpiece, Working Identity:

We like to think that the key to a successful career change is knowing what we want to do next and that using that knowledge to guide our actions. But change usually happens the other way around: doing comes first, knowing second. Why? Because changing careers means redefining our working identity–how we see ourselves in our professional roles, what we convey about ourselves to others, and ultimately, how we live our working lives. 

She goes on to explain how gradually it happens. How sometimes one identity has to erode, often unnoticed at first, until we recognize the shoreline has slipped away. It’s like falling asleep in a boat. You don’t notice the drift until you wake up, but it doesn’t mean the drifting hasn’t been happening. Awareness and consciousness are as important as time and space here. 

Ibarra, with all the organization of an HBR study, walks us through a series of case studies explaining how we are made up of not one but many selves, and that it is nearly impossible to think out how to reinvent ourselves - rendering it impossible to neatly plan transitions out. 

In a nutshell, whether you put yourself in the boat or not, whether you fall asleep or not, once you’re drifting, the question is what will you do when you wake up. 

She’s got professionals, artists, monks, and everything in between here. The case studies are mostly mid-lifers, but she explains how that demographic is easier to study (more examples for obvious reasons) and why we can still extrapolate those lessons across all of life.

What probably incepted my boat metaphor above, is how she refers to these touchpoints as “anchors.” The stuff we think we’re chained too. The stuff we think is part of our identity, and that we might find strange to find we’re detached or considering detaching from. 

I’ve experienced my own transitions. In all sorts of levels, personal and professional. Maybe the most useful part of this book is knowing they take time - as in 3-5 year amounts of time on average. Identities are complicated. We have to do our way into knowing who we are.

It’s always an act. It’s always an action.

Here’s a short video review of the book I recorded too (with a few expanded quotes, and apparently missing the boat metaphor I used above - maybe I do need to write these down first!):

Ps. some more Herminia Ibarra thoughts here. 

Pss. I’m doing these 5ish minute Cultish Reviews as video posts too - catch up here and let me know if you like the format!