Next Milestone on Your Journey
Problem Definition:
Volume 1 of your work-story is accomplished. You have the success you desired with it, but an inexplicable restlessness overwhelms you. Boredom is a possibility. A nagging anxiety you will gradually get irrelevant in the current work-story you inhabit also bothers you.
You know you have the stamina and abilities to author a series of work-stories. More volumes would be ideal. How can you orchestrate your journey forward?
You take full stock of where you have reached with your EI coach. What are the next volumes you wish to author? Why do you wish to author new work-stories? Is it for the right reasons or the wrong ones?
For instance you could have built the first volume of your work-story as an expert on markets, customers, research data, strategic trends for the industry. This story has been great so far, and it gave you a range of experiences as a technical expert. You have not felt like you had an impact or have been influential in the organization. You could not change or influence the culture of the firm. Yet, you have built a robust resume and a strong set of projects that you brilliantly shepherded through as an expert. However, you want another range of experiences to come your way. You want your work to be influential to the future of the firm.
How are you going to change your story? Where can it be changed, without being inauthentic to your expertise and your core personality? You reach out to your EI coach to brainstorm.
The Takeaway:
New work-life stories maybe realistically imagined into existence. You have to reposition existing resources from your past accomplishments. Analysis, integration, new frameworks of cognition and emotion are essential to help you embed yourself in your new journey, in a way that is “real” and “true”.
EI also cautions you about using the wrong extrinsic motivators, like money, position and prestige alone to fuel the next volume of your work-story. EI encourages you to trust the better range of emotions, cognition and skill sets, to script into existence an absorbing epic range of work-stories, that represent your authentic self.
The Diagnosis:
Your EI coach studies your work history closely and presents questions that help you critically review your history.
•What are the authentic narratives that give the best perspective on your work-story so far?
•Can you discover, uncover, disentangle and strengthen genuine possibility with your EI coach for a new narrative?
•How will you build a new story on the emotions and cognitive possibilities available to you, that had a minor role in the previous story, but will now be taking center stage in building the new map? You might have to embark on new learning curves. You might have to work with very
unfamiliar situations. Are you willing?
•What does the risk involve? Do you have the
resilience necessary for this kind of risk?
Business-History Reflection:
Steve Jobs,
Act II at Apple Inc.
Authoring his Epic-Work-Story-Series. Each one of his innovative projects, in his second act, became a block-buster, influencing the world of computer users, both literate and illiterate. He redefined 6 to 7 industries in the process. For his second act at Apple Computers, he was strategically positioned in ways, he had not been positioned while he had founded the company in the 1970’s. This made all the difference.
Steve Jobs authored volume, after volume, after volume in the 14 years that history calls his "second act":
•In the late 1990’s he revived the Macintosh in translucent candy colors, just when everyone thought it would be written off!
•iPad – the tablet, fulfilled his dream of intuitive learning.
•iPhone – imagining the phone as a computer.
•Digital Publishing - He made his personal passion critically available to the computer-user for desktop publishing.
•iPod – reshaping the music industry, in how they will distribute music.
•Creating Pixar with Lasseter & Catmull, to transform the possibilities for a computer animated feature film experience.
Cinematic Reflection:
Kungfu Panda II
(Dir. Jennifer Yuh, 2011)
The fictional hero of the series, Panda-Po, has to take the mandate he has been given, seriously. He is to lead the great martial artists of his time. Po has to master levels of inner development, peacefulness and patience to help him deploy ancient, energy moves (higher dimensions of Kungfu that involve the heart and mind) that are very difficult to control. To be effective with enemies of peace, he has to strategically mobilize his gifts with Kungfu, not use them instinctually without consciousness.
Po develops new practices by going more deeply into himself, to write into existence Volume II of his work story.
Copyright:Paramount Pictures
EI Authors A Transformation:
You shift the emphasis and orientation in how you perceive your rich history of accomplishments. Where you previously labored on pouring over research data, you now focus on how you manage teams to mature competencies, in problem definition and project management skills.
New opportunities for work present themselves in organizations that will make Volume II of your work-story a more tangible reality. You get to hire new individuals for your kind of team. You continue the journey of “risk”, that with your EI coach you are now empowered to take. You imagine into existence new projects, new communication modalities, etc. that will represent your new way of operating within an organization as an influential leader, working with self-motivated gifted individuals.
In a couple of years, you discover this has been accomplished. You are now journeying on a new map, your work-life story has shifted co-ordinates significantly.
The Impact:
You succeed in generating an “epic” journey for yourself. However local or global its impact. Your longevity is the reward.
