To get the most out of your career, think of it as a game.
When you're 45 or 50, you don't have as many moves left as you did when you were 25 or 30, so the moves you make have to be good ones.
This week, I'm looking at mid-life career changes. On Monday, I examined how to identify the work that's right for you. But that's just the beginning. The next step is figuring out how to get where you want to be.
Georgia Tech College of Management Professor Nathan Bennett suggests using game theory to orchestrate career changes. Normally associated with economics, game theory uses mathematical modeling to predict the outcomes of decisions when multiple individuals or "players" are involved.
Bennett, an organizational behavior expert, and Stephen Miles, a corporate succession planning specialist, explain the concept in their new book, Your Career Game: How Game Theory Can Help You Achieve Your Professional Goals.
Game theory teaches that to get the best outcome, you need to predict what actions everyone involved in a given situation is likely to take and then tailor your own move accordingly.
How does this apply to work? Bennett explains it this way: Say you're interested in a job opening at your company that would be a promotion. Before deciding whether to apply, consider your boss' reaction. If your company typically doesn't fill vacancies quickly, leaving your current position could cause a hardship that may lead your boss to give you a less than glowing recommendation. But if your boss is trying to develop a reputation for being great at developing talent, you could expect his full support. "Or they could feel insecure in their own job and view someone wanting to leave their team as a rat abandoning a sinking ship," Bennett says. Considering all the possibilities can help you decide if you want to apply for the position and, if so, the best way to approach your manager to talk about it, he says.
But your boss is only one player who affects your career game. Others may include your immediate co-workers, competitors for a position, a potential new boss, your spouse, kids and teams you coach or organizations where you volunteer.
The goal, Bennett says, is to play so you leave the players with the most at stake "wanting you to win."
How to do that? It could be as simple as explaining to co-workers beforehand why you're interviewing for a new job so they don't feel blindsided if you get it, Bennett says. Or it could be as complicated as mapping out to your family how the pros of moving to a different city outweigh the cons, and taking family members on a road trip so they can see the benefits of this new position for themselves.
To win at the mid-life career change game, you also have to make yourself so appealing to a potential manager or employer that their only logical response is "You're hired." Do that by focusing on the competitive advantages you bring to the table. If you're 40 or older, you don't have time on your side. But you do have experience. Take an inventory of that experience and present it a potential employer as your unique competitive advantage--the characteristics that set you apart from the next person.
"This is different from the 'what color is my parachute' approach, which focuses on what you enjoy," Bennett says. That's not unimportant, but it may not get you hired. What will get you hired is "being able to say, here's what I bring you that's valuable, rare and other people have a hard time copying. That's how you distinguish yourself from other people making the same move."