This week, I want to share a new career strategy framework I have been thinking about. I find that I get the best results when the “head” and the “heart” work together, and frameworks like these are a good way to get the dialogue started between the logical and emotional parts of ourselves.

The Starting Point: Dissatisfaction

When people are considering career moves, the current emotion is nearly always dissatisfaction.

Dissatisfaction can be linked to stress or to the absence of joy. We can be dissatisfied with the nature of the work we are doing now, the compensation we receive, the dearth of opportunities for growth, et cetera. In any case, the emotion can be powerful fuel to act.

The problem that people face when they are dissatisfied with their careers is that they don’t know what to do with the emotion. They know that they want to make a change, but they don’t know in which direction to go.

The Guiding Light: What Would Be the Highest and Best Use of My Skills?

I love this question.

I believe that each person is endowed with a set of knowledge, skills, personality traits, life experiences, worldviews, relationships, and inner motivations that in combination, is unique. Each of us can put this set of attributes to work in many ways, but some will be “better” than others. “Better” is for each person to define—it could be the role that pays the most money, but it could also be having impact on many people, having the highest impact on a single person, creating something that lasts, or anything else that’s important to the individual.

Many of us are dissatisfied because although we may be good at what we are doing right now, deep down, we know that we can do more, and perhaps we are meant to be doing more. For example, I quite enjoy teaching corporate finance to undergraduates. But when I ask myself if teaching corporate finance to undergraduates is the highest and best use of my skills, the answer feels like a clear “no” to me.

So if the current answer is “no,” how do we identify options that could be “yeses”?

Framework: The Career Cube

I want you to imagine a three-dimensional graph. Along the x-axis is subject matter knowledge, in this framework tied to an industry, and along the y-axis are functional skills, like marketing or finance. The z-axis is what I call soft skills, or interpersonal skills—these could be negotiation, management, sales, coaching/teaching/mentoring, written communication, etc. Combining the three axes, we can visualize a 3D cube, with you inhabiting a particular point within the cube. It could be working in the energy industry, in a design role, where the main thing you do is write/draw sketches of how solar panels should be laid out on the roof of a house.

The best visualization I could come up with is below. (I asked ChatGPT to draw some versions of it and it couldn’t quite come up with what I am imagining. “Design” is definitely not the highest and best use of my skills.)

My sense is that when we feel dissatisfied, we are misaligned on at least one or two of these dimensions, and possibly all three. In particular, the z-axis—what could be termed as “heart” skills—is where we are likely to feel the most dissatisfaction. These skills encompass how we truly desire to relate to other people. If we aren’t interacting with other people in the way that our heart desires to interact—whether that’s organizing the work of others, teaching others, discovering new things and sharing our findings with others, giving advice to others, selling to others, listening to the problems of others, engaging in battle with others, whatever it is—we won’t be happy.

Let me break this down further:

Subject matter knowledge/industry focus: the x-axis

Are you working on topics that interest you?

If you are really interested in climate change, you probably shouldn’t be working in the healthcare industry. You could, however, find ways to connect your subject matter interest to challenges in the energy industry, financial services, software, or real estate. If you’re really into fashion… go do something in the fashion industry.

Functional expertise and skills: the y-axis

Once you get into the fashion industry, what are you going to do there?

Do you want to work for a brand, and find ways to get the brand’s message out to people (marketing)? Do you want to count beans for the brand (finance/accounting)? Do you want to make sure that the fabric gets to the factory on time, and the finished products get to the retailers on time (operations and supply chain)? Do you want to work on making the next season’s clothes a reality (product/design)?

Interpersonal skills and relating to others: the z-axis

How do you want your work in the fashion industry to relate to others? What are you actually doing every day that creates value for others? (Remember, if we don’t create value, we don’t get paid.)

Do you want to be a runway model, being the person that displays the clothes for others to see? Do you want to talk to customers about how they want to feel wearing the clothes? Do you want to uncover hidden ideas from past trends, and share those with the world? Do you want to do the analytical work of predicting future trends? Do you want to manage the work of the designers, the models, the fabric sourcing people, and the marketers, and get them all to talk to each other?

Now that you’ve followed the interest and aptitude of your head to get to the fashion industry, what does your heart want to do now that you’re here?

The line between functional skills and interpersonal skills can get blurry. We could describe “marketing” as a functional skill, but even within marketing, there are creatives, data analysts, customer insight people, community managers, project managers, people who pitch deals, people who make decisions about how much to spend, and much more.

Two Caveats

There is more than one right answer

If you feel dissatisfied, wherever you are in the cube, it’s likely that there are a few directions you could move that would increase your satisfaction. Most of us are interested in more than one industry, can do more than one functional skill, and have multiple ways that we like to relate to other people.

This is not the only framework!

Some of us are already in the right place in the cube, and still feel dissatisfaction.

My guess is that if you feel like you’re in the right spot in the cube (after thinking carefully about the z-axis), and you still feel dissatisfied, you are playing for stakes that are too low. You are still not displaying your ability in its highest and best use.

The blocker here is typically fear, about stepping onto a bigger stage and putting yourself at risk. We’ll talk about this in a future note.

Exercise

Journal on the following or discuss with a friend.

1)      Noticing

When I reflect on my current career trajectory, what emotion do I feel? The emotion could be excitement, dissatisfaction, or anything in between.

2)      Speaking with the head

What industries, or areas of human endeavor, interest me the most? What problems that people face do I like to think about?

What functional experience do I have? What functional skills am I good at?

3)      Speaking with the heart

What does my heart want to do that I’m not doing right now?

Do I want to teach, write, negotiate, sell, communicate, empathize, mentor, learn from, organize, be on the stage, connect, attack, protect, guide, tell stories, et cetera, as it relates to others? What is missing?

Being a lawyer who works on immigration policy is very different from being a lawyer who tries immigration cases!