I have a strong work ethic and hate to fail at something I am working on, but there are times in your life when success or failure is outside your control.
There are times when simply working harder or smarter on the path you are on will simply not yield the results you want. In those cases, it is unproductive to just keep following the same path, hoping it will lead to a more positive result.
3 Questions to Decide If Your Goals Are Achievable
- Does your organization have a clear career path for you?
- Has your manager or organization objectively put you in a situation where you will fail?
- Are you still growing and learning?
Difficult Projects Can Be Periods for Growth
When the application-specific integrated circuit business that I had built from the ground up was taken away from me and given to someone else, it was the second big gut-punch of my career.
I realized through that experience that there are situations where your success is completely outside your control. My goal was to become an executive, and if building a billion-dollar business from scratch wasn’t sufficient in my current management structure to get there, it was time to pursue a different path.
I have learned that the path to success is rarely linear and straightforward. But how do you know your path is truly blocked and not merely difficult?
Everyone has hard times at work, sometimes exceedingly hard times. You can have difficult managers, difficult customers, difficult projects. The young engineer I was working with in my first year as a manager might have viewed me as a difficult boss forcing him to work on a difficult project.
In the end, though, he accomplished the project and thanked me for the role I had played in spurring him on and supporting him to finish the project. What a shame it would have been if he had thought he was being blocked and had given up on the project and himself prematurely!
3 Questions to See If Your Goals Are Realistic
So, how do you determine whether your path is blocked versus merely difficult? I answer that question with three different questions.
1. Is There a Runway for Success?
That is, do you have enough space and time to achieve your goals within the current path? For example, if there is space to take on more responsibility and be promoted beyond the immediate difficulties, it might be worthwhile sticking it out.
If, however, the time it will take you to achieve those goals exceeds the time you have, due to, for example, retirement or some other competing goal, maybe it is time to move on.
2. Is Your Path Destined for Failure?
That is, when you objectively look at your environment, the assets and resources that are available to you, and the mandate with which you have been charged, are you going to fail no matter what you put into it? This is a difficult situation to assess for yourself and it is best to have a mentor or friend to help you.
Toward the end of my career at IBM, I realized that despite all the power I had, I didn’t control a key element that would determine my ultimate success or failure, and that element was pointing toward my ultimate failure. At that point, I knew it was time to move on.
3. Are You Still Learning New and Useful Things?
If so, there may be value in sticking it out.
If your knowledge acquisition is stagnating, however, it’s time to go.
How Do You Go Around a Problem?
“Going around” can mean different things. You can go around within your organization, as I did when I pivoted from development and managing the ASIC business to sales and managing ASIC field engineering. That usually requires an organization that is large enough to accommodate multiple paths to success.
The other option of going around is leaving the organization to start somewhere new that offers a path to success.
One of the women I coach, who is in the insurance industry, recently realized that she had explored and exhausted all the potential pathways she had in her current company. It was time for her to “go around” the blockage by moving on to a new company.
Regardless of whether you “go around” within or outside your organization, it takes courage, but we’re talking about your life and your goals. Don’t let fear stand in the way of pursuing your vision, even if it means striking out in unknown new directions.
As they say, you rarely regret the shots you take. It’s the shots you don’t take that will haunt you.
This edited excerpt is from Breaking Through the Silicon Ceiling by Christine King. The rights of Christine King as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
