Re-Inventing Your Career After a Setback

Anita Brick: Hi. This is Anita Brick, and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth to help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted to be speaking to Tad Waddington, who is the author of Lasting Contributions and the director of performance measurement at Accenture. I first saw Tad's book Lasting Contributions up in the Midway Club, actually, and there are a lot of affiliations, I know, Tad, with you and the school. You have a master's in divinity and a PhD in measurement evaluation from the University of Chicago. So thank you so much for making the time.

Tad Waddington: Thanks for inviting me.

Anita Brick: Well, you know, it was interesting. There were a number of questions that came in, but there were also questions—and we're going to talk about those—about how a person could relaunch their life and career and develop a foundation, and not to be too corny, of positivity based on the reality of the world and the marketplace, because I think that having read your book, which I think is wonderful, there are new realities, but there are also new ways of making a contribution.

Tad Waddington: Yeah, I think so.

Anita Brick: So let's start at the beginning. What are some first steps that someone can take to reinvent themselves in a world with seemingly shrinking opportunities?

Tad Waddington: I think there’s an easy answer and a complex answer. The easy answer is that reinventions are caused, and the complex answer is, how do you cause it? And for that, I probably need to rewind a little bit and introduce some new vocabulary. So shall I jump into causality?

Anita Brick: Of course. And I'm going to add there are some questions that came in related to each of those. So but absolutely give us an overview of the four.

Tad Waddington: OK. Well, the—by “four,” you mean Aristotle's four causes, which I have used as the framework in the book …

Anita Brick: Right.

Tad Waddington: … Essentially, saying lasting contributions, like all kinds of other things, are caused, but usually the way we think about causality—which is, you know, one billiard ball striking another one and so on—is somewhat limited and not particularly helpful, particularly in the realm of human action. So let's, you know, take something simple, like a table, the cause of the table.

And this is Aristotle’s example. It's the action of somebody sawing and hammering. That's what we call the efficient cause. That's the one—that's the billiard ball causality. But it's also wood, because if you didn't have wood, you couldn't have a table. And it's also—that's called the material cause—it's also the formal cause. Formal cause is the structure or the idea, the plan of something flat with legs that's stable and so on.

And finally, in some ways, most interestingly, particularly for humans, is what Aristotle calls the final cause, which is, well, why do you want a table? And if you didn't want a table, there wasn't a reason, a purpose, and you wouldn't make one. And I think this is a useful framework for thinking about such things as reinventions and coming back after, you know, defeats and setbacks and so on.

Anita Brick: If you think about—if we start with that first cause, the efficient cause, how does—this came from an Exec MBA student. How does someone effectively deal with the complexity? And as he put it, help someone like him with more than 20 years of work experience reinvent themselves? I mean, he was saying, if you only have a few years, it's easy, but if you have a lot of years, how do you manage that?

Tad Waddington: Yeah, and I think that's a very typical MBA question, which is, well, what do I do? Right. That's an efficient cause question. And I would say in a lot of ways, don't start with that. You know, in some ways it's easier with somebody with 20 years. But in some ways a career setback may be the best thing that ever happened to you.

And I don't mean that in the sort of namby-pamby, you know, gosh, this is an opportunity, and we're going to try to say, over the course of the conversation, trying to prove why that might be. What is the first step? Well, I would first think about, in a sense, the structure of the problem. So what do I mean by the structure of the problem?

When it's a formal cause, in what way might a career setback be a good thing? Well, let me give you four conceptual frameworks and then four, maybe, examples. Think about, you know, the statement “The good is the enemy of the great.” You know, you've got a good job. Is there any way it could possibly be better? Well, you know, now that you don't have a job anymore, you can explore those possibilities.

Another way to, I think, say the same thing is to think about it in terms of the innovator's dilemma, which is, OK, you've got a good job, which is to say—and picture a graph—you've got a high intercept but a fairly low slope. OK, you've lost that now, which is to say, you now have a lower y intercept but potentially a higher slope. So you know, at t-one, which is now things suck, because you're lower than you were on your scale, but there is a possibility of a higher slope.

Two more examples. You know, there's in game theory, there's structures. And you need to break the structures, that are called equilibrium. And then you break those structures and you can actually do better. You know, a career setback actually, you know, affords you to do sort of conceptual switching cost.

And the final sort of game theory way to think about a career setback is if you're in the lead, your best move is essentially to match, is to be very conservative and to match whatever your opponents do, because you're in the lead, you're doing whatever they're doing. You'll just maintain that lead. But if you're behind, you know, OK, having suffered a career setback, then in a sense you've got nothing to lose, right? You could do something wild and come out ahead.

Anita Brick: But how do you do that in the reality of having to support your family? I mean, a person who is an alum said, how can I build a plan to create a career that supports my family financially with an eye on the broader contribution? But it's great to have the barriers down. But how do you do that in the reality of daily life?

Tad Waddington: Well, we're recording this on Columbus Day, which is probably why this example comes to mind, particularly given that you said sort of indicated that a lot of people are feeling lousy about ….

Anita Brick: Right? Right. They are, they are.

Tad Waddington: Well, April 21st, 1591. Captain General Hernando Cortés lands and burns his boat. He's outnumbered 300 to 1. So this really falls into the category of final cause, which sure, the final cause of … reinvention as a new career or something, but there's a lot more to it than that: the final cause involves your passions, involves what you care about, your goals.

And, you know, in your example, the person said, look, I got a family to support. So I would say, lie to yourself and say, gosh, I chose this reinvention. And, you know, I chose to be fired because it's just like burning my ships. And now, you know, by God, we're going to do or die because I do think the biggest problem in a lot of ways is internal, because I don't think at this point anybody has the luxury of self doubt.

And so one step is, create some stories around the whole event saying, look, you know, today isn't, you know, 2010 2015 and I've won; OK, how did I win? And that's again a game theory thing. You start at the end and work backwards. And you know, there's nothing about this in the least bit that's easy, but there are at least pathways that can lead to success. Figure out what you really want, assume you've got it, and then work backwards to your plan, and that will then tell you something about what your next steps are.

Anita Brick: You know, one of the weekend students. And I think it goes along with this self-doubt and fear stuff. He said, I feel like I'm stuck. And to be perfectly honest, I'm very negative right now. How do I change my perspective and feel and act more positively after being hit by not just one, but a whole series of painful setbacks?

Tad Waddington: Again, I think it's a final cause question, because right now the biggest problem is, in a sense, attitude. And Viktor Frankl, who spent way too many years in concentration camps, pointed out that, look, the people that survived were the ones who chose their reactions to things. And the essential difference in that choosing was, you know, figuring out something to live for.

And there are a number of ways to do that. One is, well, what do I value? Do I value my family? And so there is something strange about human beings and that we actually—well, for us, the future cause is the present, right. Why are you taking the GIMAT? Well, because I want to get an MBA. Right? Well, you don't have an MBA, so how can the MBA, which hasn't yet happened, be causing you to take this test? Well, you know, if that's the final cost of inaction.

Anita Brick: On a very practical, tactical sense, what should someone be doing to kind of regain their equilibrium but also regain their mojo?

Tad Waddington: I would say in the broadest sense, look at the whole board. You figure out the time and the place where you can smash your enemy. This is what Napoleon did. He was told, you know, go to Italy, get rid of the Austrian army, which is holed up in Nima and Turin. And you know, he doesn't he didn't say, I'm going to go to Milan, I'm going to go to Turin.

And you know, instead, Napoleon marched the troops all around the countryside. Eventually the Austrians got curious, and he met them at a place called Lodi and beat them. But there's no way he would have known that Lodi was the right time and the place right. And so what I'm saying is things like careers and opportunities and all kinds of actually really important things you would think about, you know, people you're friends with and stuff, they arise out of emergent properties, which is an interaction of, you know, what your skills are, what your values are, and reality and what it presents at any given time.

So were I faced with a setback right now. I would, you know, take a step back and say, well, cheese, you know, what can I actually do? That's immaterial. Cause, you know, what are my skills? And if you really think carefully about what you can really do. Because what you're doing is essentially a blue ocean strategy, right?

And so figure out what you can do, or, you know, your handful of things that you're particularly good at. And then you almost matrix wise, you [....] cross it with what the opportunities in the world are.

Anita Brick: So I mean, just like a follow on to the material cause piece, how can a person, even a student asked, how can a person mobilize his or her resources when they don't seem to be as plentiful as in the past? How does my perception impact my actual success in reinventing myself?

Tad Waddington: It's an interesting thing. I mean, the key in that is perception. There's all kinds of really interesting studies that you don't actually see within the world. You more see what you have the framework for seeing. That level of how you're thinking really guides your perceptions, which is why I keep sort of going back to this idea that, you know, the market stinks and these other problems and so on. And essentially the bigger problem isn’t the market, it's how you think about the world.

Anita Brick: I mean, how do you create a different framework? Because without a different framework, your perception can't change. How do you create a different framework so that you can see things that you didn't see before?

Tad Waddington: If you try to start with, well, what do I see in front of me, you're going to get bummed out. And so that's why I said lie to yourself, right? I mean, you just say ...

Anita Brick: Look, what does that mean practically?

Tad Waddington: Well, there are a couple of different ways. One is, it's not “I'm looking for a job because I'm broke and my kids are hungry.” It's “I am a warrior on a horse, battling the evils of poverty.” Right. And so just whatever it is that sort of gets you going. So that's what I said about mythologizing yourself.

But another one is, is the conceptual trick of saying, look, I've won. OK, how did I win? And then work backwards. I think it's just really hard to work forward from feeling stuck to success. It's actually a lot easier to go from success to, OK, what do I do now?

Anita Brick: That's actually a very interesting thought and approach. And to really think about what that end goal is, but not just the facts about that end goal, dare I say, how you feel about completion of that end goal.

Tad Waddington: Of course, at some point it has to intersect with reality. There's a part of a trick where you just say, look, you know, I've won. Now I work backward to figure out how I did it. That can’t be the sort of thing you can just do once. You know, you probably have to generate all kinds of things. You know: what do I value? Here are 10 things I value. And then here's how they might connect with other things that save the world or things that I know. OK. Well, what can I do? How does that connect you to make these networks? These are the mental exercises you do so that you cultivate the cognitive apparatus that allows one to seize opportunities.

Anita Brick: Going backwards from the end to the present. And it sounds like there's experimentation along the way that allows you to come up with different scenarios. Is that what you're saying?

Tad Waddington: Yeah. What you're doing is cultivating the ability to see opportunities. But because you've done it in ways that are unique to you—meaning, this network of your values, your skills, the kind of plans you're good at—it is then a blue ocean strategy. It's something that really works for you.

Anita Brick: It's interesting, the whole idea of blue ocean strategy keeps coming up again and again, and it sounds like the blue ocean strategy is where there's opportunity, as opposed to a red ocean strategy where all the battles have already taken place. So how do you create or develop a creative mindset to not go where you've been before and go somewhere new?

Tad Waddington: Well, I think particularly your audience already has most of the conceptual skills needed to do this picture of Venn diagram. I have competencies—that's my … if you call it your material cause, you could call it your experience, the things you're good at—and there are customers, or the marketplace, or anybody who will pay you to do something. Where the two overlap, that's going to be your business model. But you also have competitors, and that's all those other really skilled people who are out of work and looking for work.

Game theory is where your competencies overlap your competitors’, but where your business model and game theory intersect, that’s strategy. And then, you know, that gets further constrained by things like your values and, you know, the nature of the world and so on. But a lot of people react badly to such super constraints. Because I’ve now highly constrained the problem. We're not very good at super unconstrained problems, you know, hey, be creative. And if I just say, you know something, if I put you in too small a box, we're not very creative. So we, we operate in this middle ground.

And if you can constrain the problem in the right way, then things start to work. OK. So now having constrained it this way, there are two approaches. You can say, well, you know, what are my competencies and how does that apply to the world? That's sort of the inside out—that, you know, I've come up with a neat product. Now I’ve got to figure out how to sell it. Or you can go from the outside in, which is or, you know, gee, there's a niche here. How do I get the skills necessary to fill it? That's the outside in. And in a sense, it doesn't really matter if you go inside out or outside in, because ultimately the two have to meet. But again, that's one more way to start building scenarios.

Anita Brick: So one of the Exec MBA students asked, she said, which kind of goes along with what we were just talking about, “If my goal is a combination of career reinvention and actually winning while maintaining my integrity and values, how do I embody this in my life? When I'm working in an environment that rewards a very adversarial and confrontational behavior, I work in a rather aggressive aspect of financial services. And by the way, I can't quit my job right now.”

I mean, I think it's in a very practical sense ... There's the dilemma of having continuing cash flow today and also needing to find a way to coexist in an environment as this person develops both an exit strategy and the next, whatever the next step is, strategy. How do you live, or how do you not get pulled down by this very adversarial environment that may not be consistent with a person's value when you literally cannot leave because you're constrained.

Tad Waddington: And then sometimes you just dig in and suffer it, but, you know, hopefully you try not to lose sight of why you're doing that. Right? Because the kid needs braces or whatever.

Anita Brick: Well, it seems like the overarching theme with everything that you said is that if you have a purpose bigger than the current situation, it gives you a lot of leverage.

Tad Waddington: Yeah, and so in the case of the person I'm talking about, you know, I can't leave my job. I don't like it, but I can't leave. All right. So you don't have an alternative. You know, there are other sources of power.

Anita Brick: You have to find the power somewhere.

Tad Waddington: Yeah. And they're certainly not going to give it to you.

Anita Brick: Right? They're not going to give it to you.

Tad Waddington: There are concrete examples where you can focus on a career setback that ended up not being a career setback. I mean, Beethoven was really into playing the piano and that's all he cared about. But he went deaf. And so he started writing music, right? That ended up being a much bigger thing. In Chicago, there's no doubt that the fire was no party, but it cleared out the way, you know, cleared out the existing structures, allowing for the reinvention of a beautiful city.

If you have enough of the right kind of things in your head, then the other crap doesn't matter, right? The turkeys you work with, allowing you then the degrees of freedom to focus on other things. You know, the guy you mentioned, no doubt, is spending a lot of time and energy grinding his teeth, irritated at the jerks at work.

Well, you know, again, doctor, to frankly figure out a way to choose your reactions, you know, reframe them. I mean, this may sound horrible, but one of the things I've been doing lately is just thinking of people as inanimate objects.

Anita Brick: And it does sound a little horrible, by the way.

Tad Waddington: Yeah, and I don't mean it in the sense of, you know, tools to be used. But when there's some loudmouth on the cell phone, I think of a pothole or something like that, because I couldn’t really change the pothole, and there's no way I can change the loud mouth on the cell phone. But I don't really get mad at the potholes.

Right. You know, whatever the bump in the road or whatever. Right, right. You know, and if I just think, well, you know, I really can't change them and there's no point in getting irritated. You know, the person who cut me off in traffic or something, you know, it does a lot for me. And that's what you want. Is that an overabundance of degrees of freedom in the way you think about and do things.

Anita Brick: Well, it's true. And I think that, again, if you think about the end game and have—not to get too corny, but an inner determination to be successful on the other side, that commitment that you've made really accelerates your ability to get things done and to focus on the things that are most important and maybe not be as distracted by those people on cell phones or the overly aggressive coworkers or whatever it happens to be, or just a bad marketplace.

Tad Waddington: Yeah, I agree, but the end game gives you a pole star, right? Digital gives you a way to look above all the market, right? But we don't have that and I usually don't. Instead, you can have a strong internal moral compass. You know another way. Let's say you don't—if you don't have a family, you don't you don't have a, you know, a good final cause or, you know, if there's nothing you're really passionate about, one would be to find something you are passionate about and, and sort of spiral out from that.

You know, “I just love teaching kids” or whatever. And a lot of people lead quite successful lives that way. But the other thing is just the general principle of lead from strength, you know, whatever you're really good at, be it, you know, planning or, you know, I mean, like, I think my particular weird streak that I can find meaning in things.

Tad Waddington: It’s really hard to figure out how that actually applies to the world. But you just keep sort of gnawing on it and eventually, oh, yeah, you know, it applies in human capital. It applies in certain philosophical things, but it also helps me analyze data because I can find the story. So see, you know, if you just gave us that sort of … I almost picture the world in a lot of ways as chaos or darkness or something.

And there are few spots of light. One might be what you value. And then there might be, you know what, I've got an MBA. What does an MBA mean? It means this, you know, this broad tool, set of world-relevant tools that can be applied to profit any number of things. And so, you know, one has to think about what does it mean? You know, where meaning isn’t some abstract thing, as the philosopher Gadamer says, meaning as an application, you know, for how can I use this?

Anita Brick: You have a very interesting perspective about all of this, because I think that one of the things that can create enormous pain or actually enormous positive leverage is the meaning that we ascribe to things. And, you know, you see two people in a very similar situation and one person is angry and resentful, and the other person actually does use it to leverage to the next level.

Do you have time for one more question?

Tad Waddington: Oh, sure.

Anita Brick: So I know that our audience—which is a global audience, by the way—they really like to have some kind of practical tidbits to leave with. So what are three things that you would recommend that someone can start today to begin this process perhaps of career reinvention, but at least to get out of a mindset of defeat and one into a more victorious perspective?

Tad Waddington: Well, it depends on where you are with the defeat. I mean, at one point I was a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship, which I didn't get, but fortunately it was at the same time that the movie Back to the Future came out. Remember at the end of the movie: where we're going, we don't need roads.

And I ended up spending three years in China, you know, instead of three years at Oxford. Because the Chinese ended up being a fantastic thing. So, you know, one might be just that ability to shift perspective and work on, you know, what do you really value? What, really, what matters?

Anita Brick: And what would the third thing be?

Tad Waddington: Oh, don't take advice from people.

Anita Brick: OK.

Tad Waddington: So in a sense, I would say that every situation is different. I would think a lot and so on, but in the end, you know, nobody can tell you what to do, and nobody should. And you shouldn't listen to anybody. And you know, seek input, but make your own damn decisions.

Anita Brick: Well, true. Because you have to take responsibility for them ultimately.

Tad Waddington: You know, one thing I would point out, the insight comes from statistics. The idea is to look at yourself from the outside. and maybe the example is Big Brown a few years ago had won the first two races in the Triple Crown. And everybody was saying, well, look at the horse, you know, look at all these factors. You know, the horse has an MBA from Chicago. You know, the horse is really smart. You know, it's going to win the Triple Crown. The outside view would be to say, well, only a few percent of horses that have won the first two races ever went on to win the third race, and it's called the base rate and hopefully people have learned it.

The base is, right now. The economy sucks. And does that mean you're a lousy person? No, it means the economy sucks. Does that mean .. you know? No, it just means that it's hard to find a job. And I think just, you know, taking a cold look at the fact that yeah, it's hard to find a job right now. Does this mean I'm a bad person? No. You know, does it mean the problem's more difficult to solve? Yes. Well, OK. I mean, I don't know if you've ever read Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Feynman was one of the most brilliant physicists.

Anita Brick: Right, right. Right.

Tad Waddington: Right. But he sort of had this attitude of everything's a problem. Oh, I can solve problems. And I think in a sense, you get a little distance from the issue and then say, OK, you know, here's a case, this is a smart person. And, you know, who … lousy economy. You know, what would you recommend? Maybe you just get a few friends and treat it like a case and and, you know, work the problem from the outside.

Anita Brick: It's an interesting perspective. And we know that the people from both can certainly solve problems. So that's a good idea. Well, thank you so much. I know that although you have a lot of flexibility with your work, you also have busy days. So thank you for making the time.

Tad Waddington: You're quite welcome.

Anita Brick: And really totally recommend the book. It was a very quick read, but a very, very interesting one. And if you want to learn anything more about Tad's perspective, of course, go visit his website, which is lastingcontribution.com. And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.