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Dealing with Career Disappointment
Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.
The older ones among us know that “You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, well, you might find you get what you need.” I’m pretty sure that the Rolling Stones song isn’t about a career in project management, but it could be. (I know, that’s going to need a little bit of explanation…)
Any career, in any profession, is likely to contain some disappointments. I don’t know of anyone who has been successful at each step along the way on their first attempt. There will be times when you are passed over for promotion, when you aren’t hired for the job that you believe that you would be perfect for, or when you aren’t successful in delivering that high-profile initiative that could have turbo-charged your career progress. It happens to us all.
However, how you react to those setbacks can make all the difference. If you look at them as an opportunity to grow, as a lesson that will help you improve, then—at least with a little hindsight— “you might find, you get what you need.”
The power of perspective
A number of years ago, I was interviewed for a CEO position with a membership organization in a discipline closely related to project management. Given my background with projects and related work, I felt that I was a strong candidate, and I went through a number of rounds of…
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"Impartial observers from other planets would consider ours an utterly bizarre enclave if it were populated by birds, defined as flying animals, that nevertheless rarely or never actually flew. They would also be perplexed if they encountered in our seas, lakes, rivers and ponds, creatures defined as swimmers that never did any swimming. But they would be even more surprised to encounter a species defined as a thinking animal if, in fact, the creature very rarely indulged in actual thinking." - Steve Allen |