Lean Forward: How to Navigate Career Changes During an Economic Crisis

I’ve lived long enough to see a couple of economic busts and boom cycles.

I’ve been lucky to work through all of them to-date. Well, maybe lucky isn’t the correct word choice.

I started working “officially and legally” at 12. I grew up poor and learned that money can give you a leg up but doesn't buy happiness. 

At 12, in the state in which I grew up, I could chambermaid part-time at a local condominium resort. I worked hard at this job, learning to be efficient and, more importantly, deliver high-quality results.  Later, a position for the maintenance staff supervisor opened. I applied and began mastering a new type of work.

As before, I found ways to perform the job efficiently and at high quality, so much so that I’d arrive to work with my daily to-do list and have it completed by the end of the shift, unsupervised. 

As I grew through my teen years, I added additional, diverse jobs such as breakfast cook, sous chef, meter reader, and utility lineperson. I can’t admit to being a good student in school, but I read voraciously and was always at the public library, teaching myself everything I wanted to know.

I entered college and graduated into a bust cycle in the job market.

With a business degree in hand and no jobs to apply to, I decided to reboot my learning once more. I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps with a guarantee of electronics training – sticking to my theme of learning something new and valuable.

At each rank level in my first three years, I repeated the lessons I learned early on – show up, work hard, learn everything I can, innovate, and always deliver with quality. 

Then, I applied to an Officer Candidate School, and after graduation and training, I was appointed as a Data Systems Officer.

Wash, rinse, repeat with learning, improving, delivering with quality, and soon I was promoted out of our Communications Company to the Battalion level as the Operations Officer (to which they also tacked on Intelligence Officer, Substance Abuse Counseling Officer, and Equal Opportunity Officer). Having no experience in these roles, I did what I knew to do.

I read ALL of the regulation books. I then instituted project workflows and operational standards for our group, which moved us to the highest rating for training readiness and combat efficiency. 

At this point, you should see the pattern - learn, do, improve, deliver quality, and then start over learning again. 

As my service ended, my young family and I moved into the civilian world, and yes, I began learning a new career, this time in telecommunications. During this time, I learned the next big lesson for success in your career. 

A member of my family owned a small advertising and publishing company.

It was so successful that they held the contract for a season of advertising and marketing for the Boston Red Sox. How they leveraged technology at the time, with personal computers and internet access relatively new, was truly impressive. However, a few years later, the company was out of business, and I watched as the owners couldn’t find jobs.

I asked them if they were learning anything that would get them back in the game, to which I was told, “I have years of experience; that should mean something; why do I need to go to school to learn something new? And they never worked again.

That statement burned into my mind a lesson I’ve never forgotten: Keep an open mind and keep learning.

If I had doubts about my process, I knew now that if I wanted a long, successful career, there was only one path—constant learning. 

Which brings us to 2024.

Some say we are again in an employment bust cycle.

For information technology, at least, the last couple of years have been hell for finding new work. As I look out at my peers and others I’ve worked with, I see two trends. First are those who didn’t keep reading, learning, and preparing for the next opportunity. They are out of work for long stretches, and some, like the family members I mentioned previously, are in danger of never working professionally again.

The other group is the learners – those who kept reading, training, and watching where the subsequent need for their skills would appear. They charted a path, they stayed the course even when it was challenging, and they have had steady work. They stand out because they lean forward.

In all this, I hope folks see how they influence their outcomes. Sure, you might think it is unfair that you have to keep learning, especially if you have years of experience, but we are all subject to the one constant of life—change.

Everything changes.

You choose to change with it, or it moves past you.

Nothing is owed to you, but you certainly owe yourself.

How you decide to act on that is on you.