Planned Happenstance Inventory and Making Your Own Career Luck

The Career Peer - Planned Happenstance Inventory and Making Your Own Career Luck
14 minutes, 55 seconds

SPEAKERS

Ryan Brown, Steve Weingarden

Steve Weingarden 00:03
Ah, the constant wonder of what am I doing? Is my career right for me? And how do I know? Are you asking others to be your fortune teller? Well, we are here The Career Peer. That's Ryan Brown and me, Steve Weingarden. And this is where we share a closer look at career measures, and help you think about how to reflect on your own career. What do you want to do when you grow up? We want you to think bigger! And for episode three, we are looking at planned happenstance. And before we dive into that concept and that measure, we want to remind you to visit us at TheCareerPeer.com where you can find all sorts of other little novelties related to this episode, and to The Career Peer podcast in general, so enjoy and let's go. Hey Ryan, talk to me about the planned happenstance... measure. And the concept as well.

Ryan Brown 00:55
Yeah, thanks Steve. Excited for this episode. I think a lot of people hear the word happenstance and they probably just think “luck”. Do people have more luck than I do? And I'm excited to bust that myth today 'cause this is more about what you do with those opportunities than it is of luck itself. We're looking at the Planned Happenstance Career Inventory – PHCI. We will put the reference to the authors and the tool itself on our website so please feel free to check it out. Steve, I mentioned this is more about what you do with luck than luck itself. What does plan happenstance mean to you?

Steve Weingarden 01:29
Yeah, I like very much how you put it there. And it is this idea that Krumboltz has described way back when... that every situation can be seen as presenting potential opportunities, if you're able to recognize them. And then take the actions to capitalize them. And as you were speaking -- I have a book that Krumboltz and Levin had done called Luck Is No Accident. That's the idea of these incidents in life that make this huge difference in your career. But how you go about putting more of those opportunities into place by taking actions in advance of those opportunities or taking action after those opportunities or to even taking action during those opportunities, that's what they're really pushing here. What do you think about that?

Ryan Brown 02:12
Yeah, I think that's spot on and the measure that we have and that we are hoping that our listeners take... really does a good job, in my opinion, of measuring that. The Planned Happenstance Career Inventory, it is 25 items with 5 different scales and those 5 scales are optimism, flexibility, persistence, curiosity and risk taking. I found it to be really, really accurate of who I am and how my career has been playing out. I'm curious to hear how it went for you, but I'll share my results first. So for optimism, and persistence, and curiosity, I scored relatively high. My low items were flexibility and risk taking and I found that to be pretty interesting. Risk taking, I get. I'm very risk adverse, I guess you could call it. There is no pushback for me on that one. The flexibility and persistence I found pretty interesting because I think they kind of played into one another a little bit more than what I was expecting. I was low on flexibility, but high in persistence. But I think because I was high in persistence and I was trying to march towards a goal, that's ultimately what led me to being a little bit lower in flexibility. So I found a little bit of an interrelated type of thing going on with that one. But how did it go for you.

Steve Weingarden 03:29
Yeah, I hadn't taken it until you had mentioned to me that you were taking it, and so I went back and you had created a... one-to-five scale because it wasn't necessarily there, and so I did the same thing. I took this and a few things came to mind, but I'll tell you, in general I was high on the scales. I was pretty much high across the board. There were a few items – and this is a 25-item measure --there were a few items that I was lower on, but I would say about 20... 22 of them... were fives! Risk taking and curiosity were all fives. Then there were a few that were lower. I don't... I didn't have any ones. I think I had one two. Most of these were on the top end of the scale for me, with these particular questions. But I think it's important here to keep in mind what this inventory actually is. And understanding that the items... that you'll get variation... for individual, as you would with any scale, and that the items relate to careers. So some of the things you were talking about it doesn't necessarily mean... So, the risk taking it sounds like we'll see for you that it's low whether it's this inventory or other inventories, but with other pieces, we may see that in different circumstances -- not related to careers -- that you score a little bit differently. I think that's important to keep in mind here. One of the questions I have is, do you think this is affected at all by where you are at in your career? And what I mean by that is some of these questions are about your future career. And would you answer that differently when you are earlier in your career and maybe you're struggling a little bit versus when you're in the prime of your career and opportunities may be more abundant versus when you're at the end of your career and you've decided this is the last piece.

Ryan Brown 05:11
Yeah, I think you bring up a really good call out Steve that the career life cycle is certainly going to come into effect when you're answering these questions. So I see some survey items on there that were about thinking into the future, and for me, that's another 25 or 30 years of working in industry or consulting, and so that definitely impacts how I look at some of this. It would be interesting to see results from different subsects. So maybe there's like an executive group. Or maybe there's like an intern group, right? And this is probably touching on too much and even starting a whole new study for these authors. It would be very interesting to see how the different stages of the life cycle play out. Agreed?

Steve Weingarden 05:51
Yeah, and then pushing back on that even though we were just talking about it, I think we have to be really conscious of the fact that when this theory, this idea of planned happenstance, or just happenstance learning theory... When that came about, one of the implications there is: Your career is not about a single career decision. It's about the lifetime of pieces, and so I don't know that that fully counters this difference of where you are in the life cycle. I don't think it does, but I do think it's important to get at that point... that this is really about learning. This is about exploring. This is about not thinking like, oh, this is my one single career decision and then getting stuck there, which I think a lot of people may face that. It's about remaining alert to opportunities. I think those are really some of the key things. I like it.

Ryan Brown 06:41
Yeah, I like it too. I think there's a lot of practical uses with this tool, and that's really what we're trying to get at. Right? Is how do you use this to help develop your career? It provides more self-awareness to how you're in some of these situations, in my opinion. So if you're one of those people that’s like “Oh, I'm never the lucky person. I never end up in these situations.” You might be! You're just not recognizing it! Maybe you're low on that optimism and you're not looking for those types of situations. Maybe if there is a situation that presents itself and you're low on risk taking like me, maybe that situation just went by you 'cause you weren't ready to pull the metaphorical trigger on whatever it was that had to happen and get going on a new action there. So... potential to help people who are struggling in their careers.

Steve Weingarden 07:25
Yeah, and I'm not even sure it's a metaphorical trigger. I think that's one of the things they're trying to push people away from. There's three steps to an unplanned event. There's before the unplanned event. You take actions that position you to experience it. During the event, you remain alert and sensitive to recognize potential opportunities. And then after the event, you initiate actions that enable you to benefit from it. You made a really good point though, because one of the things I got sort of thoughtful on and didn't necessarily have an answer on is... What would you do after you take the inventory? What if you're not high on the scales? What is a career counselor or an individual who's doing this on their own... What do you do with that inventory if you're scoring low on it? Does recognizing that blind spot help you to do the things you need to do in order to plan for the luck? Or does there have to be some other sort of cognitive coaching before that helps you reframe things?

Ryan Brown 08:16
For me, the first step in change is awareness, so this will certainly draw that awareness to it. Now you can't take this inventory and automatically become more flexible. Right? Like you're not just gonna flip a switch once you see some measures and be able to be a totally different individual. But you can sit down. You can think through some situations that maybe you were in, and how they impacted you a little bit later down the road, and look for how you could do things a little bit differently moving forward. It's more about incremental small steps moving in the right direction than a “flip the switch”, huge change. And I think that this tool and planned happenstances as a theory can really help an individual’s career in that style.

Steve Weingarden 08:56
We're focused on very much the positive here, right? And I think one of the things to keep in mind is... I kind of like what this is saying about things like choosing a major, where we don't necessarily want to force people to choose a career when they aren't ready, and to feel like that's final. And, actually, Krumboltz who was a leader in this particular theory makes a point that he had been employed as a gardener, a magazine salesperson, a chauffeur, a farmer, a drill press operator, an aluminum foundry worker, a cereal packager, a railroad loader, an elevator operator, a chemist’s assistant, a pancake tester -- which is a great one... book publisher’s assistant, radio announcer, teaching assistant, tennis coach, camp counselor, career counselor, high school counselor, algebra teacher, military officer, test construction specialist, research psychologist, professor, and author. So, his point is, don't just get stuck. Don't be finalized. But at the same time, we know there's so much out there, especially with like the cost of higher education these days of, “Hey, pick a major and get going in that and specialize. There is another side to this, but you and I are suggesting you've got to be able to be flexible and see your career in a bigger light and understand it's not just final and done.

Ryan Brown 10:07
Yeah, I think that's a great point. Think of it as maybe a trajectory instead of a set path, right? You're moving along a direction. The direction that you're trying to get to is success that's defined by you. But... moving in the same direction with many different roads, and you can get there a lot of different ways.

Steve Weingarden 10:27
I think that word, trajectory, is a great one. I would also say, on the inventory, in planned happenstance theory, you're looking at assessments as a way to stimulate learning. Again, this is all about learning. That's what our podcast is about too. So it's a really nice fit with that. Any final thoughts on this particular inventory?

Ryan Brown 10:44
I like it. I would encourage others to go out there. I've always been a person who thought the harder you work, the luckier you get, and so when I saw that we were going to be covering this topic, I originally was set to be like, “Oh... luck isn't a thing. You gotta work for your luck, but this is about what you do with your situation and maybe that's what luck is in a different style of the definition. Keep your eyes peeled for cool opportunities, if you're not already doing that, and find ways to take advantage of it. What about you? What are your closing thoughts on this one, Steve?

Steve Weingarden 11:14
I think you just knocked it out of the ballpark. I'm just going to say, one more time, planned happenstance is the concept and you'll see more about this on our website. Add it to your career plan. Let's move on to Career Changes. Okay, Career Changes is where we get to share about someone who you may have heard of before because of something they did in their career. What we're going to talk about is what their career path was, or almost was. It's almost like we're playing with potential alternate history, there. Ryan, today's individual is... Dr. Polly Matzinger.

Ryan Brown 11:50
Polly Matzinger designated herself as least likely to succeed, coming out of high school. So not only was she modest, but she also kind of proved herself wrong 'cause she ended up being world renowned in her profession. Polly was a dog trainer, in the jazz business, a Playboy Bunny, and a world-renowned immunologist -- most famous for the Danger model. It goes to show you can always turn your career around or change careers. It's never too late, is it Steve?

Steve Weingarden 12:19
No, and as a matter of fact, one of the reasons we chose Dr. Polly Matzinger is because she was featured in the book, Luck Is No Accident, and the chapter that she was in was Wake Up, Before Your Dreams Come True. So, in other words, make sure you are taking advantage of these opportunities. She had been in all these other careers and hadn't necessarily seen the light yet on where she was going with her particular career. Should point out she dropped in and out of college for years too. She just decided that every job was boring and that she would be a cocktail waitress and train dogs all of her life. Ended up in a much different direction. So, very interesting to see that the change can happen at any time, and it's just a matter of finding that right place, but not to miss that opportunity.

Ryan Brown 13:04
Yeah, to me it shows that you don't always need the perfect skill set or competencies, right, to be able to do a job and do it successfully. So I'm sure a lot of people listening see these job descriptions for these entry level positions that are asking for 5-10 years of experience. Just apply to it. You don't need the perfect experience. You don't need the perfect academic background. You're able to use whatever it is that you have within you, and you can become successful in a whole bunch of things. So just go for it, I say when you're applying to jobs.

Steve Weingarden 13:37
She was a very curious person and one of the bullet points in the book describing her story and what actions she took to make her luck happen was she was intrigued by a conversation among a group of faculty from the local university and she asked them a question. She was questioning a lot of things. That curiosity is so underrated sometimes. Ryan, anything else you want to say about Dr. Polly Matzinger?

Ryan Brown 14:00
You know, Dr. Matzinger showed us that it's never too late to do something different, and the best way to do it... jump right in. Go for it.

Steve Weingarden 14:06
Yeah Polly Matzinger. Just goes to show that career paths are not always singular or straight, and I think that fits with this planned happenstance concept. Your career path may yet take another direction. Hey, we want to thank you for listening, assuming that you did listen. Hopefully we were able to provide a new reflection for your career. Get you thinking a bit differently. As a reminder, check out The Career Peer podcast at TheCareerPeer.com. We’re always happy to build a relationship and make some new friends. And consider leaving us a review wherever you are listening. We especially like reviews and lists on Podchaser, so help us out there. Be well. Be humane. Be meaningful in your work and your causes. Take care.

Ryan Brown 14:48
Thanks for listening everybody.