Top 10 Tips for Switching Careers [video]

You know these techniques have to do with revealing your whole self at work, the question is:  how?

We look to the career path of Dr. Eric Lander, founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a genetics research center established to help scientists work collaboratively, and whose mission includes discovering the molecular basis of major human diseases. He started out as a math genius, and–good for him–wanted more.

Recently highlighted in the New York Times, Dr. Lander’s work history can serve as a guide on how to find more fulfillment by switching your career track. From his story we gather these top 10 tips for switching careers:

1. Disrespect convention. If you’re working to transform something — be it a whole discipline, or your individual career — traditional norms may get in your way. Dr. Lander relates why the Broad Institute is interdisciplinary at its core:

We used to have these boundaries of the chemistry department in the chemistry building, and the biology department in the biology building, the math department, the computer science department. Young scientists today… have no respect for these boundaries, and they shouldn’t. They just munge it together… people are now exploring the fusion cuisine that comes out across all these different disciplines.

2. Leverage your frustrations. Author Gina Kolata writes:

“I began to appreciate that the career of mathematics is rather monastic,” Dr. Lander said. “Even though mathematics was beautiful and I loved it, I wasn’t a very good monk.” He craved a more social environment, more interactions.

3. Identify all your talents, then use them.

“I found an old professor of mine and said, ‘What can I do that makes some use of my talents?’ ” He ended up at Harvard Business School, teaching managerial economics.

4. Embrace your naivete. So many of us try to hide our inexperience; Lander knows better:

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Let Out Your Inner Drummer [video]

We loved The Carpenters back in the day, and “Superstar” remains up there among our all-time favorite songs. The duet comprised Karen Carpenter and her brother Richard Carpenter, based in Southern California. What you may not know is that Karen identified first as a drummer, and as a singer second.

Which can be hard to believe given how silky her voice was. Take a look below at the absolute joy she exudes while banging those drums! Her drumsticks seem to be a natural extension of her hands.

While Karen desired both to drum and sing for the Carpenters, Richard wanted her not to hide behind the hulking drum sets, and to be seen more fully at the front of the stage only singing. It was a more commercially appealing proposition, and so Karen came center stage, away from her beloved drums.

Legend has it that her new placement on stage ultimately contributed to her demise. It seems without the creative and rhythmic outlet of drumming, along with difficult family dynamics and–oh, yes–international stardom, Karen Carpenter developed anorexia nervosa. She succumbed to the eating disorder early in 1983.

What do we learn here? If you have a strong desire, or something essential in you — a talent and drive for drumming, or a proclivity to create order out of reams of data —  exercise it! Let it all hang out, and not only will you feel freer at work, you’ll likely meet great success.

It would have been exciting to see what would become of the Carpenters’ success had Karen stuck to the drums.  We’re bummed that we’ll never know.

What do you have inside of you that needs to be let out?

Image via

How to Get on the D-List at Work

Wall Street (subway stop, not the film)

Remember Gordon Gekko’s “greed is good” speech in the film Wall Street? Michael Douglas played Gekko, whose credo got etched inside us in the late 80s when the film about corporate excess was released. We were reminded of it recently at a lecture on raising compassionate kids, during which the presenter used video of Gekko’s outburst as context for the world we live in. The most memorable segment went like this:

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed — for lack of a better word — is good.
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind.
And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.

Cute that so much money surrounded a paper company, no? Gekko’s thesis — greed is good — was outrageous, mostly because greed has negative connotations. If we accept his digression “for lack of a better word,” we see he’s really talking about desire. And desire is good — desire for life, for money, for love, knowledge, all of it.

Especially in the workplace. Read more

How to Innovate Using Only Rocks and a Bike

Your Facebook friends on the East Coast may be talking lately about the gorgeous fall weather, and this past Sunday was both colorful and warm.  We took the opportunity to go to the playground.

While watching our daughter navigate a maze-like climber, we saw a cyclist. Riding on the rocks above the playground! We quickly called her to look at the wondrous sight of two elements that don’t typically belong together: a bicycle and a big rock. Of course she was nonplussed, and soon returned to her own climbing.

Yet this man continued to maneuver over the schist, elegantly manipulating his bicycle like it were a horse. Just look at him! To us this represents the utmost in innovation.

When we bring together two disparate ideas, something new happens. In our case, we began to view the mound of rock as a conduit rather than an obstacle. And we saw the bicycle as a vehicle to scale uneven and high terrain. From here, our mind was open to build on these concepts and consider more and newer possibilities.

It started with this man’s desire, pure and simple. He wanted to ride his bike over these rocks, which propelled him over each and every bump and chasm. The prospect of getting what we want can be a powerful motivator, and often when we pursue something simply because we want to, great things happen.

Switching up the typical context of our world is a foundation for how we can innovate in our organizations. Then allowing ourselves to seek what we want, we’re free to experience the unexpected and wonderful results.

Have you innovated by leveraging something out of its context?