SALİM KADIBEŞEGİL

There is an illusion in business life. Everyone is pursuing a “career”, but they are confused about what it looks like! There are tons of books and thousands of articles, seminars, educational studies, case studies etc. on career journeys. It is impossible to understand how people get confused despite all these. In fact, it is possible, because especially medium-level managers show careers as a path to becoming the managing director or a CEO of a company.

What a great illusion! I know a lot of people who worked as a managing director in various companies and somehow left those companies. They “are looking for a job” now. In other words, they are “unemployed”. If becoming a “managing director or a CEO” at the peak of their careers is so important, why don’t they continue this job?

Young people who are about to graduate from university mostly worry about “getting their feet in the door”. Therefore, they send their CVs with “questionable” contents to hundreds of places and decrease their “market value”. In fact, they are “valuable”! At least they should consider themselves and their CVs so. Should we approach this issue in this way when the unemployment rate is around 14% and when the number of unknown and especially young unemployed people is twice as much as this rate?

Let’s discuss it.

The most valuable approach in the career process is to get a “job offer” from a company which is considered reputable. At least this should be the target in career management. I try to give young people basic guidance on this target. I tell them to enrich themselves with cultural, social and relational aspects in addition to basic business competences starting from their first year at university so that they won’t need to apply anywhere. Instead, they will “get job offers”.

I try to explain this by drawing a triangle. There are “jobs / companies / industries” in the top section of the triangle. I tell them to write these words there. I say the left bottom corner is their “private lives”. The people they will be together for a lifetime one day will also be a part of their career. However, the most important section is the right bottom corner, which includes social environments and relationships. The middle section of the triangle is for their identities, characters and values.

In my opinion, a successful career can be achieved through efficient management of the right bottom corner, because there are activities with NGOs that you are interested in, internships, overseas experiences, voluntary activities, participation in cultural activities, intellectual satisfaction and many more in there. “Enrichment” in this area will give you an opportunity to introduce yourself to other people and organisations that you are interested in. Your responsibilities, your working method, your emotional intelligence, your consistency in relationships, your self-confidence and your other qualities only emerge from the interaction in your social environment.

I see that the people I consider successful in career development apply this formula well either knowingly or unknowingly, because a career is the whole of successful time management in the three corners of this triangle.

People who focus on the right bottom corner of the triangle will see that they receive the right job offers or that they are invited to the business interviews they prefer. Even if they find their dream jobs and spend a lot of time on their jobs, they cannot leave aside their visibility in their social environments, which has given them this opportunity. This is because they know that life is shaped there, and that new career opportunities and developments originate from the relationships in there.

In order to become an entrepreneur, to establish a business or to get wind of new business areas and become one of the key players in these areas, you should focus on this section of the triangle. New business and entrepreneurship opportunities especially in social innovation are shaped by the common future dreams of the people who think that they complete each other in a social environment. If there are thousands of examples of this subject around the world today, it is because of this solidarity.

People who think a career is climbing up the hierarchical steps one by one are constantly let down. They keep complaining about how their companies are unfair to them and how problematic their promotion or bonus systems are. Criticism about how their achievements are not appreciated and how the other professionals who started working under the same conditions are favoured always comes before “the business responsibilities that they have taken”. They do not have anything to talk about except for their jobs and complaints about their jobs since they focus on becoming a “managing director or a CEO” as soon as possible! One day, they realise that they have spent tens of years without becoming a “managing director”, and that it is too late to start other things!

However, the people who focus on the right bottom corner of the triangle have a network of relationships and a social environment that they can confidently depend on, and they have different areas of interest on which they spend as much time as their jobs. It is their cultural and social richness which shines like a star over their basic competences and makes them privileged in their business environments.

These people find the “best” person for their private lives in these environments, because they meet on a common ground with the same areas of interest in the same environment.

The “jobs” in the top section of the triangle can make them a “managing director or a CEO” one day. However, they know that this position is a gift from their performance in the right bottom corner. Therefore, this position does not make them push the related sensitivities into the background. The responsibility of a managing director never comes before all the responsibilities in the entire triangle. This position is only a part of a life design that we call a career.

We know that the winds of cultural change, which started with the generation Y especially after 1980s and then continued with generations X and Z, caused a problem about “the sense of belonging”. We need to look at the triangle if we find it hard to understand why the employees from these generations are “unhappy” and why they have “a weak sense of belonging” although they meet their expectations exceedingly well. This is because they are pursuing a life design in such a virtual triangle even if they cannot name it.

If you look at the entrepreneurs and employees of the technology companies whose market values are much more than the market values of companies such as General Motors and Exxon, you will see that they all have triangles in their pockets. These people focus on “success” although the money in their pockets can buy many countries. Their success is achieved through the competences within the scope of their social environments. This is the situation at least for the brands building a new world such as Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook.

A career path is more complicated and more challenging for women. It is rough in a way that cannot be compared to men’s career paths!

Because they have to compete with both women and men in business life. Then, the responsibility that they have to take as “a mother” can become the most important part of their careers one day. However, the most significant difficulty is that they manage their partners’ career achievements without being noticed. Because no woman would like to be with an “unsuccessful” man. Men’s ego and “self-righteousness” do not like intervention. However, women who see their careers in the entire triangle are the “invisible hand” for the most critical decisions in the careers of men that they support despite all the difficulties of living with them.

There are many people who cannot “have a good career” or cannot “complete” their careers although they have become managing directors. One day, they will be asked to leave their positions with a polite “thank-you note” and a satisfying bonus. Then, they may be depressed, hopeless and burnt-out for months. Naturally, they will not accept any offers for lower positions having had a managing director’s business card.

However, cultural and social richness to be achieved starting from university and to be put in the centre of life will always bring important job and private life opportunities in a life design. People who can achieve this richness will have no problem with leaving their positions as a managing director.