Planned Happenstance.

In last month's column on career assessments, I discussed how your values, interests, personality, and skills help determine your choice of profession. "Pure chance" probably also played a role in how you got where you are. Nevertheless, events you may have attributed to chance or luck could have been indirect outcomes of effective decision-making behavior. At least that's the argument three career theorists (Mitchell, Krumboltz, and Levin) make in an article titled "Planned Happenstance: Constructing Unexpected Career Opportunities." [*]

They tell how the field of environmental law lost a potential professional in the person of Leigh Steinberg who, as luck would have it, lived in the same dorm at U.C. Berkeley as the football team. There, by chance, he befriended student athletes--including Steve Bartkowski. Steinberg also was fortunate enough to get elected student body president and was later admitted to law school. When Bartkowski was drafted by the Atlanta Falcons, he asked Steinberg to represent him in contract negotiations. Steinberg took the risk, said yes, and "the rest is history." You can learn more about his good fortune in Jerry McGuire, the movie based on his life. Was his career choice pure random luck, or a demonstration of something else?

While it may be disconcerting to think of unforeseen events or chance factors as determining your career choices, the unpredictable abounds in everyone's life. What's relevant is how you react to these influences. Consider your own situation: How did your birthplace, family, order of birth, gender, height, geographical environment, and economic environment affect your early career choices? Who were your role models? What effect have your health and intelligence, self-concept, and relationships had on the choice and development of your career? Just think how technology is enforcing change every minute on all of our careers.

A planned-happenstance theory of career development is not a complete oxymoron. As illustrated by Steinberg's experiences, this concept includes creating and transforming unplanned events into opportunities for learning. We grow up surrounded by a wealth of positive and negative possibilities, some beyond our control, and some of our own making. What's difficult is anticipating, generating, and finding opportunities, rather than meandering through the thicket of chance. One way to capitalize on this reality is to improve your ability to tolerate ambiguity Another is to reframe indecision as open-mindedness.

People who are successful at tolerating ambiguity in the workplace often find opportunity where others find frustration. Their comfort with uncertainty enables them to act on possibilities where others experience lack of clarity, indecisiveness, or poor management. Inside an organization, they're often ambitious "intrapreneurs"; outside, they become entrepreneurs or promoters.

The advantages of open-mindedness are often lost on career seekers and career changers because our culture generally rewards decisive people. Common sense has held that those who don't know where they're going "often wind up somewhere else." But that view is changing as emerging workers, who question policies, standards, and traditional workplace perspectives, shake up old beliefs. An open-minded person is in the middle of what was and what will be. He or she has the ability to be curious, to ask "what if" questions, to explore options, and to avoid obsolete answers or directions.

How to Use Planned Happenstance in Your Career Planning

Five attitudes are essential to recognizing, creating, and using chance as an opportunity:

1. curiosity, which will prompt you to explore new learning opportunities;

2. persistence, which means you exert extra effort despite setbacks;

3. flexibility, which enables you to change attitudes and circumstances;

4. optimism, which will allow you to view new opportunities as possible and attainable; and

5. the willingness to take risks, which will enable you to act in the face of uncertainty.

Find mentors who exhibit these qualities and environments that encourage questioning. Prepare yourself for the unexpected by continuing to upgrade your skills; "chance favors only the prepared mind," according to Pasteur. Understand that anxiety about planning and goal setting is normal and can be overcome. Setting, resetting, adopting, and discarding worn-out goals is a lifelong process.

Refraining indecision into open-mindedness and adopting planned happenstance can be powerful tools for planning and working through the uncertainty of upcoming career changesuafter all, change is the only constant. Adopt an attitude of planful open-mindedness when faced with unplanned events. Initiate actions to increase the likelihood of beneficial outcomes from accidents of fateu which often arent such accidents. Prepare yourself by asking how things would be differentuif People who have been forced to face enormous constraints such as physical disabilities or personal losses rarely ask permission to make significant changes. Every day in my work, I learn a new lesson in endurance serendipity, and just plain luck.

(*.) Mitchell, K., J. Krumboltz, and A. Levin (1999), Planned Happenstance: Constructing Unexpected Career Opportunities, Journal of Counseling and Development, 77:115-122.

(**.) Crowe, C., producer and director (1977), Jerry MeGuire [Filmi, A Gracie Films Production, Columbia Tristar Home Video.