Over the last several years, the environment has drastically changed. Technology has improved so much that the forms of our jobs are changing rapidly – it seems. For example, with the introduction of the Robotic Automation Process or Artificial Intelligence, many of our entry-level tasks are disappearing.
Change has constantly been happening. I’ve seen technological changes in my career from the beginning. For example, I translated between Canadian Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAPs), US GAAPs, and German GAAPs. There were no harmonized accounting standards back then, so reports had to be translated into an accounting reporting standard depending on where stocks were traded. With the introduction of technology, these translations are now done by software.
What we need to pay attention to is not the change itself but the speed of the changes. Labor shortages in some areas are getting worse in the United States. Accounting was one of the fields. Both mid and small companies are struggling to retain qualified employees. There are many reasons that companies are motivated to make the change necessary to survive. Even small companies have started implementing simple robots to take over tasks. I have worked on several projects implementing RPA in large corporations. Now small or mid-size companies have begun implementing digital transformations.
As more RPA take over our daily tasks, more companies seek adaptable people who can do the jobs that robots cannot do, such as interpretation or generating new ideas. How the jobs are done for many of us will change rapidly in the next several years. If you are not adapting to these changes, you will be quickly be made obsolete and end up without a job. So, we need to prepare for any changes that can impose such threats and opportunities.
Another thing you will need to consider is that the work style has changed. To make matters worse, COVID hit the world. Covid forced us to work remotely, and many companies moved to a remote work style. The remote work environment would affect us sooner or later, but COVID catalyzed the change rather quickly. This change made job applications somewhat borderless—labor shortages for mid and small companies got worse last year.
It is essential to understand ourselves more because we need to adapt to environments quickly. Reactive and Impulsive decisions can often lead to an unwanted situation. For example, there will be more remote positions available in the future. Your organization may make your position remote even though a remote work environment is not for everyone. You must be sensitive to technological changes because otherwise, robots may replace your job.
A good method to understand your strategic position in the existing environment is a SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis matrix contains Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Before starting with a SWOT analysis, I think one should identify one’s career anchor because it reveals one’s underlying values. Career anchors are underlying talents, motives, values, and attitudes – people often use these as the drivers to pick their jobs or career. It was developed by Edgar Schein, who is credited for various research and books mainly under organizational psychology (MIT Sloan, n.d.). He is primarily known for his book, Career Anchors.
According to Schein, there are eight career anchors. The eight anchors are:
Technical / Functional Competence: Someone in this anchor wants to be good at what they do. They will put a lot of effort into improving their skills in their career. They also do not care about money or promotions unless the opportunity helps them excel in a chosen line of work.
General Managerial Competence: Someone in this anchor is more likely to pursue the traditional career path of the corporation. They like to supervise a large number of groups or employees. They want to learn how to manage many functions and use the information or skills from multiple sources within an organization.
Autonomy / Independence: someone in this anchor prefers to be left alone. They love the freedom to set rules, procedures, and their own schedule.
Security / Stability: Someone in this anchor values the security and stability in their job. They dislike unpredictable environments; therefore, they want to have their tasks and policies clearly defined. They tend to have a strong identity in their organization.
Entrepreneurial creativity: Someone in this anchor loves to create their own business. They can get obsessed with the idea they need to create, and they will get bored if the process is prevented.
Sense of service: People in this anchor want to work within a specific set of values. For example, an elementary school teacher wants to develop youth because they believe that education is essential for anyone. A medical researcher tries to seek a cure for cancer. Money is not the primary driver for these types of people since they are focused on the cause.
Pure Challenge: people in this anchor are constantly seeking more formidable challenges to conquer.
Lifestyle: People in this anchor value a work-life balance. They value the freedom to organize their balance between work and their personal life.
I have taken Schein’s Career Anchors test in the past. I scored high in Pure Challenge, Entrepreneurial Creativity, and Autonomy. I was not as surprised with the results because I feel the most energy when working with challenging projects. If something does not work, I instead create a new way to make it work. That is why I mainly do continuous improvement types of projects for the organization.
Analysis on Strength and Weakness
I quickly analyzed the strengths and weaknesses I obtained from the Career Anchors test. If you want to do the proper analysis, you must include your skills, knowledge, and experience in this analysis.
Strength
I enjoy the rapid changes in the environments since there are many things I can learn and create to overcome challenges. The more complex the Challenge, the more excited I become. Money and social status are not my main priority if there are challenges in it. I also value autonomy, creating rules and processes instead of following existing rules and processes.
Weakness
I have many things that I want to improve. I see some weaknesses that can lead me to chaos if I fail to control them. If I am not careful, I will endlessly spend my time chasing after the wrong thing. I get bored of things quickly, so I must keep the project short. Finally, I prefer to work independently rather than working for someone. (This is something I need to focus on).
My career anchors led to great opportunities in times like this as long as I navigate how I utilize them. For this blog, I omitted how to conduct environment scanning to find out opportunities and threats, which is very important to complete your SWOT analysis.
I strongly recommend analyzing and identifying one’s career anchors since our environments are shifting quickly. You will need to adjust and reposition yourself in such an environment.
Without understanding your underlying value or needs, you cannot position yourself wisely. Once you know your career anchor, you can create your career and skill development plan that is matched to your career anchor. People generally feel more engaged when they know what they want, can, and need to do. Understanding your career anchor helps you to identify them easier; thus, you can be adaptable.
Reference
MIT Sloan. (n.d.) Edgar H. Schein.https://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/directory/edgar-h-schein