March 8 , 1999

By DOROTHY P. MOORE
Special to the Post and Courier

     

     A career is a self-mapping process.    Success along the road depends on a package of transferable skills, the ability to be on top of the latest technology, and well grounded networks to make a smooth transition to what comes next.   What does come next?    
     Career plateaus offer the opportunity to become reflective, reexamine values and work objectives, take a candid look at the organization, and your position in it, and decide.  If one plans to stay within a corporate environment, career building requires leadership and functional expertise, particularly in the areas of marketing, general management, information systems and industry specific knowledge. The watchword is flexibility.  Experience may be gained in lateral moves within a single organization or from jumping to others. 
     New positions should be carefully selected to add important skills, challenges or exposure.  Some call this "careerbanding," meaning a close association with career growth. 
     Two recent surveys speak to the realities of the marketplace.  One, a telephone poll of 1,123 people, showed that 57  percent expect to work for five or more employers during their careers.   Half expected to work for eight employers or more. 
     The second, a survey of 1,800 American workers, found that the important employee motivators include the opportunity for personal and family time, the direction the organization is taking, opportunities for personal growth, a culture that allows challenges to the way things are done, work satisfaction, and the opportunity to participate in planning organizational change.
     Career plateaus, new value sets and changing organizational environments inspire many women to start businesses of their own.  A 1998 Catalyst and NFWBO study revealed that the major reasons women entrepreneurs had left jobs in corporate America were lack of flexibility (51 percent in private and 44 percent in nonprivate), glass ceiling issues (29 percent in private and 16 percent in non-private) unhappy with the environment (28 percent private and 17 percent non-private) and lack of challenge (22 percent private and 19 percent non-private). 
     The percentage of women leaving because they had an entrepreneurial idea has diminished from 50 percent to 35 percent in the last twenty years.  In the same period, the  percentage of women leaving because they were unfulfilled, downsized, or victims of a glass ceiling rose from 25 percent to 46 percent.  
     The finding reflects changes in values and expectations of women and their organizational work environments. Generation Xers (those in the 20 to 33 age range)  and Moderns  (entrepreneurs who started businesses in their mid 30s after five to ten years of organizational experience) want flexibility, to be treated equitably, to be valued, challenged and to have a pleasant environment in which to work.  
     And they want all this right now. More than 60 percent of the Catalyst and NFWBO respondents said that nothing their former organization could do would make them go back. The news is a warning that creative talent will be drained from organizations that do not get tuned into the expectations and values of the newer members.  As for glass ceilings, the pay inequities and limited opportunities to advance still persist.  
     The discrimination effects were far more prominent for black women than for other groups.
     Thinking about going into business for yourself?   There is no clear consensus on what it takes to prepare for the important transition from a corporate environment to becoming an entrepreneur beyond the toolkit of transferable and broad-based skills.  
     But it is first important to determine whether you wish to be a small business owner or an entrepreneur. The two are not the same.  
     To be an entrepreneur is to be creative. One focuses on a new product, something that has not been on the market, or the revival of an old product idea in a new market. While the verdict is still out on pre-ownership experience, there is a lot of case data that suggest entrepreneurs have a better chance of survival if they get into a business field they know a good deal about.    
     A small business owner, by contrast, travels a more familiar path, often replicating the pattern of other small businesses in the industry group. 
     Whichever it is, there are some important benchmarks in the transition process.   First among these is a self assessment, not only of the real reasons for considering the transition from your present organizational environment to owning a business but the equally important assessment of the strength of this need and your sustaining power when the first glamour of owning a business wears off.  
     Are you willing to do a lot of everything, to sell yourself and the business constantly, to be involved in non-stop networking, and, if necessary, wait for success?  How do you react to continuous pressure?  There is no downtime when you own a business of your own. You will bring it home at night, pack it with you on vacations, if you are fortunate enough to have these.
     Can you balance this pressure with a healthy lifestyle? It may not appear possible in the early days of your business, but later it will be important to remember that there is more to life than the business. 
     You can determine strengths and weaknesses and identify programs and courses of action to meet your operational needs prior to going into business.   Once in business, you will most likely not have enough time to gain these skills and the expertise.