1. What made this experience significant for you?  
2. What did you do to cause the change to have a positive outcome?  
3. How did you know it was the appropriate time to make the change?  
4. How would you suggest someone prepare to make such an experience more expeditious or effortless (to simplify their process)?   
5. Has this impacted your beliefs about future changes and if so how?  
6. What did you use as a support for your transition process?

  CAREER TRANSITION (to a new organization/same field)

"It was moving to an organization that resisted change and was somewhat inflexible.   I commuted an hour for the job. My hope was that I would put myself in this higher position even if the material reward would be delayed and if I invested myself for three or four years the payoff would have been worth it along the way. The small city was active, engaged people who insisted on being involved by being able to influence public policy. It was a real paradigm shift for me in the formative years of my life."  

- Sean Joyce

1. I am a future oriented person. I wanted to have learned enough through successes and failures to be marketable in the peak of my career. Had I stayed in that same organization, there would not have been another promotional opportunity.  

2. For taking a risk and stepping outside a comfort zone, by the end of the day I was a City Manager at 31. This allowed me to be placed sooner in another environment using these skills. Professionally it was a lot of work.  It was hard on my new marriage.

3. We didn't have children yet. The hope was that if I placed myself in the position of a new assignment I'd learn new skills and techniques to prepare myself to be good at it as soon as possible.   I was later able to move to a full city environment and learn everything I could about how it worked.

4. I started at an internship in a city and four months later I was promoted. I originally saw this as an opportunity to explore something and see if it turned into a career. I saw I had an aptitude for it.   College didn't offer a concrete understanding of how city management worked. College taught me the fundamentals of writing and other skills I could apply in a practical way. I did not aspire to anything better than what I was doing. I answered in five years I wanted to be five years better than what I am today. More understanding, knowledge, stronger technical skills. As I came to learn the environment and what more I wanted to accomplish, it was about developing innate intuition. I had wanted eventually to be a great city manager, not for the business card. I wanted to get the job when I was ready to do it well.

5. The prospect of change is still scary and exciting. I think if I change environments I'll be up against new things. It taught me not to resist.

6. Had excellent mentors. I had forged a good number of strong friendships with people my age and the same core folks of 5-7 people, with whom I started, leaned on each other for support. We were interns together. We were thinking about what we were doing. We were ambitious from the start and never competitive.   We may have worked in other areas, but we shared ideas.  It was collegial and even my wife would join us and we'd brown bag for lunches. There was no structure, but we shared ideas.  

"I had three partners - the three muskateers. We had a long history of knowing each other and we got along well. At this point we no longer had the personality or drive to make our organization a solid institution. The second generation of people under us didn't have the goal to take it forward. They were capable as lawyers, but not business people. We decided not to fire the young people, but fire ourselves and dissolve the firm."  

- Jeff Freedman

1. Left my law firm at 55, had been with the firm for 16 years and 25 years in partnership. Dissolved firm because we didn't see a future in it. Primarily we weren't able to develop our successors who would take it over.  It had been over a quarter of a century before I actually looked for a job. They had also had a monstrous overhead. I had a great time at my previous firms, but it was a costly mistake. I didn't realize these things until it was way down the line. I was caught up in the excitement of the change and I didn't do enough preparatory work and ask them the right questions. At my new firm, it is a much more known quarter.  

2. I ended up going to an organization whose clientele was different, different economics. They didn't have the same fee structures. I called the managing partner at a new firm. They had a meeting scheduled with the partners on a Saturday and the change was made in 30 days. They were thrilled to get me.

3. Had looked at the year end outcomes that confirmed what my suspicions had been and knew I had to leave. I'd waited to stay with my partner and he didn't want to leave. We had different client niches and financial needs. It is like a divorce from him. It has it's emotional components.

4. a) Know what you want. Look inside yourself. Make sure you get all the info you need. What are your priorties? b) Know what questions to ask. For me these were financial. When you have to cover your share of a large overhead, it's not a factor of how many hours you work it's a factor of how many dollars each of those hours bring. c) Ask yourself where you're going to be in X years.   Scenario planning was missing.

5. Emphasized priority to my self and my family. Change for the better.

6. My wife was valuable. Talked to my son a lot. A couple of people at the firm I ended up going to. Long term friend. My ex-partner felt betrayed because of the quickness of my decision, but we've remedied this somewhat now. Some of the senior people where I am now provide emotional support, mentorship for each other. They have full life experiences, down-to-earth, shared values, less pretense. My wife connects well with them too and we have a social life with them.

-Jeff Freedman, Attorney

1. There was not going to be a welcome approach for me at my particular law firm, being married and now pregnant. The city attorney for my first new city job was so encouraging I felt it would work.   He preferred people with a personal life, making them happier employees. It was also more meaningful working.

2. I let go of some of my expectations. At first I was in a small, older office. I was so happy to have acknowledgement as an attorney and a person, that this was great. I had to compromise with the ladder and the salary and in the long run that ended up being more meaningful.

3. I found my right time. I had certain family responsibilities and there was no way I could keep up with the office demands. I hooked up with an organization, New Ways to Work . They talked about people who wanted to pursue a dream, take sabbaticals, things they'd anticipated and then come back to their career field later. I think now we realize that people work P.T., telecommute, have different options for their working styles. It wasn't an option then.

4. It's easy to say that I happened to get lucky with the right environment. It could have been a bust that I'd have asked myself why did I ever leave, but it was worth looking at my values and I was compelled to live from them. Some others challenged my values.

5. I am a person that doesn't change so well. I took one big breath and jumped in. At the exact moment I was looking there was my home town I was familiar with that was offering something I wanted. But it was a win for me because I took a big chance from a stable situation. I think you have to take calculated risks. As you get older you jump in because you may say it's your last chance to go for those leaps. They may not always be the most brilliant or easy.

6. My husband, my mother. I tried to keep a sense of self-preservation, not to loose my confidence or well-being. I knew I wasn't feeling good about myself in the other situation, so I relied on moving to change that. I talked with friends too. I joined a working mother's group, Babies and Briefcases through a hospital program. A friend was in it and told me about it. It was a whole life support group. We created our own kind of mastermind group. It was a blend of people I might not otherwise have connected with over personal, family and business issues.

- Carol Schwab, City Attorney