The very first thing I did before writing this blog was to visit Amazon.com to search on job and career-related chaos. I was enlightened and surprised at the complexity of the subject – my present daily experience is so chaotic that it’s pushed me to find out more how it works. My present experience isn’t momentary but, permanent and unpredictable chaos as long as I am here.
By way of hundreds of titles, I learned you can manage chaos, thrive in it, thrive on it, build it into management systems, it is not industry specific, it can be remediated and, yes, it has strategic value. There are theories about chaos as cause and effect. Then, chaos has a “how to” contribution for those who want more of it. It's human and digital. It can lead to personal failure or success.
If you used the word on a resume would it translate well? Is chaos managed, intentional, leader-less, strategic where you work? In my new post-career position, chaos must be assumed and also very managed. It is also shared – my workforce understands and accepts this even if no worker understands its complexities.
You might say I’m learning to manage chaos first as a human nature reality and second with a digital support role. If I think of it as a skill, then I can write it out like a performance metric on my resume. Such skills are developed in the most unusual circumstances; not so much by the book but by persevering. A clearly current example would be defining the chaos of an ICE officer versus that of a late-night building security desk job. Another, think of the chaos CEO's are causing by going strongly into the political culture versus those CEO's who never engage at all. They choose between a level 1 and 10 on the chaos generation scale. Job loss? Yet another manifestation of career chaos.
R. Waters, 2018, 2025
You can now purchase, Shaken Leaders. an ebook at the Kindle Store
By way of hundreds of titles, I learned you can manage chaos, thrive in it, thrive on it, build it into management systems, it is not industry specific, it can be remediated and, yes, it has strategic value. There are theories about chaos as cause and effect. Then, chaos has a “how to” contribution for those who want more of it. It's human and digital. It can lead to personal failure or success.
If you used the word on a resume would it translate well? Is chaos managed, intentional, leader-less, strategic where you work? In my new post-career position, chaos must be assumed and also very managed. It is also shared – my workforce understands and accepts this even if no worker understands its complexities.
You might say I’m learning to manage chaos first as a human nature reality and second with a digital support role. If I think of it as a skill, then I can write it out like a performance metric on my resume. Such skills are developed in the most unusual circumstances; not so much by the book but by persevering. A clearly current example would be defining the chaos of an ICE officer versus that of a late-night building security desk job. Another, think of the chaos CEO's are causing by going strongly into the political culture versus those CEO's who never engage at all. They choose between a level 1 and 10 on the chaos generation scale. Job loss? Yet another manifestation of career chaos.
R. Waters, 2018, 2025
You can now purchase, Shaken Leaders. an ebook at the Kindle Store