How will you design your future work life?

Hello!

This is the third of four posts designed to help you explore your motivations for selling your business – and help you design a good future work life.

There are many complex factors to consider when selling a business – and at Melo we can guide you through those when you’re ready to start.

The big challenge, as with all financial planning, is that we tend to delay starting the process – in part because we’re unsure about what we’ll do after we sell.

So, in this post, we outline some questions to help you build more certainty about that.

What we’ve covered and what’s coming up

In the first post in this series, we listed the big factors pushing advice firm owners to consider selling up – and warned of the risks of rushing this process.

In the second post, we explored the psychological challenges of knowing what we’ll need to be happy in the future – and offered two proven ways to improve those forecasts.

Now, in this and the next post, we’ll outline some ideas (and bust a few myths) to help you design your future work-life.

So, these ideas may be of limited value if you know what you’ll do (or don’t plan to work again) after selling your business.

That said, the myth-busting ideas and thought experiments here may help you to double-check your current choice.

Can we offer you some golden rules for your future?

Not exactly – and, as this miner’s proverb says, once you have the gold from selling your business, you will make the rules! 

In any event, as you tell your financial planning clients daily, there are no golden rules about what’s right for your future.

What matters to you is unique to you – and each of us is unique in a great many ways.

For example, psychologists now suggest we have 25 or more facets to our personality alone. More on that shortly.

Beyond that, we each have our own unique sets of:

• Emotional styles (Resilience, Outlook, Social Intuition, Self-awareness, Sensitivity to Context and Ability to maintain attention)
• Attitudes – to every question under the sun – many of which come from our unique life history.
• Habits and hobbies.
• Fascinations and Motivations.
• Ideas that make us laugh.
• Circumstances: Physical, mental and financial.
• Looks and vocal accents.
• Educational attainments and other skills.
• Character strengths (Courage, Wisdom, Humanity, Justice, Temperance and Transcendence/Gratitude)
• Talent strengths
• Values and what we value – as explained in our previous post.

We may also have unique roles as family members and/or friends to various people in our unique groups and communities.

So, no, we don’t have any instructions for you—just invitations to explore some questions about redesigning your work life.

Some of these ideas come from our own experiences, but most draw on the experience and research of experts – in career counselling, life design and psychology.

And you can learn more about all these subjects in these books.

So, here are twelve key ideas and questions to consider.

We’d love to know your thoughts on these – and any others you’d add to this list.

1. Are you looking for enough obstacles?

Most of us want to boost our chances of thriving in life – and reduce the risks of crises.

And relatively new research shows that a key to our success (in any life goal – from losing weight to passing exams or acquiring more clients) is to focus on the obstacles in our way.

The widely shared idea of visualising our future success (rather than the work required) does not tend to deliver good results.

Who knew?

Indeed, the evidence shows that the old ‘vision boarding’ game can make things worse for those who most need help.

S0, we need a better approach to our vital life projects, and Psychologist Gabrielle Oettingen has found one.

In her four-step (WOOP) thinking process, we’re encouraged to:

1. Start with a ‘Wish’ about what we want to change.
2. Think about the best ‘Outcome’ – and how we’ll feel when we achieve it. (The dreamy bit!)
3. Think harder about what ‘Obstacles’ could stop us from doing what’s necessary for that outcome.
4. Develop ‘Plans’ for our actions when those obstacles appear.

The ‘WOOP’ approach (which also works wonders in a financial planning context, by the way) turns traditional positive thinking on its head.

Here, we’re encouraged to look for (not avoid) obstacles on our projects – so we know what we’ll do when those obstacles crop up – as they surely will.

Of course, one obstacle might be our lack of expertise to explore our options on complex questions.

Questions like how to make a sound plan for selling your business—although you know we can help you with that!

And it’s worth noting that we need to feel capable (or supported) to feel comfortable to engage with complex challenges.

We need what psychologist Albert Bandura calls ‘self-efficacy’ – a belief in our ability to execute tasks successfully.

Without that sense of competence, we rely too heavily on the slippery asset of motivation – as BJ Fogg illustrates beautifully here.

So, keep the ‘WOOP’ process in mind as you review your business and life plans, and keep asking:

What are the obstacles to progress?

This may all sound utterly obvious, but the evidence (in Oettingen’s book) is clear.

We (and our clients) make much more progress when, after dreaming about completed goals, we immediately think hard about the obstacles to our progress.

2. Are you embracing your curiosity and re-framing questions?

Experts suggest there are broadly two types of design problems.

First, there are ‘Tame’ problems – where outcomes are predictable and repeatable.

Second, there are ‘Wicked’ problems – where the inputs and outcomes are far more unpredictable.

Designing a new machine or reconciling the numbers in our accounts is complex and gruelling work. But those challenges are tame compared to the wicked problem of satisfying our ever-changing human needs!

Too often, we assume a problem has only one solution—the first one that comes to mind.

It’s only natural. Our brain is an energy-saving device.

It prefers to think fast, not slow.

We grab for quick and simple answers even when we know the problem is hugely complex.

For example, when we want to escape from the grisly tasks associated with our jobs, we might assume the solution is to leave our jobs altogether.

It doesn’t always occur to us to step back and reframe this question – but of course, we could ask ourselves:

‘How could I remove some of the grizzly tasks from my work, so I can focus on the jobs I enjoy most?’

And at Melo, we focus on helping you to escape from the grisly aspects of your job.

After all, your business can’t be sold while it relies on YOU to do all those tasks!

3. Can you see your assumptions?

The pressure of work and our desire for quick answers also means we’re (sometimes) somewhat less than objective or open-minded!

So, occasionally, we hold on to a flawed belief – about an idea, person, group or institution.

And confirmation bias (which many psychologists describe as the mother of all behavioural biases) prevents us from seeing our flawed assumptions.

We favour information that reinforces our existing beliefs – and ignore or dismiss ideas that contradict them.

We’re human.

We also turn to quick answers (‘common sense’ maxims) for guidance on some of our most complex life challenges, such as re-planning our lives.

And looking for common sense answers can create all sorts of problems.

As Albert Einstein said,

Common sense is just the collection of prejudices we acquire by age eighteen!

Psychologist and Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman was also no fan of common sense.

In his book, ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ Kahneman describes ‘common sense’ as being more about judging than thinking.

We make snap judgments on ideas based on whether they agree or disagree with our current beliefs. (Confirmation bias again)

The hard truth is that common-sense maxims can’t help us with complex problems about life, love or work – as these examples prove.

So, we all carry the odd unhelpful belief that leads us to make poor assumptions – like the perfectly natural belief that we can forecast what will make us happy – as outlined in the previous post.

We also acquire misleading beliefs from popular culture.

And, in relation to planning our work lives, one of the most popular beliefs is that you should always ‘follow your passion.’

The only problem is that there’s no evidence to support this ‘common sense’ assumption.

Professor Cal Newport has written a book and delivered a popular TED talk on this – and says the ‘follow your passion’ idea only got embedded into our Western World Psyche 20 years ago.

It started when a video clip of Steve Jobs telling graduates to follow their passion went viral online.

Ironically, Steve Jobs did not start with a passion for his work: his biographers say Apple was something he stumbled into.

Jobs only found his passion for computers after he became more skilled and successful.

Studies show that very few people have a passion relevant to their career choice.

And there’s no evidence that trying to match a pre-work inclination with an occupation leads to happiness.

Our passion grows as we get better at our work – and job satisfaction is more closely related to our intrinsic motivators – which we’ll look at now.

Of course, we may be passionate about various good causes.

And those passions may inform the kinds of projects we want to support – whether financially or through our efforts.

However, a passion for a good cause doesn’t tell us what type of work (or work environment) we might enjoy in the future. These are quite different questions.

4. Are you considering those *intrinsic* motivators?

Try it – they’re electrifying!

AMP: Electrifying?
Oh, never mind.

We spend most of our working lives being driven by external motivators.

We work to generate pay cheques and study for good exam grades, in part to grow those pay cheques or keep others happy. We also complete many tasks to avoid reprimands from bosses, regulators, and partners!

So, extrinsic motivators help us achieve various short-term goals – but, on their own, they don’t offer much long-term joy or a sense of personal growth.

On the other hand, Intrinsic motivators give us personal satisfaction and a sense of fulfilment – so they’re more sustaining.

The theory suggests we all have (to varying degrees) three intrinsic motivators:

First is Autonomy: our desire for control over our actions – including our freedom of speech.

In the work context, this means having (an appropriate) level of freedom to choose how we solve problems.

And unsurprisingly, this freedom tends to enhance our creativity.

Second is Mastery: our desire to become skilled – which drives our commitment to learning and development.

And third is Purpose: our desire for work that contributes to something more than our own needs – and of real value to the world. We’re more motivated by (and connected to) work aligned with what we value and our professional goals.

If we can find (or redesign) a work life with these three intrinsic motivators, we will likely be more engaged and enthusiastic—and, thus, more resilient to the challenges of this work-life transition.

5. What else does IDEAL work mean?

No assessment of an ideal work life is complete without this Venn diagram.

Popular among life coaches – this picture suggests we should pursue work which:

• We love.
• We’re good at.
• We can be paid for.
• Provides a service the world needs.

It’s a neat diagram and a wonderful ambition, for sure, but it’s hard to score well in those four circles consistently.

And, as we’ve seen, we’re unlikely to know if we’ll love a new role without trying it – and getting good at it.

So let’s be kind to ourselves when we’re not in that central zone. In the real world, that will be much of the time.

Also, be aware that this diagram is often (misleadingly) used to describe the Japanese concept of IKIGAI.

However, Ikigai is a very different and easier state to reach, and you can learn what it means here – if it interests you.

In short, Ikigai is about:

• Starting small.
• Releasing ourselves.
• Harmony and sustainability.
• Finding joy in little things – not impossibly hard goals.
• Paying attention to the here and now.

All of which have been proven to be drivers of happiness.

So, be careful with this Venn diagram. It illustrates an ideal and doesn’t apply to those who have made (or will make) enough money to:

• Undertake unpaid work for a charitable cause.
• Do unpaid work (for a while – like writing a book) to acquire a new set of skills.

6. Have you reviewed your skills needs – for your future work life? 

If you’re exploring a completely NEW work-life direction after selling your business, then books like ‘What Colour is Your Parachute’ by Richard Bolles or “How to Get a Job You Love”, by John Lees are worth a read.

John Lees, one of the UK’s most respected career counsellors, identifies five skill categories to help us explore our work strengths – including:

• People Skills: Interpersonal abilities, such as communication, compassion and teamwork.
• Information Skills: gathering, analysing, and using information effectively.
• Skills with Things: Practical skills involving equipment, tools, or physical tasks.
• Enterprise Skills: Leadership and project initiation, direction and management.
• Concepts and Ideas: Skills related to creativity, strategic thinking, and problem-solving.

Richard Bolles’s book includes the famous Flower Petal Exercise – another self-assessment tool designed to help us identify our career objectives and life goals.

Painting the flower picture helps us reflect on our personal needs from work, including:

• The values and skills of the people we enjoy working with.
• The firm’s size and culture.
• The working conditions, hours, and organisational structure.
• The transferable skills we can apply – and acquire.
• The specific knowledge areas that interest us.
• Our desire for leadership responsibility.
• Income and other benefits.

These books (and John Lees’s skill card set) can help anyone navigate a work-life transition.

More importantly, they can help us all explore our motivated skills, the type of work that gives us the most satisfaction.

This self-awareness is crucial whether we’re exploring a future of employed work or one where we design a new business.

It also helps us to uncover any further training or coaching needs.

7. Have you explored your personality recently?

There are various personality self-assessment tools available, but we suggest you explore one based on the OCEAN model of personality.

The word ‘OCEAN’ is a mnemonic for remembering the traits of:

1. Openness
2. Conscientiousness
3. Extraversion
4. Agreeableness
5. Neuroticism (emotionality – in plain English)

Professional psychologists recognise the OCEAN model as valid because it’s backed by extensive research, offers a more detailed assessment of our personality, and measures traits on a continuum—unlike the MBTI, for example, which ignores any spectrum of differences.

Various teams of psychologists have developed expanded versions of this OCEAN (aka BIG 5) assessment to offer deeper insights into our personalities. 

For example, the HEXACO Personality Inventory (HEXACO PI) includes a sixth dimension of honesty and humility.

Despite the big name change (from OCEAN), the HEXACO model is similar.

The Psychologists swapped the ‘E’ for an ‘X’ for eXtroversion and replaced the ‘N’ for ‘Neuroticism’ with an ‘E’ for ‘Emotionality’ because that word is more readily understood.

The HEXACO model unpacks each of the main traits into four facets – as shown here:

1. Honesty-Humility: Sincerity, Fairness, Greed-Avoidance and Modesty.
2. Emotionality: Fearfulness, Anxiety, Dependence and Sentimentality.
3. eXtroversion: Social Self-Esteem, Social Boldness, Sociability and Liveliness.
4. Agreeableness: Forgivingness, Gentleness, Flexibility, Patience.
5. Conscientiousness: Organization, Diligence, Perfectionism and Prudence.
6. Openness to Experience: Aesthetic Appreciation, Inquisitiveness, Creativity, Unconventionality.

The model also has altruism as a standalone facet to give a 25-point scale

You can take the HEXACO PI here for FREE.

If you plot your scores on a chart, you’ll get something like this – which we’ve plotted for an imaginary person called ‘Sam’.

Why would we look at our personality in such detail?

Well, look at the Green line of Sam’s scores compared to the median of those who took this assessment.

Clearly, it could help Sam to be aware of their tendencies to be highly socially bold while less than gentle in their communications with others.

You can read the fascinating scale descriptions for the HEXACO PI here. 

Please note:

These self-assessment tools are designed to help us understand ourselves – so we don’t need to tell anyone else our scores.

That said, it can be enormous fun to share these insights with trusted friends and family members. And it can help us build and maintain bonds of mutual understanding.

Most importantly, be aware that there are no good or bad test scores.

The value is in seeing how we differ from each other (and from the ‘average’ person) on these (agreed-upon) facets of personality.

Our scores can also offer valuable Insights into the type of work and environments in which we might thrive.

For example, someone like Sam, who has a low score on the ‘Sociability’ trait, may not thrive in highly social environments, such as open offices.

Conversely, you may do better in such offices if you have a high ‘Sociability’ score.

Just be aware that simpler (binary output) personality models (like MBTI), which, for example, label us as either extroverts or Introverts, are unhelpful.

Sound models, like HEXACO, give scores on a scale for each of our traits.

And then there are Ambiverts!

Fascinatingly, it’s also estimated that around half of all people switch between introverted and extroverted states in different situations.

And those who do are described as Ambiverts!

What’s more, research shows that such people have a significant advantage in sales roles.

You can read this research by Professor Adam Grant here. 

It could be extremely useful for your recruitment thinking too.

8. Have you identified your personal needs from your future work life?

Our suitability for future work roles is one thing.

Our motivated skills and those Intrinsic motivators are quite another – so it’s vital to consider these in your plan.

It also helps to highlight the gaps between what you believe you need from work and what you have now.

At Melo, our ‘Exit Readiness Report’ and ‘Business Effectiveness Review’ services help you identify sales readiness and business process gaps.

The idea is simple – to help you find the right buyer and secure the right terms for yourself, your team, and your clients.

It’s only natural, then, that we’d urge you to take a similar (gap analysis) approach to assess your personal needs from any work you might do in the future.

A personally focused exercise may also help you prioritise business process improvements to make your work life easier in the short term.

And in the next (and final) post in this series, we’ll outline this work-needs assessment tool.

9. Are you exploring several different futures?

Another myth/assumption to avoid (highlighted in the book Designing Your Life) is that there is only ONE best version of YOU.

Physicists might argue about whether we live in one of many parallel universes, but there is no doubt that there are many possible work roads we can follow.

And we can add value and find happiness in many of them.

So, it’s best not to get too hung up about finding the one perfect version of you.

We just need intrinsically motivating work that meets most of our needs most of the time.

That said, research (from Professor Dan Schwartz at Stanford) also suggests that we benefit enormously from starting our new work-life exploration with three ideas rather than one.

It turns out that having several possible roads to travel results in more and better final solutions.

If we start with just one idea, we tend to refine it (over and over) and miss out on potential innovations.

The key, however, is to start with, say, three viable options.

There’s no point in listing a crazy plan B and an impossible plan C – to make plan A the only one we take seriously.

So, the expert advice is broadly as follows:

Your plan A might be what you already have in mind. Perhaps it’s what you’re already doing – but with more of the work you enjoy and less of the stuff you don’t!

Plan B might be the work you’d consider if Plan A were no longer available – perhaps because of regulatory or technological (e.g. A.I. driven) disruption to your market.

Then there’s Plan C, which might be more of a wild card.

It’s something you’d do if money were no object, which it might not be in the future.

And for ideas on Plan C – you might want to consider some career aspirations you had in the past which became roads not taken.

We love this poem – don’t you? 

Are any of those ‘roads not taken’ roles still available (and of interest) to you, now?

Do you have the knowledge and skills to move directly into one of those roles – or will you need to develop them?

You may not find a specific role in the ‘road not taken’ exercise… but it may offer clues to what you really want from your future work life.

10. Are you planning to try before you buy?

Ultimately, aside from luck (which contributes significantly to some endeavours), we agree with Da Vinci.

We’re impressed by the urgency of doing things – and trying things out.

Career counsellor John Lees seems to agree, pointing out that many successful career transitions are’ Inside Jobs.’

The applicant is already ‘inside’ or connected to their new employer before the job opens up.

This may mean they’re working as an ‘experienced intern’ or are well-known to the firm’s key people.

So, the suggestion, once we’ve listed a few work lives that interest us, we explore them in one of two ways:

First, through conversations with those currently doing that work, which, as noted earlier, also helps us avoid the bad forecasting trap.

Second, we can invest some time in the new role or observe others do it to test our assumptions about what’s involved and whether we’d enjoy it.

11. Could you remove some of the gravity problems?

Considering all the questions above, you may have encountered one or two ‘gravity’ problems.

These are the things you cannot change – and must work around.

Just remember to re-frame (one of our favourite games!) these gravity problems – to test how stuck you are with them.

For example, our personality is not a gravity problem.

Psychologists do not describe low or high scores on a (sound) personality assessment as strengths or weaknesses.

Introversion, for example, is not a weakness in business and is now more widely understood as a strength.

Quieter, more focused people are essential for dealing with complex business challenges.

They also tend to stick longer at the deep work necessary to develop outstanding pieces of work.

That’s not to say that extroversion is a disadvantage: it’s certainly not in other regards.

This is just an example of a gravity problem assumption worth testing.

Also, the evidence (from Albert Bandura) shows that we engage more in challenging tasks when we learn more about what’s involved.

So, talking with others (who’ve been down the road you’re travelling) is a great way to check if your challenges are more solvable than you think.

And the same applies to your financial planning clients, of course.

You’ll have met many clients who assumed their tax challenges were a gravity problem – until they obtained your advice.

Are we right?

So, please test the boundaries of your gravity problems – to see what more is within your control.

12. Are you committed to deciding what you’ll do?

In his book, ‘Happiness by Design’, Paul Dolan (Professor of Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics) suggests we’re happier when we’re Deciding, Designing and Doing.

Yes, we’ve suggested starting your future work-life exploration with some options – but there are enormous benefits to committing to one option before too long!

Research suggests that keeping our options open for too long is a bad idea.

Harvard Psychologist Dan Gilbert (in his book, ‘Stumbling on Happiness’) points to a study with participants asked to choose one painting (from a selection) to take home and keep.

One group was told they could later change their minds and swap the painting for another.

A second group was told they could not change their minds, and this group reported being happier with their choice.

Once we decide on (or only have) one option, we can get more comfortable with what we have.

Studies also show (unsurprisingly) that holding onto multiple options undermines our working memory (and ability to focus on other projects) as we keep churning over our options.

And some people get caught in an optionality trap, habitually collecting options, avoiding decisions, and missing opportunities.

In short, while having choices seems to offer more security, it can lead to paralysis by analysis, which ultimately hinders our progress.

At the heart of all this is the tension between our desire to be free to choose (one of our intrinsic motivators) and the problems that come with too much choice.

And, you can learn about the wider societal issues related to this in this TED talk by Psychologist Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice. 

Of course, no work-life choice is forever.

Ultimately, our work choices can be changed – if not always reversed.

Our point is that it pays to work hard in the design phase, so we feel comfortable making decisions and following through on them.

Coming next

In the next and final post in this series, we’ll outline a simple model for assessing the value of your future work-life ideas.

This spreadsheet-based tool will also help you assess the gaps between what you need from work – and what you have now.

So, even if you don’t plan to work after selling your business, it might help you focus on business improvements to make your life easier now.

See you in there when you’re ready for that.

In the meantime, to learn more about our Exit Readiness Report or Business Effectiveness Review email us at hello@melo.co.uk or call us on 0113 4656 111.

We live in the thick of this challenging market with our business owner clients every day.

Thanks for dropping in.