Staying Smart: Advice on Navigating Your Career Millions of career changes occur each year. Some are natural, but many more occur in adverse circumstances. Other forces at work today further alter the work environment. The Internet tidal wave destroys existing business methods and creates new ones. Many jobs get shaken up in the process. In 1998 the momentum of the Asian economies went from fast-forward to reverse. With their appetite for new products and services, these countries had fueled economic growth all over the world. The change in their fortunes has affected and untold number of careers throughout the world. Clearly, environmental changes like these beget strategic inflection points for companies. Even more acutely, however, they bring career inflection points to the employees of those companies. Your Career is Your Business Every person, whether he is an employee or self-employed, is like an individual business. Your career is your business, and you are its CEO. Just like the CEO of a large corporation, you must respond to market forces, head off competitors, and be alert to the possibility that what you are doing can be done in a different way. You must protect your career from harm and position yourself to benefit from changes in the operating environment. This business of one often encounters a defining point where an action you take will determine whether your career bounces upward or slumps into decline. Let's call it a career inflection point. A career inflection point most often resets from a subtle but profound shift in the operating environment in which you work, a shift that demands that you respond with action. This action will not necessarily introduce an immediate discontinuity into your career, but it may unleash forces that in time will have a lasting and significant effect. A strategic inflection point reflects a wrenching moment in the life of a company, hot the effort of navigating through it is spread among members of a community. Career inflection points are more intense, because everything rests on the shoulders of one individual — you. Career inflection points happen to everyone. Consider the case of a business journalist I know. This man used to be a banker. He was happily and productively employed until the day he went to work and learned that his employer had been acquired by a larger bank. In short order he was out of a job. He then became a stockbroker. For a while, things went well and the future looked promising. However, a short time before we met, online brokerage firms started to appear. Several of this man's clients left him, preferring to do their business with low-cost online firms. The handwriting was on the wall. This time our man decided to make his move early. He had always had an interest in and aptitude for writing. Building on the financial knowledge he had already acquired, he found himself a job as a business journalist, a less lucrative position but one less likely to be done in by technology. This transition was not as traumatic (痛苦而难忘的) as the move from bank to brokerage this time he had initiated it rather than waiting for change to be forced on him by outside forces. To know whether you're facing a career inflection point, you must be alert to changes in your environment. Working inside an organization, you're often sheltered from the world at large. In some ways you tacitly relinquish (放弃) responsibility for your we[fare to your employer. But if you take your eyes off the environment in which your company operates, you may be the last to know of potential changes that could have an impact on your career. The Mental Fire Drill You should train yourself to look for strategic inflection points that may affect your career. Simply put, you need to be a little paranoid about your career. One way to do this is to go through a mental