A long-anticipated journey to Peru reminded May Busch* of some of the factors that have helped her to a successful career.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could wave a wand and guarantee you’ll have a fulfilling career?
While there’s no magic formula, there are factors that can substantially enhance your chances of success.
Here are three that I was reminded of recently during my trip to Machu Picchu in Peru.
Keep Transforming Yourself: To have a fulfilling career, you have to keep morphing and transforming yourself.
Sitting still and staying in your comfort zone is an invitation to fall behind.
It’s essential to keep learning, growing and developing whether that’s new skills, new angles or new approaches.
At a minimum, transforming yourself will keep you from getting bored.
Take Pablo Seminario (pictured) for example. He’s a Peruvian ceramic artist who’s at the top of his field.
He began as an architect but then became an artist, first drawing buildings and landscapes then becoming recognised as a leading figure in contemporary native art.
He then shifted his focus from local Peruvian influences to incorporating more of the global, followed by combining the ancient with the modern.
His latest transformation is to incorporate different mediums beyond ceramics.
Every time he felt he was being pigeon-holed into a particular field, he transformed himself.
That’s how he has stayed relevant and fulfilled for so many decades.
Create New Experiences: Innovation is often about combining things you already have access to in a different way.
For Peruvian chef Pío, who runs one of the most successful restaurants in the city of Cusco, a key factor is his passion for creating combinations of foods to create distinctive meals.
He combines different ingredients that complement each other, like something crunchy with something smooth or puréed.
The result is a memorable (and delicious) dining experience.
From a business and career perspective, this could look like combining aesthetic design with technology as Steve Jobs from Apple did.
Or it could be bringing different kinds of people together to improve results.
Like bringing in artists and storytellers to a science and technology team; or forming cross-generational teams who come with different perspectives to produce more innovative results.
It could simply be meeting different kinds of people whether that’s at a dinner party or conference.
When you hang out with the same people and do the same things, you’ll get stale and that won’t make for a fulfilling career.
Love What You Do: When you love what you do, it’s easy to feel fulfilled.
Everyone we met in Peru loved what they did.
From chef Pío, who came in on his day off to cook for us, to our tour guide, Tomás, who got up at 4.30am every day to take us hiking and touring.
Or Pablo Seminario, who spent hours creating in his studio.
We could feel their love, joy and enthusiasm. None of them thought of it as ‘work’.
For years I felt like my chosen career (investment banking) wasn’t making the best use of my talents.
I’m not the most technical or quantitative person. I was never that interested in finance or capital markets.
I was motivated by pure challenge and this work was hard for me.
Every year I was going to quit. This went on for about eight years until my husband said: “I’m sick of listening to you complain. Either commit or quit.”
That’s when I realised there were things that I uniquely did that made me successful in my job and that I loved doing.
Working with clients (especially the ones that were tough nuts to crack), leading my team and winning people over through influence and persuasion.
As I leaned into the things I did best and gave myself permission to do things differently than my colleagues did, I began to find more joy.
Ultimately, I loved what I did enough to stay for 24 years.
In the end, it’s up to each of us to find fulfilment in our careers.
After all, no one else can know what you find fulfilling, and you will always have the greatest incentive to make sure you feel fulfilled.
So take a moment to think about where you stand on these three success factors and which one would most help you have a more fulfilling career.
Of course, there are other factors too, like embracing fear as your friend — but that’s for another time.
*May Busch’s mission is to help leaders and their organisations achieve their full potential. She can be contacted at [email protected].
This article first appeared on May’s blogsite.
