To Quit or Not to Quit?
5-3-1 framework to make sure you don’t quit or stay for the wrong reasons.
Among the questions that fascinate me when I think about people, careers, and relationships is why, how, and when we decide to quit or stay. Here, I mean the situations where the decision belongs to us and is not forced upon us. More often than not, I see examples when such decisions are mostly emotionally driven. Some may quit too soon or stay for too long for the wrong reasons. Some may feel desperate or, on the contrary, enchanted, to rush to the readily available alternative without fully appreciating its worth. How can we improve the quality and timing of the quitting decisions to minimize future regrets?
Recently, I came across a very compelling and simple advice to approach the question of quitting. And I decided to expand it into 5-3-1 framework: 5 questions, 3 actions and 1 scorecard - that help put this advice into practice. Here we go.
Go for the Next Thing for What It IS
I came across this great advice on one of my recent forest walks while listening to this Invest Like the Best podcast with Paul Enright as the guest. At the end of the podcast, he shared the kindest thing someone did for him professionally.
So I've decided that the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for me in my career where they had zero upside for doing this was when I was back at Pricewaterhouse Coopers (…) And the partner on the Coopers and Lybrand side was a guy by the name of Rich Klein. And after a couple of years when I went into his office and I said, "I'm thinking about making a change. This isn't for me. There's just something missing." And we walked through it and he said, "Well, okay. Well, what are you going to do?" And I told him I was quitting to go work at a law firm, doing the taxation of sale-leaseback transactions for capital equipment. And he very astutely was like, "You're doing that for the money. Those are the highest-paid junior lawyers at any firm because it's the worst work. Go sit at your desk for six months, read, explore, do whatever you need to do, but do not leave this for what it isn't. Go to the next thing for what it is, or you will spend the rest of your career jumping around from thing to thing." I repeat that advice as often as I can to people that are struggling with the same question. And I think about it in terms of relationships, I think about it, "It's okay to be single. Don't jump into a new relationship because your old relationship stinks. Don't take a new job that is mediocre because your old job stinks. Whatever you're doing, go and do it for what it is not because of what the old thing wasn't." I love that advice and I repeat it over and over again.
If you are short of time, you can just stop here and remember this advice: go for the next thing for what it IS, not because of what the old thing WASN’T.
If you want to have a more detailed guidance on how you can apply this advice to your burning dilemma to stay or to quit, read on.
So, I loved the advice and next thing I was thinking about was - OK, how can one put that into practice? I came up with a 5-3-1 framework to accompany the decision process: 5 questions, 3 Actions and 1 Scorecard.
5-3-1 framework for better quitting decisions
5-3-1 Framework for Better Quitting Decisions: 5 Questions / 3 Actions / 1 Scorecard. © Arina Divo, Better Career Transitions blog.
We start with the status quo and ask ourselves Question #1: Are you happy? Here I do not mean a happiness in a moment, but in general, sustainable way.
If the answer is YES, it’s a no-brainer - you stay.
If the answer is NO, we move on to the next question.
Question #2: Do you understand the reasons of your unhappiness?
If the answer is YES, then it will be a no-brainer to fill in the scorecard.
If the answer is NO, you have to stop, take a breath and REFLECT (Action #1) on the true reasons of your unhappiness. The Scorecard will help you to see the things on balance.
If you skip the REFLECT step, you will likely keep in a highly emotionally charged state and may make a decision for wrong reasons.
The Scorecard: It will have the same structure throughout the process
It has a section on the negatives, where we distinguish between Red Flags (things you cannot stand) and Irritations (non-ideal yet tolerable).
It has a section on the positives. Again, we distinguish between Must-Have’s, the things you cannot give up, and Nice-to-Have’s.
First, we fill it in for the status quo. When you are emotional, you tend to focus only on the negatives. The scorecard forces you to think in a balanced way.
The Scorecard for the Status Quo. © Arina Divo, Better Career Transitions blog.
Next, we fill the scorecard in for an ideal situation. It will help you to clearly see What You Want. It’s a derivative of the status quo. Red flags disappear. Their opposites show up as must-have’s. The opposites of irritations can show up as nice-to-have’s. Two things are important here: (1) this ideal scorecard is uniquely yours. The choice of attributes can be drastically different for someone else. (2) this scorecard is context-dependent. It’s worth revisiting it from time to time, as it may evolve with the time (e.g. flexibility of WFH may become a must-have when you have children)
Your Ideal Scorecard: What You Want. © Arina Divo, Better Career Transitions blog.
Question #3 to ask yourself after having filled in the scorecard for the status quo: are there any red flags in the current situation?
if the answer is NO, it means that on the negative side, we have only the irritations. The Action #2 you can take is NEGOTIATE. Although it can mean IMPROVE too if YOU make an effort. In a nutshell, in the presence of only irritations, it’s worth doing something within the limits of the current situation. Paradoxically, we often neglect negotiation of our current situation at work, because quitting seems like less effort.
if you miss NEGOTIATE step, you miss on an opportunity to improve the current situation at almost no cost for you. In the worst case scenario, you will get nothing. In the best case scenario, you will be happy in the new situation. For anything in between, you will end up less unhappy and can consider next steps from a better starting position.
if the answer is YES, the question from “To Quit or Not to Quit?” becomes “When to Quit?” and need to move on to the next question.
Question #4: Do you have a safety net? By “safety net” I mean anything that can allow quitting immediately without a readily available alternative. Financial safety net is an obvious one. We also can think more broadly in terms of the “professional” assets we have, the “career capital” - a set of rare and valuable skills that we have developed.
If the answer is YES, you have a choice to QUIT & EXPLORE.
If the answer is NO, your choice could be to STAY & EXPLORE.
You have noticed that EXPLORE (Action #3) is mandatory in both situations. It’s the key to making sure you go for the next thing for what it IS. The time you have to spend exploring depends on many things - how thick is your safety net (if you quit), how long you can tolerate red flags (if you stay), how external context evolves. In a nutshell, here we are in the presence of a classical “Explore & Exploit” dilemma. The important thing is to do the exploration. It will comprise two things:
Looking for the new opportunities
Assessing them. Here, you will need to use the Scorecard again, for every new opportunity.
The Scorecard to evaluate each new opportunity. © Arina Divo, Better Career Transitions blog.
I cannot highlight the importance of exploring strongly enough. Many people skip or shorten the EXPLORE step and jump for an opportunity that is far from ideal for a simple reason: we are not comfortable with ambiguity. The book “Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes” by William Bridges calls this transition period of exploring, indecision and ambiguity “the Neutral Zone”: “One of the difficulties of being in transition in the modern world is that we have lost our appreciation for this gap in the continuity of existence. For us, “emptiness” represents only the absence of something. So when what’s missing is something as important as relatedness and purpose and reality, we try to find ways of replacing these missing elements as quickly as possible. That state of affairs can’t be an important part of the transition process; we hope it can only be a temporary, if unfortunate, situation to be endured.”
Finally, when you consider that you have done enough exploration, you compare all the available opportunities among themselves and with your ideal scorecard, select the best one and ask yourself Question #5: On balance, is the best available alternative better than the old situation?
If the answer is YES, you go for the best alternative.
If the answer is NO, you return to the drawing board and explore more.
Now, a few final thoughts:
Whatever the decision you will end up making, you will have made it based on certain assumptions, not on a complete certainty. It will pay off to revisit your notes and scorecards 3-6 months later and see in retrospect what turned out to be true.
This approach cannot guarantee 100% good outcome, yet it can remove emotional veil from your decisions, give you a good process to approach these difficult dilemmas and increase the likelihood that you go for the new thing for what it IS.
I’ve started using this approach in my pro-bono consulting sessions, and I am keen to receive your feedback too.
Image: Unsplash.com