Fluidity: How to continually reinvent yourself (in a world of change)
The world’s instability requires us to respond with fluidity: an ability to flow easily and continually reinvent ourselves in a river of change. [Work in Progress: Part 03]
Series: Work in Progress | Part: 3 of 10 | Reading Time: 10 mins
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This is the third part of the series Work in Progress. Last week, I talked about being committed, not conditional in your work. Subscribe to get the next part in the series.
We will all be faced with reinvention.
If you hadn’t noticed, there are no longer any professions stable enough to last you an entire career, without multiple reinventions along the way.
The reinventions may come from the outside via technological change or socio-economic impact. Or they may come to you directly via a promotion, firing, children, aging parents, change in personal health, midlife crisis, or a late-stage encore career.
And the pace of change is only increasing. What will our work look like in an AI-driven future? The author and historian, Yuval Noah Harari says “It’s the first time in human history that nobody has any idea what the world will look like in 20 years.”
We may never again have a feeling of security or settledness that others felt in the past.
Thus, the world’s instability requires us to respond with fluidity. An ability to flow easily and continually reinvent ourselves in a river of change.
Reinventing myself
Over 12 years at Privia Health, I went through 3 different major transitions and moved frequently across about a dozen teams. These changes were sometimes voluntary, but sometimes forced.
For me, the hardest transition was around 2017, when our founder Jeff Butler left as CEO. We had just gone through an epic run of growth over the previous 4 years, taking our medical group from zero to a 9-figure business.
Jeff had been the most significant mentor and advocate I had in my career. In some sense, I was his apprentice.
When he left, it left a void.
New leaders came in to fill new roles, which left me in a weird place.
I was still a young, up-and-comer now in a big, mature business. I may have been respected for what I had done for the company before, when it was small, but now, I seemed out of place.
The other leaders around me were about 10-20 years older. And while I was still figuring things out, they had served in similar senior roles before.
I was worried about what that meant for me. Would I be pushed out? Would I be demoted? Was I still relevant?
We talk so much about growing companies and the people at the top, but we forget about early employees who killed themselves to build up the business. Too often they get discarded along the way because they don’t scale perfectly in line with the company’s growth.
“Thanks for building this thing and all, but we don’t need you anymore!”
Around this time, I started to get pointed feedback, especially about my inability to collaborate with other leaders. I was no longer considered one of the top performers and missed a few promotions. I went through about 5 different bosses in less than 2 years.
I was committed to the company, but also very tempted to leave.
This dark period was the start of a multi-year process of reinvention, completely changing my mindset and arming myself for the new world I was propelled into.
While no one will go through the same journey, there are lessons from my experience that may help others approach the inevitable reinventions in their own lives.
Step 1: Give Up Control
There’s a view of human nature that compares us to machines. As if when we go through a reinvention, we simply replace our parts or upgrade our software.
We focus on acquiring new skills, new titles, or completing a new training. And voila! The change is complete, from one version to another.
But, of course, we aren’t machines. And change is never an abrupt, mechanical shift from one thing to another. It’s a complex and nuanced process that involves a deeper, emotional shift as well.
In my experience, the main problem with reinvention is how hard we attach to our old identity. It’s the stories of who we are that we tell others and ourselves. We grasp onto the old identity, unwilling to let go.
For example, as we move up in an organization, we may…
Learn ways to delegate, but resist giving up control because our self worth is still tied to our personal performance.
Learn to create a process, but resist creating something that makes ourselves replaceable.
Learn to create a budget, but resist playing the politics necessary to get the budget approved.
Learn to gain more power by earning promotions, but resist passing the power onto our team so they can be successful.
Thus, in order to reinvent ourselves, the bigger opportunity is in embracing fluidity. In allowing our past and future identities and mindsets to naturally evolve over time.
And the first step in becoming fluid is giving up control.
▸ Reinvention starts with a process of becoming irrelevant.
We build ourselves up to meet the demands of the day. We train ourselves, hit our goals, and perform at the highest level. We work hard to become an ideal version of ourselves. Then, all of a sudden, we realize that version is irrelevant in the new world.
▸ Irrelevance is existential.
Sometimes we get a smack across the face, like “you’re fired” or for me it was: “people don’t like working with you!” But many times, becoming irrelevant feels like fighting against the current. Over time, we become less influential, our work seems harder, and something feels off. For me, these realizations were existential. The stakes were high because my identity - who I was and what I had built myself to be - was at risk.
▸ The old current pulls us back.
It’s not enough that the old us is irrelevant, it’s working against us. It wants us to stay. I thought I mastered personal performance by controlling everything around me. Only to realize, now responsible for more, that the same control was holding me back now.
▸ We’re standing under a waterfall, trying to understand water.
Unfortunately, these shifts don’t come in peaceful moments, when we have space to figure it out. We don’t have the luxury to stand apart and analyze the situation. We are in the middle of the mess. The daily demands of our work haven't changed, in fact they’re increasing. And somehow we must get out, while drowning.
▸ Many lose hope or search for blame.
The work becomes insurmountable. We can’t do it anymore. So we look for answers. We think, either “I’m not good enough,” or “someone did this to me.” We look for blame, either within ourselves or with others. We dismiss the reality that this challenge is to be expected, and the starting point of change.
▸ Let go to get unstuck.
To move forward, we must accept that our old version is no longer relevant. We need to let go of: work habits that worked before, how things worked at another company, and our old job titles or responsibilities. The old ways may have been appropriate for the time before, but now we must evolve.
Step 2: Flow with change
Whitewater rafting with some friends taught me an important lesson about reinvention.
We were rafting Upper Gauley, in West Virginia, one of the most dangerous commercial graded rapids in North America. People die there every year.
Toward the end was a waterfall and area nicknamed “The Carnival of Carnage.” Observers would stop there to watch rafters go over the waterfall and succumb to the carnage of the rapids at the bottom.
As we approached the waterfall, our guide told us to “paddle hard into the waterfall.” This sounded wrong… the current was pushing us toward the waterfall. Shouldn’t we resist the flow and slow down?
The point, while counterintuitive, was to control our raft through the chaos of the rapids. We needed to control the raft, not control the water.
Surviving change is the same. We must paddle into the chaos.
▸ Embrace the drift.
We may have to drift for a while, pulled in a direction that might not feel natural or comfortable. We’ll desperately want the old control back. But we must let ourselves face where the new reality takes us. I’ve seen many others, while in the midst of change, not finish it because they can’t help but go back to their old ways and habits.
▸ Keep a fluid identity.
The way to reinvent is by not attaching so hard to our identity. Our culture drives us to amplify our identity. Our identity makes us feel safe because it’s something firm to hold onto. But rather than trying to throw an anchor down, it’s better to see our identity as flowing from one to the next. For example, I tried to focus on “how I can best help the company?” rather than “I am the head of this team.” This small shift in mindset allowed me to move where needed, rather than sticking to an old past.
▸ Embrace the lack of definition.
People would joke: “what’s your job description this year?” And while it can feel disarming, I eventually took pride in being hard to pin down, being a bit of a mystery. I made the ambiguity my badge, rather than resisting it. My identity was more about being a nomad - constantly under change, rather than ever having arrived in one place.
▸ Hold on.
When going over the waterfall, it’s simply: “hold onto the raft!” Most of my success comes down to surviving through persistence and some naivete. It’s what Daniel Vassallo calls the “cockroach strategy,” staying alive amidst the change around us. I don’t have a good recipe for knowing when to quit during tumultuous times, but hanging on worked.
▸ Understand change itself.
I learned after Privia about the wealth of resources around “transitions,” which helped me better understand the emotional aspects of change. We can realize that change is natural and ubiquitous, not some evil experiment that we are subject to alone. Great resources include Working Identity (by Herminia Ibarra), Transitions (by William Bridges), Steve Schlafman (founder of Downshift) and Khe Hy (founder of RadReads).
Step 3: Flow together
While we undergo change, we do it amongst others.
Sometimes reinventing is safer with numbers, but sometimes the numbers make it harder.
While I was evolving over time, I noticed that others saw me as the person they used to know, not the person I had now become. Their view lagged behind. For some, their vision of me was stuck in a distant past that they were unable to let go.
Meanwhile, others were changing around me as well.
I realized that we are all reinventing as we go. And it’s important that we embrace, not resist others.
▸ Graduate to a new set of peers.
We’re not the first ones to go through this change. But we must look outside of our current peers for answers. Our current peers will not solve the riddle, they reinforce it. I had to seek out senior leaders who had gone through similar shifts themselves. And when there was no one I could find, I turned to books.
▸ Observe the wave that your new peers ride.
It’s useful to ask: what’s a new reality that I’m resisting or don’t want to be true? If all your new peers seem to operate by a set of new rules, it’s useful to understand why. For example, as I became a new executive, I thought I could avoid politics. It’s what inferior people did and I was above all that. In my arrogance, I believed I was different. Eventually, I came to understand why politics exist (everywhere), and rather than resisting it, should have sought to learn it quicker.
▸ Want the change.
I’ve tried to coach others through change. In my experience, the biggest reason someone ends up reinventing themselves is that they want the change. I worked with one individual, who had to face brutal feedback, over several years. Their old ways were holding them back and they had a hard time seeing it. But the reason they ended up surviving change (and thriving after) was that they wanted what was on the other side of change.
▸ Train for reinventions now.
Reinvention seems harder as we age. The older we get the less identity risk we are willing to take. Our identities get hardened inside our mind and reinforced by those around us. There’s a point where many people get stuck with who they are and are unwilling to reinvent themselves. Assume it will always get harder from here.
▸ The tide changes, whether we follow is our choice.
Unfortunately, we will likely only face more change in the future. My process of reinvention took about 3-4 years before I reached the other side. But future reinvention may require more frequent and rapid adaptation.
We may resist reinvention, but change is inevitable. It’s up to us to decide: do we stay stagnant and still? Or do we stay fluid and flow with the change?
Next up, we talk about career leverage, and how to create more impact from your work.
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Note: views are my own and do not represent the views of any companies or people referenced within.
Really enjoying this series. Your point about avoiding politics really struck a chord with me. I'd be interested to hear more about your journey from attempting to steer clear of politics to realizing their inevitability and learning to navigate them effectively. Thanks!