It all began when I was a young boy growing up in the suburbs of Milwaukee. My older brother and I would turn on the sprinklers at dusk, sipping on Kool-Aid as we waited for the sun to drop and the grass to fully saturate. Grabbing our flashlights, we’d slosh onto the soggy lawn to stalk the objects of our desire - Nightcrawlers. These are the big, fat, juicy earthworms that are the lifeblood of a Midwestern fisherman. Squirming and diving, the faceless creatures would be collected en masse, dropped by the dozen onto a dirt bed within cheap styrofoam containers.  We had an enterprise, and signs all over town pointed to our house, where “M & M Worms” (Mike and Mark…very creative, I know) was headquartered.

In the very early morning, the alarm would ring, the garage was opened and the fishermen would come.  We sold a lot of worms and had a very good client base.  But even at the age of eight, I had a sense that the worm business may not the right long-term strategy for me.  I had learned a lot about marketing, product management, packaging and operations, so I took those lessons, found a new and growing trade (recycling cans & bottles), and pushed my career forward.  Almost thirty years later - and with the benefit of hindsight - I can easily count over twenty such instances where I shapeshifted my career into something new.  

Business humorist Tom Stern writes about this is his Fast Company article, “The Skills Portability Factor“.  Stern speaks to the fact that employees are consciously taking jobs to add specific skills which allow them to be more marketable somewhere else.  They tend to drop in, learn something on your watch, and then jump.  Stern chalks this up (with a smirk) to today’s job reality:

“We all want to make sure we are ready for every eventuality the shrinking job market might throw at us. It’s all about survival. Corporations once owned us and kept us dancing to their tune. Now a new crop of skill-set hustlers, who strut into the metaphorical pool hall of their workforce and clean up on a sucker bet, are challenging them. Today’s job market is doing double time as the University of Turnover. And you know us Americans. Between our denial and our tenacity, eventually we will begin to feel that we really can fill any position that might come our way.”

I think that when push comes to shove, most employees are opportunistic, searching for those elusive characteristics that can fill the happiness-gap in their careers and lives.  And once they land that next job, the cycle repeats until it’s time to move onto greener pastures.  A lot of the people I know in this situation either bore easily, want the challenge of something new, or can only tolerate the inevitable frustrations they encounter for a fixed period of time.  

Regardless of the reason, employers will be challenged by the shapeshifters.  They will take any form you’d like, learn on the job, and then leave you scratching your head wondering what ever happened to them.  As a former worm salesman, I know it can be done.  Let’s keep the conversation going. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 1:53 pm and is filed under Human Capital/Human Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.