Everything’s fine until it isn’t: How to audit your mid-career risks and opportunities.
Most careers break silently. This 5-part scan will help you catch and address problems early.
A few weeks ago, I told the story of our basement flooding and the high costs of waiting for a crisis to expose our lack of preparation.
The post resonated with many because it turns out that many professionals are quietly postponing a series of no-brainer habits meant to enhance career optionality until an unexpected event, such as a layoff, their boss leaving, etc., puts them in a pickle. I’m talking about habits such as:
– Building new skills
– Updating their narrative
– Reconnecting with their network
– Exploring what else they could do
This is not because they’re lazy, but because everything at the moment feels “fine enough.”
But “fine enough” is a dangerous place to be—especially right now, when we’re living in a period of maximum volatility:
Just look at the last 30 days:
A single executive order just upended decades of trade policy overnight and put global markets on the edge of collapse. Organizations are making contingency plans and considering scenarios they never had to contend with before.
Entire government departments are gutted without warning, leaving thousands jobless and whole adjacent industries and vital research programs scrambling.
AI continues accelerating. Entire workflows and job categories are being reshaped or automated under people’s feet by tools and AI agents that most professionals still don’t fully understand.
And in the face of all that uncertainty, the most natural response is to cling to the familiar: Put your head down. Work hard. Wait and see if the hype cools off. Hope you don’t end up on the next round of cuts.
But in times like these, focusing only on what’s in front of you isn’t enough. Thes days hard work alone doesn’t guarantee job security.
Quick pause…
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Manage your career before someone else does it for you.
A lot of people just cruise through their careers after getting a job. They end up giving up control to their employers without even realizing it. They focus on performing great in their role, hoping for recognition and promotions, but don’t think about what might happen if their job changes or disappears. Over time, as roles evolve, they can wake up feeling disconnected and disengaged, like they’re just waiting to see what the company decides to do with them.
The smartest thing you can do is build the muscles to reinvent your career.
One of my clients realized this firsthand, and it paid off. His role in IT had become increasingly isolated—low visibility, unclear scope, no defined growth path. On paper, everything looked fine. He came to me because he realized that underneath, the roots were growing.
We started by auditing five key areas of his career. I call this the Hidden Cost Career Scan, which aims to spot hidden vulnerabilities and surface new opportunities. Here’s how it works:
For each of the five areas below, consider:
How am I actively building this?
What opportunities or assets could I leverage to strengthen it?
What’s hindering me from making progress?
1. Skills
My client realized his biggest strength wasn’t being used: managing complex IT integrations. A few years earlier, he’d led the successful merger of two major SaaS platforms—a rare and valuable skill set that had gone dormant in his current role but is highly relevant as companies continue to combine complex capabilities. Once we named it, everything else got clearer.
Ask yourself:
How am I building relevant, future-facing expertise and capabilities?
What strengths or curiosities could I develop further?
What skills am I relying on today that may be losing market value?
2. Visibility
Rather than wait for roles to be posted, my client started reaching out to internal teams—offering support, asking questions and getting involved. These conversations led by curiosity, quickly raised his profile and built trust. Within weeks, people began approaching him about openings that didn’t even exist yet.
Ask yourself:
Where am I showing up in ways that keep me top-of-mind?
What channels or relationships could help me stay more visible?
Where am I fading into the background—inside or outside my company?
3. Optionality
My client didn’t just focus internally. He also began exploratory conversations with professionals in the private equity space, where his IT integration expertise would be highly relevant. These conversations are becoming an insurance policy in case his existing job takes a downturn.
Ask yourself:
What choices do I currently have if my job disappeared tomorrow?
What seeds can I plant now to create new paths down the line?
Where have I become overly dependent on a single outcome or employer?
4. Narrative
Together, we repositioned his story—not as “just another IT lead” but as a strategic systems integrator who thrives during moments of complexity and rapid transformation. That narrative helped others (and himself) see him differently, making his value easier to place.
Ask yourself:
How clearly can I explain my unique value beyond my title?
What elements of my story feel fresh, relevant, and energizing?
Where am I underselling myself—or clinging to outdated labels?
5. Support
By reaching out to peers and adjacent teams before he “needed” to, he built real goodwill. That network became the bridge to new internal opportunities—no applications, no interview prep marathons, just good conversations with people who already trusted him.
Ask yourself:
Who’s in my corner right now—people I could call in a crunch?
Who have I lost touch with that I’d like to reconnect with?
Where have I been going it alone when I didn’t have to?
Thanks to these efforts, my client landed an offer to transfer into a high-value role in a business unit focused on large-scale platform reinventions and integrations—his sweet spot. And he’s still in motion: continuing external conversations to expand his optionality and stay ready in case his new role takes an unexpected turn.
That’s the power of conducting a periodic career maintenance scan and training your reinvention muscles every day.
Just like you shouldn’t wait for your basement to flood, don’t wait for your job to feel at risk.
Even picking one category and spending ten minutes reflecting can surface important insights—and help you make strategic moves while things still feel “fine.”
Adaptability isn’t just for crises. It’s constant maintenance.
And just like plumbing, your career only flows if you keep clearing out the clogs.