Following up on my previous post ‘How Most Executives’ Should Plan For a Second Career after Age 45‘, I would like to share my experience and view on how a proactive career move at that stage is better than a defensive move – and thus, why it is so important to anticipate the ceiling of corporate career.
When placed in a defensive situation, i.e. having been terminated forcefully from an existing position, the executive often has some benefits in the form of termination premium which can sometimes be sizable. However, it is often not sufficient for the following reasons:
- the executive’s personal finances are not adapted to the new career path with a high running expenditure flow, and often he does not have sufficient reserves to experiment with a new career keeping calm about the time it takes to build something new
- if not anticipated, the time to change one’s mindset can be very long, in particular if it only happens if the executive spends too much time trying to find an equivalent corporate position and only considers a new career after a long time. This strains the cash situation
Therefore it is essential that executives take a proactive career change approach as soon as they identify that their corporate career seems to approach a potential ceiling. Proactive planning can even involve taking active action in parallel to the executive role, and even negotiate a mutually beneficial severance package with the corporate employer, leveraging on possible social benefits.
I can only recommend executives to consider proactively their second career early enough. Once awareness sets in, their dynamism will do the rest – still it takes time for awareness to set in and mindsets to change.
