Two years ago, I started speaking to a potential career coaching client.

She was contemplating a career change with a restlessness that she couldn't quite name. She asked a few questions, said she'd think about it, and then ghosted me.

I circled back a couple of times.

Crickets.

That's the way it usually goes when someone is curious about a change but not yet under any real pressure to make one.

Then, two weeks ago, she resurfaced.

Layoffs are moving through her department in rounds, and she doesn't know which round (if any) has her name on it.

I couldn't stop thinking about her situation.

When she came back, the thing she wanted hadn't changed at all. It was the same restlessness from two years ago, almost word for word. She hadn't discovered a new desire over the past two years. She'd been sitting on the old one the whole time.

The only thing that had changed was the price of ignoring it.

Two years ago, staying put was cheap.

The job was steady and the restlessness could live in the background like a tab she never had to close. She could afford to keep wondering ‘what if’ because wondering costs nothing as long as she felt professional stability.

As long as the job felt secure, she could leave that restlessness unexamined, and she did, for two years.

Then the layoffs were announced. The job stopped being safe and the cost of indecision became too high.

The question she'd been able to defer for two years became one she had to reexamine.

In 1988, an oil rig called Piper Alpha exploded in the North Sea.

A superintendent named Andy Mochan escaped to the platform's edge and faced a choice: stay on the burning rig, or jump fifteen stories into freezing, oil-slicked water where survival was unlikely.

He jumped.

Later, when he was asked why he took the leap, he said it was a matter of "jump or fry."

He chose to jump because staying on the platform was no longer an option.

A change consultant named Daryl Conner saw that interview and built a concept around it that's been in the change-management vocabulary ever since.

It's called the burning platform.

People don't move when change becomes appealing, especially when they're anchored by stability and comfort. They move when staying becomes more dangerous than leaving, or in Andy's case, when the platform literally catches fire.

Conner has spent years correcting how his idea gets used, and I think this distinction is really important for us as career professionals.

I’m not trying to suggest that fear is a good motivator for our clients, or that we need to light a fire under someone to get them moving. The fire didn't give Andy courage; it removed his other option. 

My client's desire to reinvent herself had been sitting there for two years. The restructuring simply made it too expensive to keep it on the shelf.

As a career professional, it's very likely that you'll experience this yourself.

A potential client books a coaching session when the urgency hits.

Maybe they're anxious, a little scattered, talking fast about a deadline or a reorg or a boss who they can no longer tolerate.

They're suddenly feeling the need for change.

Sometimes, the sudden feeling for change is warranted. But often it's the opposite of what's actually going on. The calm client who's been "doing the work" for a year can afford to keep doing the work because nothing is forcing the issue, so the contemplation can run forever.

The scared client whose platform just caught fire is frequently the one who's finally going to move, because for the first time the cost of staying put has climbed higher than the cost of changing.

Readiness was never really the bottleneck. Cost was.

A crisis doesn't manufacture readiness. It just stops subsidizing avoidance.

So when someone shows up reactive and scared, the more useful question isn't “What's wrong?” It's “What changed?”

The answer usually tells you whether you're looking at a brand-new problem or an old one.

My client and I aren't finished. I don't know yet what she'll do, but I'm not coaching her like someone in a sudden emergency. Her situation isn't a fire starting. It's one that finally got noticed.

Before I go, a quick question for you.

What's your biggest goal right now?

Heather

The Coach for Career Coaches