How can you move forward when you’re unsure of where you want to go? This is the challenge many people face when they try to change career direction. They know they don’t want to stay where they are, but they struggle to pinpoint what else would truly fulfil them. It’s a difficult problem—one that isn’t easily solved by traditional career planning.
Career Wayfinding is a more effective approach, one which I’ve tested and refined with my clients.
There is no singular, ideal job meant for us for life—though our minds often cling to this illusion. We are constantly evolving. The best we can do is align our work with who we are now—and, if we’re lucky, with who we are becoming.
Wayfinding is about taking small, intentional steps, building prototypes for the type of work which would be a good fit, testing them out, gathering feedback, and adjusting along the way. Rather than trying to map out the entire journey in advance, it’s about moving forward, exploring possibilities, and learning through experience.
This approach has been gaining traction, especially as traditional career planning methods—where you create a fixed plan and then execute it—struggle to keep up with today’s unpredictable and rapidly changing work landscape. In a world that is increasingly VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous), a more adaptive, exploratory way of navigating careers is essential, especially for people changing careers. Even leading institutions like Stanford’s Life Design Lab now teach career wayfinding, applying design thinking principles to help people create meaningful, fulfilling careers in an ever-evolving world.
Clarity for a Change of Career Direction
The first step in this process is to identify a Direction—one of the three pillars of my Career Wayfinding framework, which you can read more about here.
To determine this change of Career Direction, you need to explore what matters to you. What’s currently not working? What’s missing and how you want things to be?
While it’s possible to do this in your head, it’s easy to get lost in conflicting thoughts and self-doubt. What I’ve found most helpful in these situations are two things:
What I’ve found helps in this situation is two things:
- A structured process to clarify and refine your Direction systematically.
- Guidance from someone who can help you see the big picture and maintain clarity.
In this article, I’ll outline the first. If you’d like the second, get in touch.
Factors for Work Happiness
Many factors contribute to our sense of fulfilment and happiness at work. However, it can be difficult to untangle what truly matters to us.
To help with this, I developed the Work Happiness Indicator, a test which helps clients identify their core needs and priorities.
I’ve distilled these insights into six key factors for career wayfinding. These factors form the basis for creating a composite Direction—a personalized career compass that reflects what truly matters to you.
Navigating using your Direction
This Direction is a compass heading in which to begin moving and exploring.
As you take action and test out this change of career Direction, you’ll receive feedback that indicates whether your current trajectory is aligned with your deeper aspirations.
This ability to notice feedback and adjust accordingly is what I refer to as Navigation—another core pillar of the framework. We work to develop this skill. It involves cultivating an awareness of what feels right, not just intellectually, but at a deeper, intuitive level. It requires tuning into your inner knowing and using it as a guide to refine your path.
Mapping Your Core Career Priorities
When people feel lost in their careers, they usually have a sense of what’s not working. However, they often struggle to articulate a clear and complete picture of what they truly want. It’s like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces—the overall image remains unclear. If only they had a vision of what they were building and how everything fits together.
A good starting point is to ask yourself:
- What’s important to you about your work?
- Why do you work? What do you hope to gain from it?
Your answers might include better relationships at work, freedom and flexibility, contributing something meaningful, personal growth, or using your talents in a fulfilling way. What matters most varies from person to person—and even evolves over time.
As you answer these question you’ll begin to see that your response can be categorised into a number of different areas, which contribute to your overall satisfaction and fulfilment with your work.
Through my Career Wayfinding Framework, I help you see the relative importance of each aspect that contributes to your work happiness. Using the following categories, we systematically arrive at a comprehensive and clear picture of what’s important in your work and what it looks like, i.e. what your needs are.
The Six Core Areas of Work Fulfillment
Meaning – Your Why
This is the sense of purpose you derive from your work. Meaning can come from contributing to an organization’s success, supporting a team, or making a tangible impact on a mission you care about. The more aligned your work is with your values, the more deeply fulfilling it becomes.
Talents – Your Gifts
Talents are your natural abilities—what comes effortlessly to you. It’s who you are, rather than what you know or have even learnt.
People often get confused between talents, qualities, skills and knowledge. It’s useful to distinguish between and have a clear inventory of all of these. However, talents are the most important since they are innate, and so directly connected to intrinsic motivation and satisfaction.
To get clarity about what you have to offer, there is an element of digging under the surface to find the gold, i.e. the talents and skills that might be transferable to a new career.
Pleasure – The Day to Day
This reflects the enjoyment you get from the tasks that make up your work.
It is not the satisfaction you get from achieving things, i.e. the result, But an evaluation of how much you enjoy the process.
This factor is sometimes ignored, when people have been conditioned to believe work is a grind, and you’re not really supposed to actually enjoy it! But the bottom line is, it pays to do what you love!
People sometimes wonder how they can possibly do what they love and actually earn a living doing that. This takes some exploration. What can bring insight is that the pleasure is coming from the inner state you’re in, when engaging in an activity. What we actually seek is to have that inner experience, which can be perhaps found in many different ways.
Environment – The Context
The environment encompasses the physical and cultural context of your work: your workspace, location, commute, tools, company culture, and relationships. When this suits you it can enhance productivity and satisfaction, while the wrong one can drain energy and motivation.
Reward – What you Receive
Fairly obviously, this is how happy you are with the level of monetary compensation for your work, whether that’s as a business owner, freelancer, or employee.
However, it also includes the level and form of feedback you receive for your work. It might be that the money is not of utmost importance. Perhaps you are someone who needs your work to be appreciated and for that to be communicated to you in some way.
In this area, people sometimes struggle with a conflict between having meaning and making money, especially those of us who want to do work that contributes something positive to the world. These conflicts need to be resolved to sustainably make a positive impact.
Balance – Maintain Harmony
This is more to life than just work, or so the saying goes!
Although, I don’t really believe in the concept of work-life balance, since there is no actual physical line or separation. It’s important to have harmony between our different needs. When we are truly listening and being ourselves, we act in alignment with that and all areas can work together.
The relative balance of work and other aspects differ with each individual. This is your level of happiness with the space occupied by work and that by other areas of your life such as family, friends, leisure etc. It’s not only in terms of time but also the level of energy you have available.
Value Exchange – Completing the Picture
These six aspects create a well-rounded picture of what contributes to your work satisfaction. However, this picture remains incomplete because it only reflects one side of the equation—your own needs. Work, at its core, is an exchange of value. Fulfilment comes not only from what you receive but also from what you contribute. The missing piece is the needs you satisfy in the world. This can take different forms. If you run your own business, you directly meet the needs of clients or customers through the products or services you provide. If you work within an organization, your contributions serve the needs of your employer, who in turn leverages your work to create value for their customers.
However you satisfy a need in the world, it’s important to ask yourself:
What need(s) are you motivated to satisfy in the world?
In all cases, understanding this exchange is key to crafting a career Direction change that is both personally fulfilling and impactful.
Synthesizing Your Personal Mission Statement
By weaving together the key insights from each of the elements above, we can create a powerful synthesis—your own personal mission statement. Much like how organizations craft mission statements to define their purpose and guide their actions, this statement serves as your North Star, keeping you aligned with what truly matters. It acts as both a compass direction and a reminder of the kind of work that resonates with your core values, and what you bring to the table, helping you navigate towards a career that feels deeply authentic and fulfilling.
Chart your Course for a Career Direction Change
Losing your way in your career can feel disorienting, but it also presents an opportunity to redefine your path. By identifying what truly matters, exploring possibilities, and staying open to feedback, you can begin charting a course towards work that feels meaningful, aligned, and fulfilling.
Career Wayfinding isn’t about finding a single, fixed destination. It’s about developing the tools and skills to continuously navigate toward a career that grows with you. If you’re ready to take the next step, reach out for guidance. Your future career is waiting to be discovered, just over the horizon.
Photo by Oleg Hasanov on Unsplash
