Cast Away is an Adventure/Drama from 2000 which has beautifully captured the journey of Chuck Noland a FedEx executive marooned in an uninhabited island. It is a wonderful movie which has a lot of career lessons embedded in it. The movie is close to 2 decades, I am sure you’d have already seen the movie multiple times. If you have not, you probably should, before you read.
For those of us who have been in the professional journey for over 20 years, we’d agree that it doesn’t have to be a devastating job loss for a career crisis to unfold, even a prolonged stagnation or a mere role misfit result in a Career Crisis. A good part of one’s professional life is invested in managing careers. Cast Away has some valuable lessons for us on the mindset that we should nurture to manage our careers better. This is even more relevant in the aftermath of COVID-19. Here are 3 lessons, that I thought is valuable.
Find Your Wilson
Chuck Noland finds a companion in the lifeless Wilson, a volleyball during the four lonely years in the island. Throughout his stay in the island, he keeps having regular conversations and arguments with Wilson. This helps him keep himself emotionally stable. The first casualty, when faced with a career crisis, is a huge blow on the emotional front. It is very important to keep the emotions in check. Drawing from the movie, It is important to identify such channels for the emotional well being.
Good news is that, since we are not stranded on an island and there aren’t dearth for mentors, peers, or even good friends, you can have a set of confidants (full of life :-D) with whom we can have honest conversations, who can act as sounding boards for us helping us navigate though situations much effective than talking to a personified volleyball. Also, you can’t expect them to incarnate as your support during a crisis, it is quite important to identify and constantly nurture such relationships, and not just during the testing times.
Can you list up to 5 names that you can have meaningful discussions, about your career, with whom you can confide not just your success but your failures as well, one who wouldn’t keep singing paeans, but be critical of you, most importantly, one who can be your ‘Wilson’
Know your Resources
One of the important lesson Cast Away teaches us is the importance of resources. In the movie, Chuck diligently recognises various resources that he would need to survive. He uses each of these resources to ensure his basic needs are met. Be it tooling a rock to open coconuts, to recover the shoes off his dead co-pilot, crafting a fishing spear, or kindling fire. The two critical lessons here would be to recognise the resources available and being resourceful, i.e knowing how to leverage what is available and put it to optimal use.
Careers are no different. We have to be constantly aware of the resources we have at our disposal. Resources in this context could be anything from the capabilities we possess to our professional networks and the opportunities around us. One way to enlist our capabilities is to ask the question, What are all the professional services that I can provide that is of value to individuals and organisations? It can be as simple as I can prepare excellent presentations, or something that you can teach others, or some subject matter that you are good at, or specialise in. In our careers, we gain a lot of capabilities as we progress, but leverage only those that are pertinent and relevant to the current role. Not required in the current role does not imply these skills aren’t of any use. It is therefore important to keep a tab on your capabilities irrespective of whether it is required in the current role.
Once you recognise your resources, it is important to start leveraging such resources to your advantage. Again the best way to reach out to your networks and ask the question, How can I help you/your organisation with my skills? At first, you can even start pro-bono and offer your help. This will go a long way in structuring your careers and help you get answers to your career barriers
Most people in my experience get stuck at identifying resources at their disposal, but once they start recognising their resources, they smartly start using them to their advantage. The first step is the difficult one to get over with.
List at least 10 professional services that you can offer to individuals or organisations? Identify people, startups, or professionals in your network to whom you can offer these services? At this point try doing it as an academic exercise. You don’t have to act on it.
Keep Breathing
This is one of the highly motivating lines that revs me up every time I feel low. In the movie, Chuck spends 4 years on the island, doing everything that is required to survive. He never loses hope and keeps waiting for the right opportunity. At the end of 4 years, the opportunity comes as a large section of a portable toilet. Again Chuck recognises the resource in this and builds a sail to escape from the island.
The powerful message here is to NOT GIVE UP. The message here is to stay relevant and continue to do what you are good at. For you never know when an opportunity would come knocking at your door. It should not be perceived as advice to keep doing the same thing and wishing for different results. Breathing here means, to keep yourself fit with your skills polished, staying up-to-date in the area of your expertise to be ready for any opportunity that comes your way.
This quote also serves a powerful message of hope to those marooned on the island of dysfunctional careers. There is definitely hope for everyone. There is a beautiful quote in Sanskrit – अयोग्यः पुरुषो नास्ति, योजकस्तत्र दुर्लभः।, meaning there’s not a single human being who is worthless, what is rare is to find people who can recognise an individual’s true worth. It is rare, not impossible.
Cast Away has been a very inspiring movie at various times in my career. I have tried to capture the essence of it in the above post. Do share your thoughts and experience around how one deals with career challenges. After all, we are all in it together.