{"id":5656,"date":"2016-05-05T19:34:13","date_gmt":"2016-05-06T02:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.careersingovernment.com\/tools\/?p=5656"},"modified":"2016-05-15T15:20:06","modified_gmt":"2016-05-15T22:20:06","slug":"career-spark-burning-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.careersingovernment.com\/tools\/gov-talk\/career-advice\/career-spark-burning-platform\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Career: How to Spark a Burning Platform"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"spark<\/a>Have you been in the same job, role, organization or career for a long time? The chances of that occurring in the future are diminishing by the year. You are likely to move jobs and careers more regularly and work under different forms of employment. The real-life Transformers are coming in the form of robotics and artificial intelligence<\/a> changing what people do for a living beyond recognition. Scary, exciting or \u2018it won\u2019t affect me\u2019?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an old story about being on a burning platform<\/a> as a metaphor for the imperative to change. The Chairman of Nokia used it when the mobile giant fell from grace a couple of years ago. Imagine being on an oil platform at sea. You wake up one morning to the sound of an explosion and everything is on fire. You scramble blindly through the flames, heat and smoke to the platform\u2019s edge. All you can see are the dark, cold and wild waves below.<\/p>\n

You have a choice on that burning platform \u2013 stay and be burned to death and overcome by smoke; or jump into the icy waters where you may survive and be rescued. No one would ordinarily jump from an oil platform into a dangerous sea. It\u2019s a radical change of behaviour to jump because the situation is extraordinary. As the Nokia Chairman put it to his employees at the time talking about the challenges facing the company:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe too, are standing on a \u2018burning platform\u2019, and we must decide how we are going to change our behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a career context, you can nip that difficult choice in the bud before the metaphorical explosion occurs. Could you jump before you don\u2019t have a choice? What would that be like? The differences can be stark:<\/p>\n