If you discover at some point in your career that this is not what you actually want to do, rest assured that you’re not alone and you don’t have to stay in the course because being in a career that you aren’t passionate about will become stressful at some point and will reflect negatively on your performance and your health.

Regardless of how many years of experience you have, changing career paths is not impossible so don’t hesitate to take this step because:

• Many management skills are transferrable: Skills like planning, problem solving and decision-making. 
• Interpersonal and Soft Skills apply to all careers: Communication, emotional intelligence, Active Listening, Leadership and many more. 
• It might be difficult short term but it pays off long term: Even if you change companies while staying within the same career path, it will still be a learning curve while you adapt to the organizational culture. You might start with a lower post and salary but sometimes taking a step back to gain ten in the future is a wise thing to do. 
• You can always learn the same way you learned in your previous career. I personally know many who changed their careers after 10 years and now they are extremely successful. 

Believe in yourself and do not hesitate to take this step because it might be life changing. When you decide to take this step, make sure you:

• Chose the Right Path: Make sure you have a clear idea about the new career path you want to pursue and establish a measurable goal that you want to achieve in the future. 
• Establish a Plan: Just like you manage any project based on a preliminary plan, you should do the same. During your journey, you can inspect and adapt. 
• Chose the Right Organization: When changing careers, what’s more important than just finding a job, is to find an organization that you believe will help you achieve your career goals so you need to do proper due diligence. 
• Chose the Right Time: Timing of changing careers can make a difference for you. Don’t stay dwelling on your plan for a long time. 
• Pursue Professional Development: It’s a great asset if you pursue some certifications that are relevant to your new career plan and goals. Knowledge combined with experience is a recipe for long term success.

Below are a few tips that will help individuals build a solid career and stand out from the competition:

• Professional Development: Knowledge is power and when combined with experience, it is a recipe for long-term success. The knowledge you gain from practical experience is limited to that specific experience but that’s not enough, you need to go above and beyond the ordinary. To achieve this, put an annual professional plan for professional development to fill in any gaps knowledge that you might have, learn something new, get up to date with new technologies, frameworks or methodologies and you can do this in so many ways (Online Courses, Conferences, Webinars and so on). 
• Certifications: Pursue some certifications relevant to your line of business. Most organizations offer self-paced study plans and certifications. Industry specific certifications will help you stand out from the crowd. 
• Networking: Be it In-Person or Virtual Networking, your network is your net worth. However, networking alone doesn’t help, one should always aim to build genuine relationships with people and learn from them. This can help you grow in so many ways. 
• LinkedIn Profile: Refine and keep your profile up to date. Let’s be real, we are in the era of the Internet of Things (IoT) and digital transformation and online platforms are very powerful is used properly of which LinkedIn comes on top of the list. 
• Self-Reflection: Reflect on your current job and re-evaluate your goals. You need to ensure that what you do contributes to your long terms goals. Unlike finding a job, building a career doesn’t happen over night. It is an accumulation of years of hard work and experience.

Having a job is important because we all have to pay our bills but while you are busy working, make sure to also concentrate on building a career, because this is what will help you on the long run. It will make you stand out of the competition and will pave the road for you to be your own boss and run your own business in a career that you are passionate about in the future should you opt to do so.

I always treat Personal / Professional Development as a continuous product that is divided into phases where each phase has its own achievements “Increments“.

It’s always healthy to run your own personal “Sprint Review“ to inspect your achievement “Releasable Increment”, compare it to both your original plan and “Definition of Done” then adapt as necessary. It is also a good approach to self-reflect and evaluate what you can do better “Sprint Retrospective”.

If your progress is going on as planned, then you carry on with your next goal “Sprint”. If not, then you re-add what was not achieved to your plan “Product Backlog”, re-order your priorities in terms of professional development then plan your next sprint “Sprint Planning”.

The only difference is with the scrum team itself because in this case, its not a team but instead, you are the whole Self-Organizing & Cross-Functional team taking the role of Scrum Master, Product Owner & Development Team:

• You are the Product Owner who maximizes the value of their professional development by checking what best serves their career, where the market is trending and what employers look for.
• You are the Scrum Master who ensures that you are conducting your recaps as necessary and in timely manner.
• You are the Development Team who works hard on studying to achieve the goal as planned.

Scrum On Everyone !

I personally think this approach is not very practical given that we are now in an era of advanced technology.

Why Closed Book?

In real life, if you encounter an issue or forget something, you can google it and/or refer to your library for seeking information. How is this any different for an exam that is supposed to be based on your experience in a certain domain? Why does it need to be closed book? In fact, finding information in timely manner is a skill by itself.

If the exam is experience based, then I suspect no matter how many references the candidate has open in front of them, they won’t be able to complete or pass the exam within the given time frame if they do not deeply understand the material and have solid experience in that domain.

Why the Stress?

The stress of taking a day off, heading to a testing center, getting checked as if you are crossing boarders has a negative impact in so many ways.

Does the Closed Book / In-Person Strategy add credibility to the certification ? 

It might but in my humble opinion it is very minimal. The credibility of a certificate stems from:

• Rigorous application process, pre-requisites &audits.
• Professional Development requirements for renewal.
• Exam difficulty level and passing score.
• The overall organization offering those credentials.

That triggered the idea of this blog is the day I sat for the advanced level exam for the Professional Scrum Master (PSM II) certification. It was a 30 question (Multiple Choice / True or False) online exam that you have to complete in 90 minutes. While I did pass,and it is not proctored, I assure you that I barely completed the exam on time and didn’t have the chance nor saw value in opening any reference book because the questions were scenario based, lengthy and fully dependent on the candidate’s experience so if I didn’t have an in depth understanding of the Scrum framework combined with practical experience, I would have certainly failed.

People might say that 30 questions to be completed in 90 minutes sounds reasonable. Well, you can’t take the number of questions as a measure for time when you get a lengthy scenario based question with 5 choices in which you need to analyze each choice in details in order to conclude the best answer. The questions were much more difficult and tough than most of the exams I’ve ever written and it tested my knowledge and experience beyond any text book. On the bright side, I had the luxury to do the exam on a weekend out of my own place and comfort zone which, mentally and physically, made a big difference.

Many highly reputable organizations like scrum.org offer online exams and I believe PMI too is heading towards that direction in terms of giving candidates the option of sitting for  proctored exams online from the comfort of their own home (With certain rules and regulations).

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From my personal experience, increasing your Network base especially on professional platforms like LinkedIn, is very beneficial, so for those who are wondering what the purpose is or what’s the added value, below are a few lessons learned of how I personally found it useful:

• Mentoring / Assistance: In many cases, I connect with people and they send me a thank you message for connecting with them and indicate that they are new in a certain community or platform and wonder how they can start on so I help them out get started. Some people feel shy or not comfortable taking a first step so why don’t you take the first step.

• Enhancing the Community Engagement: Mentoring and assistance lead to enhanced member engagement within any community as soon as individuals get their head around it and understand how much of an amazing platform or community it is. Everyone of us should have a sense of responsibility towards the community they belong to and to one another.
• Connecting in Person: I connected with people in person via connecting through professional online platforms and became friends with some of them.
• Learning from Others: Don’t underestimate the power of learning from others experiences. It is amazing and I did learn a lot from so many individuals I virtually connected with. 

In summary, Networking has so many advantages of which one of them is Building Relationships. You just need to look at the positive side of things and look what’s beyond the number of connections you have. I am not saying I am interacting with all my connections, but I certainly did interact with a decent number of people. For example, interacting with 500 people out of the 10,000 in your network, is an outstanding accomplishment because while it maybe a small percentage in theory, it is certainly a significant number in reality.

Always remember, it is not about adding connections to increase your network count. It is about the whole package of being a member of a community, leading by example, contributing, helping, connecting, learning and the list goes on.

Thanks to everyone who gave me the honor to connect with them. There are lots of great people out there, so connect with people and start building relationships.

Network and let your Relationship Ship Sail towards Building Relations!

On one of the projects, JGC were our client / owner representative for one of the largest Gas to Liquid Projects in Qatar called: Pearl GTL Project. Frankly speaking, this was the most outstanding management experience I’ve ever had and I learned a lot from it. The project was worth more than $1 Billion US, very complex and running on tight schedule.

Over the years, I’ve dealt with many large international companies from different countries. They were all very professional but dealing with the Japanese took my experience to a totally different level:

1- Team Work: Although they were the client, they worked with us hand in hand as one cohesive team which resulted in significant positive added value to the project. We never felt they were our client.

2- Openness and Honesty: They built a level of comfort and confidence among everyone which resulted in a culture of openness, honesty and trust. Those are key success factors on any project.

3- Efficiency: They were always very efficient, to the point, hard working, very loyal to their company, committed to their work.

4- Attitude: They had an outstanding positive attitude and were very diplomatic to the extent that if they told someone “Go to Hell”, they might look forward for this trip.

5- Precision and Accuracy: Their drawings had minimal discrepancies which obviously minimized any re-work, change orders and variations.

6- Organizational Chart: They always respected the level of authority and reporting channels within their organization and ours. I’ve never seen them even for once, by passing anyone.

7- Punctuality: Always punctual, from higher management officials down to the inspectors. They used to be the first to report to work every morning because they believe that you have to lead by example.

8- Humble and Smart: They were very smart, highly educated and very humble – I’ve learned a lot from them because when you ask them about a certain thing, they do not leave you before they make sure you fully understood.

9- Meetings: Their meetings were always to the point, that’s why during most of our meetings with them, we used to end up with fruitful results in a very short time. They all come prepared (I’ve seen other companies who would come to the meetings with each attendee having his own agenda and the meeting could take forever) and they all spoke as one team, regardless whose idea was it.

10- Sense of Ownership: If anything went wrong on the job even if it wasn’t their fault, they would work with us immediately on finding a solution because they do have sense of ownership, not a blaming attitude.

11- No Arguments: They do not argue. This is a strength because they do concentrate on being productive rather than just being busy.

I have high respect for the Japanese culture, their management style and for them as individuals.

Always Remember: “Unity is Strength and when there is Teamwork and Collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved” – Mattie J.T. Stepanek