What Was Your Career Path?

I thought that the easiest way to decline would be to say that my father advised against the move.  He was then the Commissioner of Education for the Church, and I felt sure that he would worry about the appearance of nepotism in my working at BYU.  When I told him of the invitation, though, he paused for a moment before saying, “I have a feeling that you should take this seriously.”  I followed his counsel, and a visit to Provo made it clear that I was to change careers.  Reluctant to give up my Church calling, I commuted from North Salt Lake for four years.  The experience was life-changing.

 

Looking back, I can see that only a Divine planner could have laid out the path I took.  I had dreamed of the Harvard Business School, but my student’s knowledge of the BYU MBA program proved essential to my later work there as an administrator; for me, that was entirely unforeseen.  Likewise, pursuing my consulting dream turned out to be better preparation for directing the MBA program than would have a degree in higher education administration, which is the path I might have taken had I been consciously preparing for what ultimately happened.

 

The shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but in my experience the best career path is often far from straight.  The story of Elder Robert D. Hales in the “Starting Your Career” chapter you’ll find at majordecisionsforcollege.com illustrates one reason why that’s true–you need to get what Elder Hales’ mentor, General Georges Doriot of the Harvard Business School called a broad “sense of operation.”  In other words, contributing effectively to any organization, including a university, requires not only deep knowledge of a particular function but also broad perspective.  Such perspective is difficult to gain through classroom study alone, or even through on-the-job-experience in just one function.  Moving up in an organization–or a career–often requires moving around first.

 

The even more important insight that I take from my own career experience is captured in a Yiddish proverb:  “Man plans, God laughs.”  I’ve learned that the best plan is to study and pray hard about the decisions immediately ahead but not assume too much about where the path leads in the long term.  There are fundamental objectives, such as getting more education and serving people, that have proven to be of lasting value.  However, with few exceptions, I’ve never had a job description or title that had occurred to me before I got it.  Providentially, the unplanned zigzags have seemed to create a coherent pattern.  Perhaps I can even claim to have a “sense of operation.”