As the readership of this magazine includes those who provide career development advice, either on a regular or occasional basis, I thought this book would be worthy of attention. Reading it has increased my knowledge and has given me a different perspective on how careers typically unfold. Although not the easiest read for a “layman”, I have taken from it some useful insights to use in my own work in counselling those in need of careers advice. And with around 2.5 million people unemployed in the UK, a book that may help some of those to get back into economic activity is to be welcomed.
The book's authors, Robert Pryor and Jim Bright, have a long and distinguished involvement in the field of career development. Between them they can count upon professorships and fellowship posts at various institutions and they bring a depth of academic research to the table. This makes the book a little challenging at times, rather than a “lite‐read” before bedtime, but it does give confidence that they really do know what they are talking about.
Pryor and Bright apply Chaos Theory to the field of career development. The book is largely about explaining their own theory – the Chaos Theory of Careers – and showing how it advances our thinking.
In the early part of the book the authors show how the world is increasing complex, changeable and unpredictable, and how this impacts on careers. They summarise existing theories of career development and point out their limitations. Thus, they show how their Chaos Theory of Careers is a more appropriate model for today.
Much of the careers advice provided in the last century was based upon the desirability of finding the “right job” for the person. It was about exploring an individual's skills, attributes and finding a position that would make best used of these. The so‐called “best fit”.
Another later school of thought placed a person's career into the bigger picture of a person's life, where meaning and purpose were assigned a much greater role. Careers were to be constructed on the basis of what matters to the individual. In counselling sessions, the “life story” is discerned from the stories about themselves that they find significant, and the next job can be viewed as the next chapter in the story.
So far, so good – or so bad, as far as the book's authors are concerned. Actually, their concern has not been with these individual schools of thought, per se. This book sets out their view that that a better model of careers can be envisaged – one that draws on both of these earlier schools and incorporates more recent knowledge of Chaos.
Pryor and Bright introduce the topic of Chaos theory. Chaos theory relates to the behaviour of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to the initial conditions. Small differences in initial conditions lead to widely diverging outcomes for the system. One small change can have disproportionate impacts on the system. Whilst it does not profess to teach all there is to know about the theory, the book provides a good grounding and the authors go on to show how it can be applied in the field of career development. They also refer extensively to systems thinking, and show how this too can be applied to careers.
Whilst my role is to critique the book rather than the theory, the authors do make a compelling case for their theory. A little academic in style, but a case to which a reader could relate from their own observations and practical experience (and perhaps even from their own career).
So, the pay‐off? Why is this theory important for those who advise others on careers, or indeed for those who want to consider their own career?
The books' main messages is that in addition to the work on matching a person to a role, the adviser should also ensure that the individual is equipped to deal with a world of complexity, change, chance and interconnection. This approach requires the individual to have less certainty rather than more certainty about the future, and in doing so open up opportunities for their career that they would not otherwise have considered.
Having spent time with the background and the theory, Pryor and Bright move forward with practical tools and techniques for the adviser. Some of these have be adopted or adapted from other sources, and some have been created by the authors. In a nice twist, they describe how one technique was developed by the necessity of not having enough materials to run an exercise as originally planned. From this random, unforeseen event, a powerful technique was born. In the same section, they outline their “Luck Readiness Index”. This measures an individual's current attitude to luck, based on eight dimensions, and can assist in teaching the attributes that make a person more receptive to chance occurences.
Subsequent chapters are used to give further consideration to how the Chaos Theory of Careers may apply to a person's meaning, purpose and spirituality, and the implication of the theory to organisations development. Aspects covered include the application to Goal Setting (don't expect goal setting to work well), Strategic Planning and Succession Planning (don't expect them to work well) and control‐style Leadership (yes, you have guessed!). They don't advocate the termination of such activities but they do point up reasons why they do not work so well in reality as they do on paper.
The book finishes with an invitation for others to continue to research this field and to advance our knowledge even further.
In summary. Not a lite‐read but one that may make you think – about careers advice you provide, about your own career and indeed about how we operate in our complex world.
