Planning the unexpected to be successful

Le concept de dream job et l’idée que notre parcours professionnel consiste à atteindre un but unique souffre de pas mal de failles. En matière d’orientation, le modèle du life design, c’est-à-dire façonner son parcours tout au long de sa vie, est beaucoup plus robuste. Mais ça demande surtout d’être adaptable. Et pour ça, il faut être capable de réagir face à l’imprévisible. D’après certains chercheurs, on peut même apprendre à « influencer le hasard. »

The concept of dream job and the idea that our career path is about achieving a single goal is not without flaws. In terms of guidance, the Life Design model, i.e. shaping one's path throughout one's life, is much more solid. But above all it requires adaptability. And for that, we need to be able to react to the unexpected. According to some researchers, you can even learn “to influence chance”. 

Learning to plan chance 

Two personalities to remember among experts in counselling psychology: John Krumboltz and Al Levin. These two Americans created the happenstance learning theory. A counselling model recognizing the crucial role of chance but also the possibility of influencing for it to work in our favour. 

John Krumboltz, a Stanford University teacher, has spent his career developing and enriching this theory. But he has also experienced it personally. He himself said that his career was “a succession of unpredictable events”. It was by chance that he became interested in psychology: not knowing what to study, John Krumboltz went to ask for help from the only teacher at his university who did not intimidate him. It was his tennis coach, who was also a psychology professor. And that was it.

This personal anecdote is a perfect illustration of how unexpected events shape our lives. “Whether on a personal or collective scale”, says Auguste Dumouilla, a researcher in counselling psychology at JobTeaser - who has also experienced the power of chance. 

Advice not to be followed

In their book Luck is no accident, Krumboltz and Levin teach us to welcome the unknown and make the most of chance. For John Krumboltz, there is also advice that should not be followed, even though they are often quite common. 

• Choosing a career 

For the father of the theory of planned chance, this is complete nonsense. Since it is impossible to plan one's entire life in advance, choosing a career is pointless. Between the unpredictable events in our personal lives and those on a societal scale (a pandemic, for instance...) such a choice can never be beneficial. 

• Following our dreams 

Just because Krumboltz and Levin's theory encourages us to embrace the unknown and always be ready to adapt, it doesn't mean that we should just go with the flow. According to John Krumboltz, giving up everything to follow our dreams is a very bad piece of advice. Instead, he advocates a test-and-learn approach where we experiment step-by-step to build our path rather than making drastic changes. How can we plan the unexpected? 

Welcoming the unknown and anticipating the unpredictable in order to make chance work in our favour is an attractive idea, but it doesn't really tell us how to do it. Fortunately, the happenstance learning theory also helps us learn how to do it by stimulating our skills to better manage the unexpected. By developing certain skills, we are not “simply a spectator of the unexpected, but we can actually generate it”, Auguste Dumouilla explains. It is somewhat like the idea of “generating our destiny”.

Five skills to develop 

• Perseverance 
• Optimism 
• Openness 
• Flexibility 
• Risk-taking 

In practice, these skills should enable us to talk to different people, keep learning new things, try new activities, get involved in a project as well as undertake and create. 

One of the best tips for learning to develop these skills is therefore to act, to do, to experiment in order to continue learning throughout life. In the words of John Krumblotz: “When you act, unexpected things happen. If you do nothing, nothing happens”.