When was the last time YOU strategically quit? The concept of quitting often has a negative association. However, I’ve learned that knowing when quitting is the right thing to do — strategically — is highly beneficial.
Not all opportunities are created equal, and our time is limited. Be choosy about where you invest your time.
Quitting the wrong opportunities early frees up time and energy to pursue the right opportunities for growth with laser focus.
Two Common Curves
I became curious about strategic quitting in 2012, one year after pivoting into my first corporate managerial role.
I was on the hunt for fresh thinking and ideas about how to assess career opportunities more strategically and effectively. That’s when I discovered Seth Godin's book, The Dip.
In the book, Godin describes two common curves that exist:
1. The Dip, and
2. The Cul-de-Sac
Curve #1: The Dip
On the journey from starting to mastery, Godin notes that the beginning is fun, involves rapid learning, and you can easily stay engaged and see some modest results.
Then, as you hit the dip, things get harder, more effort is required, and your results drop. As you work through the dip, you build more skills, achieve mastery, and achieve your highest results.
According to Godin, “The dip is a long slog that’s actually a shortcut because it gets you where you want to go faster than any other path.”
Now let’s compare this to the other curve.
Curve #2: The Cul-de-Sac
“Dead end” is the French translation for the phrase cul-de-sac. Godin notes that nothing significant changes over time in this second curve, regardless of how much you work. “It doesn’t get a lot better; it doesn’t get a lot worse. It just is.”
According to Godin, “There’s not a lot to say about the cul-de-sac except to realize that it exists and to embrace the fact when you find one, that you need to get off it, fast.
The dead end is keeping you from doing something else. The opportunity cost of investing your life in something that’s not going to get better is just too high.”
The Dip in Practice: A Real-World Example
In 2015, I recognized that I was parked in a cul-de-sac professionally. While the signs did not appear evident to others, I knew that was my reality.
The opportunity cost of waiting to pursue my dip to be a global content strategist full-time was just simply too high. I couldn’t afford to wait any longer. It was time for me to get brave and strategically quit to pursue my next dip.
Ultimately, three factors contributed to my decision.
Factor #1
The Job Fit Assessment
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It had been four years since I’d pivoted into a newly created global communications manager role.
Some aspects of that job matched my career interests—specifically, the opportunity to work in global marketing, global agriculture, and digital communications. However, other core aspects were not a long-term fit, specifically the ever-growing work of managing internal communications.
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Fast forward to 2015, and I knew I wanted my future career path to be located at the intersection of content business strategy, story-based messaging strategy and global agriculture.
Factor #2
The Marketing Evolution
Roadmap
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During those first four years in my role as global communications manager, I stayed laser-focused on the primary mission the organization needed from me at the time in that role: to establish and grow a high-performing global communications function to support rapid global business growth.
I understood that the table stakes of corporate communications and traditional public relations functions needed to exist within the organization before an investment could be made in establishing a content marketing function. |
By 2015, we’d built a solid framework for global communications. I knew this was an ideal time for the organization to either promote or hire someone else to step into my existing global communications manager role.
Factor #3
Identifying Future Growth
Opportunities
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One of my first big moves as global communications manager in 2011 was officially launching a new global corporate website that would later be recognized with a “Best Science Website” WebAward.
As excited as I was about launching the site, I knew that for the website to be genuinely effective from a marketing standpoint and helpful to customers, we were missing a vital piece of the puzzle: a corporate blog with strong organic search visibility.
With a solid corporate communications function now established, I recognized there was a void within the global marketing structure.
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Fast-forward to 2015. I recognized the organization needed to extract more global marketing value from its marketing and research investment.
This opportunity matched well with my mission of accelerating B2B content marketing excellence and my commitment to spending all my time as a global content strategist.
Pursuing Invisible Growth Opportunities
With all these factors in mind, I went to work making the business case, pitch after pitch, for strategically quitting my role as global communications manager and recommending the creation of a new, additional global marketing content strategist role within the team. I knew I couldn’t wait any longer to pursue my next dip of becoming a global content marketing strategist; I had to act.
Eventually, I was able to pivot into a newly created global content marketing strategist role. I spent the next three-plus years establishing and growing a global content marketing function to support business growth, including an award-winning corporate blog.
Lessons Learned
For over a decade, I’ve used the decision-making model outlined in The Dip by Seth Godin summary to assess various situations, both opportunities and challenges, in my professional and personal life.
While my earlier example outlined a big decision – quitting a job – I’ve found the concept equally relevant when assessing more straightforward choices.
Using this model forced me to take a real, honest assessment of where I was compared to where I wanted to be professionally. Armed with extreme clarity surrounding my desired future path, I was able to formulate an effective action plan and get out of the cul-de-sac.
This put me in the driver’s seat to chart an accelerated growth path for my career. A path that would spark my entrepreneurial spirit in 2019 when I quit my corporate job and founded my B2B content strategy consulting company.
3 Key Questions To Ask Yourself
If you’re curious where to go from here when exploring the topic of strategic quitting, here are three key questions to ask.
When you look at the two curves (the dip and the cul-de-sac),
- Which one matches your current state?
- What do you need to quit strategically?
- What’s your next dip?