James Wilding's Weblog

I’ve heard it said that jazz = blues + improvisation. It’s the same with a career (well, almost: no guitars).

While a few people are lucky enough to have a single job that lasts for life, the rest of us can enjoy the adventure of a changing career: shifting from job to job, adjusting skills and focus depending on the changing demands of our position current position. Which can be fun (I mean it!).

I used to tell people that my approach to my work was to “make it up as I go along”. Lately I’ve realised that’s not quite right; making things up implies a kind of chaos, without a real understanding of the best way to do things.

Jazz geniuses didn’t “make things up”: they improvised. Their deep, cultivated understanding of the rules and methods of the blues and popular music allowed them to bend and break those rules, inventing (fabulous) new ways of doing things as they went. This is how a career should be: master the basics, always be willing to learn new things, and then amaze your peers as you adapt (almost) effortlessly to new situations.

The irony of this is that a lot of the ground work for a wonderfully flexible career can be done in really boring jobs. I learnt lots about project management (mostly how not to do it) through four years in local government: if I made my mistakes then, and watched other people make them, I’d still be making them now. It’s the same for most of us: the boring basics come first. Even Hendrix started off with a supporting role in an ordinary big band!