In 1928 Alexander Fleming returned to the lab and noticed that mold had accidentally contaminated a petri dish of staphylococcus killing the bacteria around it. This discovery was not the result of perfectly planned grand design but a moment of serendipity born from ongoing experimentation.
Herminia Ibarra’s research (Working Identity: Unconventional strategies for reinventing your career, 2023) suggests that career works the same way. Contrary to conventional career advice that urges deep introspection before making a move, Ibarra argues that action precedes insight. We cannot think our way into a new identity but we can act our way into one. To reinvent ourselves we must treat our careers as a laboratory – running small experiments, learning from the data and iterating.
This mindset matters because our working identities contain more “ingredients” than any single job uses. Over time, we compress who we are into a role, a function or a brand name on a resume. Career reinvention becomes easier when you remember that your current role is just one formulation. It draws on strengths and interests you may have while leaving others untouched. Experimentation is how you discover what else belongs in the mix.
What gets in the way of prototyping a new career?
- Not knowing what to do next. Lack of clarity can be paralyzing especially if you feel you shouldn’t talk to people until you can articulate a crisp plan. But clarity is often the output of those conversations, not the prerequisite. Like a good scientist, loosen the parameters early. Early tests reveal options you wouldn’t have predicted from your desk.
- Beliefs and self-narratives. In action can reduce self-confidence which then inhibits exploration – a vicious cycle. The antidote is movement. Even small experiments can restore a sense of agency and create evidence that you can learn, adapt and belong somewhere new. Remember that an object in motion, stays in motion.
- Finding your new tribe. Networking is uncomfortable for most people and it feels even harder when you don’t have a clear story to tell. Yet the discomfort fades with practice. Retelling your story helps you hear your own patterns: what you consistently emphasize, what energizes you, and what you avoid. Reinvention requires building relationships with new and divergent groups – people who can expand your sense of what the possibilities look like.
- Your personal situation. If you have financial responsibilities or others who depend on you, trying to reinvent yourself can sound impractical. Sometimes it is. But experimentation is precisely how you design change within real constraints. Small bounded trials reduced perceived risk, preserve income and still generate momentum.
Four practices that make experimentation real
Just as Fleming required a physical petri dish, reinventing your career will require tangible and enticing alternatives that you can feel, touch and taste – not just imagine. The goal is not to figure it out in one sitting, but to run a series of low risks tests with learning as the goal.
Crafting experiments (not “leaps). Take for example, a recent alumna interested in startups after a career in large enterprises. Instead of making a high-stakes jump without knowing fit, they became an advisor to early stage startups. They also expanded their network by attending demo days and conferences. These settings help them test their assumptions, build pattern recognition and learn the language and pace of a different environment.
Other low risk prototyping can include a cross-functional project, a fractional role, mentoring, joining a professional association or serving on a board.
Building new connections that change what you believe is possible. A career change isn’t only about the content of the work, it’s also about the environment and the people with whom you work. Ibarra’s research emphasizes that changing your work relationships: who you learn from, who you compare yourself to, who you imagine yourself becoming – is a powerful catalyst.
This shifts the question from “who do I want to be?” to “Who can I aspire to be?” New groups help answer that – not by giving you generic advice but making the future feel concrete and accessible. This is fieldwork. You are not asking people to choose you; you are collecting data about paths, possibilities and potential – and pressure testing those assumptions.
Telling your story until it starts to speak to you. As we tell our story to different audiences, not our friends or colleagues, insights and ideas begin to emerge. You start to hear what stays consistent across contexts and what changes depending on who is listening. Over time what you initially treated as a side note may reveal itself as central. As you retell your story, you also start to hear the things you emphasize and the things you leave out.
A recent alumnus began this process describing themselves as a “social impact” leader. Through conversations outside of their immediate circle, they discovered two things: first, there were options they hadn’t even considered; and second, “social impact” was something they had done, but not necessarily who they were becoming. They still didn’t have the final answer but the repeated telling created direction and direction created better experiments.
Dropping the rocks: identity that slows the experiment
Ibarra also describes the importance of “dropping the rocks.” If the goal is meaningful change, we often have to loosen the identify we’ve clung to especially when it is derived from a title, a function, a compensation or a prestigious brand. That kind of over-identification can quietly narrow your options; you start filtering possibilities by what maintains the status rather than what broadens your future.
These rocks can be heavy. They slow learning, raise the stakes of every move and make experimentation feel dangerous. Letting them go, even partially, creates room for serendipity. Part of the point of experimentation is not knowing exactly what your new self will look like. Trying to conform to what others expect that self to be can limit the range of outcomes you’re willing to test.
A final note for the impatient (which is most of us)
Career reinvention rarely happens in a straight line. It is circular – you revisit the same questions with new information and, it is winding with small tests that build toward larger experiments. The aim is not immediate certainty; it is disciplined momentum.
Ready to start this exercise?
- Choose one experiment you can run with bounded risk; and
- Three conversations with people who live in the world you are curious about.
Patience and tenacity are required along with a healthy dose of courage and a willingness to learn your way into the answers.
Interested in discussing your experiments with a career coach? The CDO is here to help you create the experiments that will lead to breakthroughs. Find us here
