Why career redesign is not the same as career change
I recently wrote an article The messy middle of career transitions - the ambiguity, uncertainty, and confusion that often accompany them. That piece, however, only scratched the surface of a process that is frequently far more complex, surprisingly lengthy, and more unsettling than most people expect.
Today, I want to go one layer deeper: into why this phase exists, what makes it so difficult, and the patterns I keep seeing again and again.
No straight lines
When I look back at my own path and the four major transitions I’ve gone through, one thing stands out clearly: none of them happened in a straight line. Each was a process that took time, with detours, false starts, and quite a few moments that felt like failure.
Things rarely worked out the way I had envisioned them at the start. The “ideal” next step, the seemingly logical move, often didn’t materialise. And at times, it felt as if I had settled for something that was not the plan at all. Looking back, though, it all makes sense.
Not getting my ideal role at my ideal bank took me to Brazil
Banker turned entrepreneur - but not the company or product I had first imagined
A future I pictured in Lisbon became a life in Munich (close enough, right?)
An almost accidental venture capital entrepreneur-in-residence role turned into years in the industry
The decision to "throw" everything I have done so far away and become “just a coach,” which then evolved into a portfolio career spanning advisory, coaching, and investing
Trying to decide upfront on a narrow focus, only to have my clients lead me to the right niche
Planning meets reality
What does this show?
There is a limit to how much we can plan on paper. We can think, brainstorm, decide, and design - and that work matters too. But at some point, every plan meets reality. And for it to be viable and sustainable, it has to survive that test.
Circumstances change. Things do not work out, or turn out very differently. People leave. And perhaps most importantly, we change along the way. Sometimes, once we finally reach what we thought was the finish line, we realise we don’t want it as much as we once believed.
This is why career transitions are rarely simple.
What we really mean by transition
When I talk about career transitions here, I mean significant ones: moving into a different industry or sector, changing the nature of your work, shifting from corporate to entrepreneurship (and everything in between).
Usually, it starts quietly. We are doing something that looks right on the outside, but something feels off. Often for a long time. The real question is not whether we feel it, but when we allow ourselves to acknowledge it.
Between that recognition and actual change, there is often a long lag. Sometimes we do not yet know what else we could do. Sometimes we know exactly what we want, but not how to get there. Either way, the process is far more complex than it appears, because it is not just an external change.
Identity, not direction
The inner change is the hardest part.
At the deepest level, this is about identity. We build a strong sense of who we are around what we do, and letting go of that is deeply uncomfortable. The messy middle is, in essence, a transformation of identity: the old one no longer fits, and the new one (or ones) has not yet fully formed.
In my work with clients navigating significant career transitions and redesigns, I see this again and again. Beyond encouraging them to envision, try, and test different possible versions of themselves, something else inevitably surfaces in this identity (re-)work: deeper beliefs.
Beliefs about what work should look like. Beliefs about what success means to you. Deeply ingrained beliefs about money, security, and what seems possible.
These beliefs are often invisible at first, yet they quietly shape every decision, hesitation, and internal conflict during the transition.
The cost of letting go
This is where things get difficult.
We don’t like letting go. It feels like a loss, and we are naturally loss-averse. It’s not only about losing a title or role, but about what we have invested: years of effort, experience, and hard work.
When I tried to “ditch everything” a few years ago and become a coach - a calling that is still ambiguous, poorly protected, and not always respected - I tried to let go of all my previous experience and expertise. Everything in me resisted. I sabotaged myself constantly.
I did give it a serious attempt. I spent a year doing everything I could to take it off the ground (next to having a newborn), until it became clear that something was not working. Completely discarding who I had been and everything I had done before simply did not work for me.
Only when I revised the plan, when I found ways to integrate my experience with my newly acquired skills, did things start to fall into place.
That lesson could only be learned by trying. By testing ideas in reality. By talking to people. By offering my work and hearing feedback, including many no’s.
Because when something does not resonate with us, it will not resonate with others either. Our uncertainty shows. Our insecurities leak through. And no amount of preparation can fully hide that.
Between selves
In searching for a framework that explains why this phase is so difficult, I found one of the clearest descriptions in Working Identity by Herminia Ibarra. She writes that “the period in-between is not a literal space between one job and the next but a psychological zone in which we are truly between selves, with one foot firmly planted in the old world and the other making tentative steps toward an as-yet undefined new world.”
What I appreciate most is how this normalises the turmoil. The confusion. The back-and-forth. And the fact that this phase can take months, sometimes years.
We oscillate. Some days, we want to hold on to the old. We look for reasons to stay, to make it work, even when we know it no longer fits. The longer we’ve been in a role, the more tightly our identity is tied to it, especially if we once imagined it as a long-term or even lifelong path.
Our future self-image is often still anchored in the past.
A similar dynamic exists in relationships we’ve outgrown. We may know, deep down, that something is not right, yet we stay because it feels safer. After all, leaving means letting go of who we thought we would become.
Letting go of an old professional identity is no different. And yet, this letting go is precisely what allows reinvention to begin. It creates the space for new options to emerge, and eventually, for a new identity to take shape.
Career redesign is not about choosing the next thing faster. Rather, it is about allowing that deeper shift to happen.