How To Navigate A Career Transition When AI Changes Your Work

A Career Transition Can Lead Somewhere You Never Expected

Consider this. It’s two in the morning in Seattle, and David Baker gets a phone call from Sweden telling him he has just won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Now rewind that same man to age twenty. He has no idea what he wants to do with his life. He’s taking different courses trying to figure out what interests him, and the one chemistry class he takes is, by his own account, by far his worst class.

Forty years later, the guy whose worst class was chemistry won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. If you had told that twenty-year-old that decades later he was going to get a phone call at two in the morning telling him he had won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, I’m pretty sure he would have thought you were crazy. But late in college, he took a developmental biology class that pulled him into graduate school and eventually into protein science, which eventually led to the work that earned him the Nobel Prize.

Like Baker, it is hard to see where our path can lead us, especially during a career transition. But if we develop adaptive curiosity, we keep learning and moving toward possibilities even when we can’t see how everything is going to connect yet. That can become increasingly important as AI changes work people spent years learning to do.

Why AI Can Create A Career Transition

If you feel uncomfortable with the current AI transition, it might help to know that part of why you feel that way is because becoming good at something feels really good. Doesn’t it? But then suddenly AI takes a few minutes to do something that would normally take you three weeks, and that can be just a little insulting.

Part of that sting comes from the loss of purpose you feel as AI automates what you used to do. To find out the impact of that, I studied full-time employees who were asked to imagine that AI had substantially replaced part of their job responsibilities. More than 80 percent said they tied their expertise to their identity at work, and nearly half felt that change could affect their sense of meaning and value.

You probably hear a lot about upskilling lately. Many organizations recognize that the future of work requires a skills transition. But what many might miss is the identity transition that can accompany a career transition.

There is a sense of accomplishment you feel when you work hard to achieve your status at work. If you are like me, you might have spent decades becoming an expert and then AI became one over a long weekend. That can certainly feel like someone burst your bubble.

When that happens you start thinking, “If people no longer need me for this, where am I valuable now?” But what I think many people don’t recognize is that your value was never just the task you performed. You still have the experience, judgment, and skills you built along the way.

Adaptive Curiosity Can Help With A Career Transition

AI is making a lot of people question how they can reinvent themselves. I know what that feels like. I left a job after being with a company for 20 years to start from scratch in a new field.

I expected starting over to be uncomfortable, and it was, but once I started learning again, discovering something new became energizing. That career transition eventually led me to study curiosity and what gives people meaning and purpose. That required learning what people found meaningful.

In my research, people reported four important sources of meaning and purpose, including exploration, connection, creation and influence. Everyone experiences all four to some degree, so I’m not interested in putting anybody into a box or having you announce at dinner that you have discovered you’re an Exploration person. I’m interested in what these paths help you see.

When you hear yourself thinking, “That was my thing,” there is an important question to ask. What was it about that work that made it yours and gave it meaning for you? And where else could you find that?

Three Questions To Ask During A Career Transition

When you think about a part of your work AI could change, one of the first questions people ask is, “What am I supposed to learn now?” But I think there is a better place to start because rushing toward a new skill can make you overlook what you actually care about in the work you already do. There are three questions I want you to ask: What would I miss if I no longer did this part of my work? What have people learned to rely on me for? And where else could I use that experience and still find meaning?

Start with what you would miss in your current job, because that tells you something about where the meaning is coming from. Maybe you would miss solving a problem, connecting with people, creating or improving something, or using what you know to help someone else. That can give you important information when you are considering a career transition.

Then ask the second question: What have people learned to rely on me for? That is going to be important to recognize, because AI is going to get very good at more of the visible part of work. And when that happens, it is easy to conclude that because the task became easier, your experience somehow became less valuable.

Once you know what you would miss and what people have learned to rely on you for, the third question becomes much more useful: Where else could I use that experience and still find meaning? Knowing which paths give you the most meaning can help you choose new responsibilities that give you a sense of purpose, instead of just filling the time AI gives back with work you never found meaningful. That can help you make a career transition based on what you already bring with you rather than assuming you have to start over.

Experience Still Counts During A Career Transition

We keep asking how much time AI can save us. I’m much more interested in what we choose to do with the time we get back. If somebody has spent twenty years learning everything about your company and technology suddenly gives that person five hours back, the interesting question is not how to fill those five hours.

Five hours of saved time is not automatically five hours of value. Leaders need to recognize what experience is sitting inside the person whose work just changed and what part of that work gave them meaning.

Organizations Have A Role In A Career Transition

When organizations create the kind of environment where people can do that, the impact can go well beyond how people feel about their work. My research showed that around 80 percent of executives from small to mid-sized companies reported saving more than $100,000 a year, while executives from larger organizations reported savings of more than $1 million by implementing a culture of curiosity. Those results show what can happen when organizations recognize and address the things that get in the way of curiosity.

In my work with organizations, I focus on helping people overcome what they fear, question the assumptions they make, fully utilize technology, and improve the corporate environment. Those barriers can make it harder for people to see possibilities when familiar responsibilities change. Addressing them can give people more room to explore where their experience and abilities could be valuable next.

A Career Transition Does Not Mean Starting Over

When organizations address those barriers, people are better able to adapt as AI changes their work and approach a career transition with a better understanding of what they already bring with them. You may not be able to see exactly where your experience will take you, just as David Baker could not have predicted where his interests would eventually lead when he was twenty, but you still have the experience, judgment, and skills you built along the way. Adaptive curiosity can help you keep learning and moving toward possibilities even when you can’t see how everything is going to connect yet, and that might take you somewhere you could never have imagined.