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Dear Marketplace Friend,

In just a decade, Chip and Joanna Gaines have become heroes of the home reno genre. In small-town Waco – current population 144,000 – they created a template for a one-hour reality program that depicts the transformation of tired houses to treasured homes, on behalf of clients who choose their dilapidated fixer and set the budget. After 79 episodes, they’ve become media celebs with reputations that stretch beyond the local Home Depot and have amassed a net-worth estimated to be $50+ million. How did they do that?

There’s something about taking a fresh look at a tired reality and imagining how a desirable lot and a building with good bones can allow a radical real estate resurrection that former owners and current neighbors would have never imagined possible. Surviving in a depreciating dump when a reset is possible is akin to embracing defeat when victory – after some fresh thinking and strategic effort – can instead be life giving.

What’s true for aging houses in Texas is also viable for aging careers in (insert your work address). You may be in a role that was custom built for you, just a few years ago… or, you may have moved into a position that was originally created for a predecessor who moved out long ago. In the neighborhood in which you spend the greatest amount of your life (average time-at-work is 100,000 hours over four decades), are you occupying a box on the org chart that is no longer the dream-job it once promised to be?

You can live with the out-of-date kitchen, lousy plumbing and leaky roof if you so choose, but you might be ready for a Love It or List It makeover on your job description. What would it take to create a blueprint for breakthrough regarding your career position?

Chip and Joanna aren’t coming to your rescue, and no Google search will find a hired gun advisor to help you with an overhaul. This may be the do-it-yourself project that could usher in some accelerated advancement for your business card without having to put yourself on the market for outplacement. How can you imagine positive career refinement for 2024?

Block some time during the next few year-end weeks to allow space to disconnect and become effectively objective about the way things really are. Consultants do their best work when they ask the right questions and allow their client to write the report. What do you need to explore?

Question #1: What’s right? There’s a reason why you’re doing what you’re doing; the positives are often overshadowed by the negatives. Give voice to the victories: what are the significant pluses of the role you play today that benefit your clients and bless your soul? How can you allocate more time in 2024 in doing what you already know is your best stuff?

Question #2: What’s wrong? The newness of your professional role has long-since worn off; the recurrent irritations have become as predictable as each morning’s sunrise. If you were in charge (and, for the purposes of this exercise, you are!), what would you eliminate from your working world that would elevate your situation? Stop tolerating the intolerable: what do you need to do to extricate the exhausting from your newly-remodeled 2024 career?

Question #3: What’s confused? Clarity is the antithesis of confusion, and in today’s progressive world, lack of clarity is widespread. Your forward motion will always be compromised by the uncertainty created by confusion. What do you need to do to shine light in the shadows and achieve confidence that you won’t be ambushed by ignorance?

Question #4: What’s missing? Too often, we practice tolerance toward the absence of things that, if acquired and ensured, would complete the construction of a world-class formation at work. Instead of conceding the future to be compromised by what’s lacking, what acquisition would you actively seek or solicit in 2024 to round-out your operational capability?

If you could get your professional life lined-up for Fixer-Upper, would the “reveal” create a radical improvement for your coming year?

Bob Shank