I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking about family, work, career, accomplishments, goals … heady stuff like that.  It has translated into several drives into the office in silence … no music, no radio … and many evenings on the back porch staring out over the greenway that separates our small cluster from the houses on the next block over.

Most of this reflection has, I think, been productive.  But some has bordered on the thumb-sucking, navel gazing and Hamletesque type angst that most humans are prone to.

I got some unexpected help and insight from a very dear friend who now is a big muckety-muck at one of the nation’s leading career services firm.  She mentioned a conversation with another important muckety-muck … a person from Harvard … who said that most people get it all wrong.  They frame the entire career thing the wrong way.  What she said I’ll remember for a long, long time.

“The critical question is not ‘what‘ you want to be … it is ‘who‘ you want to be.”

That says so much in just fifteen words.  It is more the motivation than the act.  It is more the idea than the product.  It is more the character than the career.  It is more the identity than the label.

I thought about my clients.  And I realized that their challenge was eerily the same.  Many were all bollixed up trying to figure out the “what” … when their real problem was the “who.”  It wasn’t the product set, the service package, the channel strategy that was their real problem.  Their real problem was that they didn’t have a clear sense of who they were and what they stood for.

These fifteen words haven’t solved my personal life’s riddle.  But they’ve allowed me to see things much more clearly.

So I ask you …

Not what do you do … but …

Who are you?