The Career Pivot Canvas for Purpose-Driven Professionals
As of this writing, an authoritarian presidential administration has effectively dismantled USAID, once the world’s largest provider of development aid and humanitarian assistance—with a likely cost of tens of thousands or more in lives and livelihoods worldwide. Meanwhile, thousands of dedicated civil servants across other U.S. federal agencies are also being abruptly terminated from their roles.
Far too many of my friends and former colleagues in international development careers have already been impacted. If you are reading this, perhaps you have been as well. If so, I’m sorry. I’m furious. I’m sad. I’m terrified.
And I have struggled to know how I can help.
Then, two weeks ago, a Management Center newsletter offered a framing that helped me get unstuck. The newsletter asked, “Think about your comparative advantage with an emphasis on impact. What are the 1-3 most impactful things that only you can do this week?”
Well, that helped me find my grounding.
In my consulting work, I use a strategy framework that helps nonprofit organizations translate their high-level purpose and unique organizational superpower into the services, operating model, and business model that can fulfill it. I have been learning that the framework can also be useful in the personal career context.
Last year, two friends and I–two of us international development sector-switchers, one of us sector-switch-curious–used this framework to clarify our own career strategies. It grounded us in our purpose and our unique superpower, and it helped us think expansively about the roles we might play to harness our superpower in service of our purpose.
Now that so many of my development friends are facing a career pivot–in all likelihood into a new sector–I have attempted to make this career strategy approach broadly accessible with the Career Pivot Canvas (see below).
This is kind of a “minimum viable act of solidarity” (apologies for the jargon–that’s a reference to the minimum viable product concept). The tool is not perfect–or validated, or even tested very much–and I’m not used to putting myself out there like that.
But if it helps just one person navigate their career pivot successfully and in alignment with their purpose, I’ll be happy knowing I have been of some value in supporting a livelihood, perhaps a family–and that I have in some way helped to preserve the purpose-driven workforce we so desperately need if we are to build a better future than this for our children and grandchildren.
Read on to access the Career Pivot Canvas and follow AI prompting to help you use it.
(And by the way–please help me improve this tool. Who are the folks out there with career coaching expertise? Corporate recruiting expertise? AI prompt engineering expertise? Let’s make this more useful!)
Meet the Career Pivot Canvas
Many of you will recognize that this tool is styled after the Business Model Canvas. The one-pager format is helpful because it forces clarity and conciseness, and because arranging all key dimensions on one page makes it easier to ensure coherence among all the parts during the iterative process of design, testing, and pivoting.
You can access the Career Pivot Canvas for Purpose-Driven Professionals in Google slides. To edit your own version, download it as a PowerPoint file, or make a Google slides copy.
The Career Pivot Canvas helps people navigate a sector switch that leverages their superpower and is rooted in purpose.
There are nine sections in the Career Pivot Canvas:
Purpose
(A) VISION - The long-term future I want to help build.
(B) MISSION - The contribution I want to make to building that future.
Analysis
(C) WHAT I LOVE - The contexts and types of work that fill my cup.
(D) WHAT I DO WELL - My applied knowledge, competencies, and skills.
(E) HOW I WORK AND LEAD - My leadership style, decision-making, and execution approach.
(F) DISTINCTIVE CAPABILITIES - The ways in which I create meaningful value in a work setting.
(G) SUPERPOWER - The ability to create a unique mix of value in an organization, team, or project.
Response
(H) COMPANY CONTEXTS AND ROLES TO EXPLORE - Roles in which my superpower creates value.
(I) HOW I CAN PURSUE MY MISSION IN THESE ROLES - Strategies I might employ within these roles to pursue my mission.
These components differ slightly from the nonprofit strategy framework I use with organizations in my consulting–but the logic remains the same.
The idea is to design for alignment among your career purpose, an analysis of the unique value you can create, and a response–in this case, in terms of career roles in which that value is needed.
Center your superpower
I believe that, just as each nonprofit has a unique organizational superpower–the ability to create a unique mix of value–we as individuals have a unique professional superpower. None of us has quite the same set of strengths. None of us has the same lived experiences. None of us thinks in just the same way. That means we each bring something beautifully unique to our work. And it makes each of us uniquely powerful in the right context and role.
So, what is your superpower? This is actually where I like to start the strategy conversation. You’ll see in the slides that the exercise first takes you through components C through G in the Canvas, taking you through What I Love, What I Do Well, How I Work and Lead, and Distinctive Capabilities, to help you draft your Superpower.
Drafting the Canvas with the help of artificial intelligence
When my friends and I did a similar career strategy exercise last year, we were together in person. We could bounce ideas off of one another. We could help each other identify strengths we might not have recognized in ourselves. We could learn from our diverse industry experiences. It was extremely valuable to do this as a group exercise.
However, I think the Career Pivot Canvas tool needs to be something people can use independently, so I built out some AI prompting guidance to help you move through this by yourself.
When you access the slides, the first page is the Canvas itself. The second page explains how you might move through the exercise, and the following slides contain suggested AI prompting.
This is a starting point. I’m hoping the tool and exercise can help you get some thinking started, get a draft on the page, and get some ideas for roles to research.
And, while generative AI is amazing at helping to make industry-specific experience more transferrable, it is probably not going to get you through the finish line of evocatively conveying the magic and nuance of your unique superpower. This means that, if you are using AI prompting to help complete the Canvas, you may need to iterate–perhaps a lot–and at some point you will probably want to take creative control back into your own hands to craft your superpower and finalize other elements of the Canvas. In this sense, the exercise is really both art and science.
After you have a draft you like, I’d encourage workshopping it with others who know you well, if you can. Generative AI can also be very helpful when it comes time to tailor your resume, prepare your elevator pitch, network, draft cover letters, and interview. (See the Other Resources section below for some relevant links to support these steps.)
May your superpower shine
My heart is with all who are navigating uncertainty, pressure, and loss right now. I wish you courage and confidence as you move through this career transition. You have a superpower that no one else has. Find it, and find–or create–a niche where it comes to life and can be monetized, in whatever sector that may be. Please. Because you, as a purpose-driven professional, are needed in the long-term fight to build a better world.
I hope this tool is helpful to you in some way. If it is, I’d love to hear about it. If I can be helpful in any other way, please let me know. Send me an email via the form below. Connect on LinkedIn. Find me on BlueSky. And friends, you have my number.
In solidarity,
Nick
Other career pivot resources
The Career Pivot Canvas is my small offering in support of folks who are impacted by the current disruption in the development industry. Others are offering much more robust support and resources. See below for just a few I’ve become aware of:
Wayan Vota’s Career Pivot is a community for action specifically for professionals impacted by the dismantling of USAID. Wayan is sharing great intel and resources for this community, including 10 Ways to Rethink Your USAID Job Titles, and a Mega List: Social Impact Job Boards. Wayan’s forthcoming Career Pivot Action Teams also sound very valuable.
Mariela Vasquez’ USAID to Corporate Roadmap looks like an amazing compendium of resources and guidance, including AI prompting to help with Resume & Professional Summary Optimization, Industry & Market Research, Company & Job Search Strategy, Interview Preparation & Networking, and other use cases. (Hat tip to Wayan–I learned of this resource on the Career Pivot substack).
Also, as I wrote this post, I saw that Google has released the Google Career Dreamer, which appears to be an AI-powered tool to help people explore how their experience and skills might translate into other careers. I know very little about it, but it seems worth checking out if you’re facing a career pivot.
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