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When It's Time to Change Careers
by
Rick Lynch
Soon after graduating from West Point, in year three of serving in the army, I started pushing to transfer to a different branch. It was clear as day to me that as an engineer officer, I would spend my entire career working for somebody else. That’s not what I wanted. I wanted to be the guy in charge. The only way to do that, as far as I could see, was to branch-transfer. My ?rst choice was to be an armor officer, but nobody wanted me to branch-transfer.
“No. You can’t do that” was the answer from on high. “There’s a shortage of engineer officers. We don’t need you as an armor officer.” For nine years, I accepted “no” for an answer.
But I never stopped asking for it. I never gave up trying.
People tend to want to keep you in a box. Whatever role you started out in, somehow, structured organizations of all shapes and sizes—from the army to colleges to big corporations—want to keep you there. If you’re on a certain career path, there’s this inherent pressure built into the system to keep you on that career path whether you like it or not. I’ve never understood where that comes from, and I’ve simply never stood for that behavior. In life, we need to choose our paths to follow our call, to go after whatever it is we want to go after, or we’re never going to be fulfilled.
After graduating from MIT, I was as- signed to and stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky. It was there at Fort Knox where I was given a new title: Robotics Project Officer. I was still an engineer. I still worked for the engineer branch of the army. It was a forward-thinking position, on the cutting edge of new technologies in the field that would slowly change the way we do business on the battlefield. But the title did little to put me on the leadership track I wanted to be on. And now, for my family as much as for me, I wanted to be on that track more than ever.
Lucky for me, I went to work for a major general named Tom Tait—a man who would become one of my mentors. Tom was a guy who recognized my strengths and abilities, and was willing to go the extra mile for me.
One day General Tait and I flew from Fort Knox over to Fort Monroe, Virginia, to brief another general on an armored cavalry program. I presented the standard overview that you might present in a boardroom, to which the other general commented, “Hey, that’s a great brief.”
He then turned to General Tait and said, “Why do you have an engineer officer working this?”
General Tait said right then and there, “I can fix that.”
On the flight home, Tait turned to me and said the words I’d almost given up hope of ever hearing: “You want to be an armor officer?”
“Sir, I’ve been trying to be an armor officer for nine years,” I said. We land. He picks up the phone. He calls the armor branch chief in Washington, D.C., and says, “If you don’t get Lynch branch- transferred, you’re fired.”
A lot of wheels went into motion, and next thing I know the branch transfer’s approved. Just like that, I’m an armor officer. For all those years I had kept the faith and continued to strive. I felt like I was finally getting my reward. It brought to mind Matthew 25:21: “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’”
I did the best I could. I followed my own rules: I worked hard and I didn’t complain; I made myself widely known so the higher-ups knew me and could see what a good job I was doing. And it worked. Just three months later I was selected to become an operations officer for the First Squadron, Eleventh Armored Cavalry Regiment. Operations officer was just where I wanted to be as a field officer.
Because I was moved into the armor branch, I would be stationed in Germany when the Warsaw Pact crumbled and the wall came tumbling down. I was there in the Fulda Gap when the East Germans came into West Germany and experienced freedom for the first time. I witnessed that great moment in history firsthand because I had made the decision to branch-transfer from engineer to armor and accept that risk. I made that decision even though the army and everyone I knew threw all of those obstacles up and said, “You ought not do it!” My branch-transfer decision was not only a success, it was also the jump-start I needed to set me on the path toward a successful career that would culminate in my becoming a general.
If I had given in to that pressure and not followed my heart, I never would have moved up to become a flag officer, I never would have been a division commander or corps commander. It was a life-changing experience.
Could my career have come to a screeching halt after I made that transfer? Yes! In some ways, making that branch-transfer was the ultimate risk. But I knew that it was something I needed to do, and I was determined not to let that transfer stop the momentum of my career, no matter what. I simply wasn’t comfortable being the support guy. I knew that. I wanted to be the guy in charge. I knew I didn’t like to be the guy in the back of the room who hoped nobody would ask him a question. That wasn’t me. I wanted to be the guy in the front of the room. The guy who asks the questions, and whom people would ask questions of.
This article is excerpted from
Adapt or Die
(copyright 2013) by Rick Lynch, published by Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group. Used by permission. All rights to this material are reserved. Material is not to be reproduced, scanned, copied, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without written permission from Baker Publishing Group.
Find out more about the book.
Editor’s note: Image by
Horia Varlan.
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