CHANGING
JOBS

Topics: Change; Determination; Motives; Sanctification

References: Matthew 22:1–14; Galatians 5:16–25

My wife, Carol, a career counselor, was meeting with a client, George, who said to her in their first session, “I’ve got to get out of the rubber industry.”

She gave him some homework to do before their next session. He came back the next week without having done a lick of homework. My wife asked, “What will happen if you don’t get out of the rubber industry?”

“My wife will divorce me,” George said.

“Do you want that to happen?” Carol asked.

He couldn’t keep the smile off his face. She knew then that he would never change his job till it gave him what he wanted: a divorce, with his wife taking the initiative and the guilt.

Carol named this behavior “the doctrine of the prior agenda.” “You can’t help people change or find their mission when they have a conflicting prior agenda,” she said. People will not change until they want to.

—Daniel H. Pink, “What Happened to Your Parachute?” Fast Company (September 1999)