Something to readChanging jobs
Working Identity
Herminia Ibarra's book on finding a new career by acting first and making sense of it later
Why it’s worth your time
If you've been trying to plan your way to a new career and keep circling, Herminia Ibarra's Working Identity suggests the trouble may be in the method. Ibarra, who studies career change, followed professionals in the middle of a switch to see how the ones who got somewhere did it.
How to make a career change when you're not sure what you want
The book · About 5 hours of reading · Buy or borrow
How to get it
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- Notice how late clarity arrives.
Ibarra draws three practices from the people she followed. As you read their stories, notice how late the moment of truth arrives in each.
- Tell your change story to someone new.
Write two or three sentences on what you're moving toward and the thread that links it to what you do now, even if it's rough. Tell it this week to one person outside your usual circle, such as someone in the field or an acquaintance on another team. Afterwards, note which part they asked about.
Good moments for this: when the same career daydream keeps coming backafter a side project starts to feel like the real jobwhen friends keep steering you back to your old line of work
Keep going with Truest
Small actions add up. Truest helps you find the next thing worth doing, make the space to do it, and keep a record of your progress. It’s a private place to work on your career, and it’s yours, not your employer’s.
- It actually happensWe’ll put it on your calendar and remind you before it starts.
- The longer sessionCareer Compass is the guided session for working out what you want next.
- It’s yours to keepEach thing you do is saved to your private record, there when your next review or job search comes around.
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
Ibarra found that friends, family and long-time mentors often reinforce the identity you're trying to leave, out of care. Newer contacts tend to see the person you're becoming more easily, so it helps to widen who you talk to.
What might make this harder
Run the first experiments outside the company, such as a course, a volunteer project or a coffee with someone in the field, and say nothing at work until you have something worth saying.
Questions people ask
What are the three practices in Working Identity?
Ibarra calls them crafting experiments, shifting connections and making sense. People try new roles on a small scale, find new networks and role models, and turn events into a story about who they're becoming.
How long does a career change take, according to Ibarra?
In her research, most of the transitions took about three years, and rarely in a straight line.
What's the difference between plan and implement and test and learn?
They're Ibarra's names for two ways of changing careers. The first works out what you want, then carries it out; the second tries possibilities in practice and lets clarity follow.
Is Working Identity still relevant?
Harvard Business Review Press published a second, updated edition in 2023 with exercises at the end of each chapter. In a later survey of business school alumni, Ibarra and two colleagues found that not knowing what to do next was still the barrier named most often.
What it says, and how it holds up
The usual advice for changing careers runs in a sensible order: work out who you are, find a match, then move. Ibarra calls this plan and implement, and in her research it tended to produce long stretches of nothing. People learn what they want by doing, in her account, and the knowing comes afterwards. Who we are at work, she argues, was built through years of action, so reworking it takes action too.
The book follows 39 people through reinventions that mostly took years. From their stories Ibarra draws three practices: crafting experiments through side projects, temporary assignments or courses; shifting connections toward new networks and role models; and making sense, turning events into a story that explains the change to others and to yourself. One finding stands out for anyone waiting for clarity. The defining moment people later point to tended to come late, after much of the change had happened. A free way in is her article How to Stay Stuck in the Wrong Career, which sets out the argument in brief.
Liz Gooster, who read it as assigned reading on her coaching course, found the case studies absorbing and the framework substantial enough to stay with her. A similar idea runs through Bill Burnett and Dave Evans's Designing Your Life (2016), which builds its exercises around small prototypes of a possible career and makes a natural next read. Ibarra's sample leans toward managers and professionals, and that shapes what the experiments look like. A pro bono project, an executive program or a sabbatical is easier to arrange with savings and a flexible employer. Ibarra and two colleagues, in a 2023 article on barriers to career change, treat money as a real barrier, while arguing that worries about it often go untested until you try something on the side.
If you already know where you're headed and the obstacle is a credential, such as a license or degree the new field requires, the experimenting phase may be short and the rest is mostly logistics. Ibarra's method is built for the earlier fog, when you can't yet say what the destination is.
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Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.