Ask AltoTRY · 14 MIN
Stay / Change / Leave
TAIU
Three real options, examined at the same level of detail.
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Tool 43 · Develop yourself
Is the problem the job, the role, the people or me?
A guided 18 to 22 minutes conversation, here in TAIU. This exercise gives no legal or financial advice and does not push you either way. Stay and change one thing is a real answer.
GUIDES
You have named it. Now spend some time on it.
Each Guide gives you a clear way to look at one subject in your own time. Choose where to begin. You do not need to work through everything.
Job, role, people or me
Where the problem actually sits
Separate the job from the role, the people and your own part in it.
Where this often ends up: A clear account of what is actually wrong, and where it sits.
It may also end with a clearer view of something, or with nothing that needs doing.
Around twenty minutes
The conditions
What staying would have to look like
Work out what would have to be true for staying to be the right answer.
Where this often ends up: The conditions for staying, written down so you can test them.
It may also end with a clearer view of something, or with nothing that needs doing.
Around thirty minutes
The decision
Leave, stay or renegotiate
Come to a view you can live with, including waiting until something changes.
It may also end with a clearer view of something, or with nothing that needs doing.
Around twenty minutes
This Guide is free, like everything else in The Clearing.
You can see what it covers before you begin.
Start this Guide
What would still be true on your first Monday somewhere else?
Whatever is on that list is not a reason to leave. It will be waiting for you when you arrive.
Staying on purpose is a decision. Staying because you have not decided is the thing that wears people out.
What you'll look at
- 01One specific incident
- 02How long
- 03What you have tried
- 04Your constraints
A note from Mark
Most people who ask me whether they should leave have not yet said what is wrong. They have said it is not working, which is a verdict rather than evidence. The first useful ten minutes is always spent getting to a specific thing that happened.
The distinction that does most of the work is between the role, the manager and the organisation. A bad manager is often survivable and sometimes solvable. A role that has drifted can usually be renegotiated by somebody who is valued. An organisation that has changed shape is generally not fixable from below. Those three call for entirely different responses. They feel identical on a Sunday night.
Read my full view ↓
I would also ask what leaving would not solve, because that list travels. If somebody is bored, under confident and drifting, a new logo on the payslip does not touch any of it.
And I have a lot of time for staying deliberately. Staying six more months to finish a qualification, bank some money or wait out a market is not cowardice. It is a plan. What corrodes people is staying without deciding to, which is what most people are actually doing when they arrive at this question.
What you'll get
This will not sort you into a personality type.It will give you answers about your own life that you can test.
01
Where the fault sits
02
What leaving solves
03
What travels with you
04
The condition that flips it
+
Your TAIU handover: a summary of what the conversation found, written so you can take it with you.
See everything included ↓
- 01What you came here with
- 02What is actually wrong
- 03How long it has been wrong
- 04Where the fault actually sits
- 05What you have already tried
- 06What leaving would solve
- 07What leaving would not solve
- 08The financial picture
- 09What staying would buy you
- 10The rival reading
- 11What deserves protecting
- 12The credible alternative
- 13What this exercise cannot decide
- 14What remains unresolved
- 15Where this goes next
When you finish
Bring it back to your tree.
Your tree is where TAIU keeps a picture of your whole life, in parts like work, money and health.
At the end, the conversation asks how Work and purpose feels for you right now, in your own words. It also asks what, if anything, would feel different. Nothing changes on your tree unless you say it changes.
The conversation writes this summary for you. Keep the sheet, print it or paste it into My Tree. Nothing from the conversation is stored by TAIU.
- Session
- Date
- The part of life this belongs to
- How you described it
- What would feel different
- What we found
- The alternative we tested
- What deserves protecting
- What should change, if anything
- Next actions
- What to notice or find out
- What remains unresolved
What now?
01 · Save it
The fault located specifically.
02 · Test it
Ask for the specific change you want. Put it in writing. See what happens.
See more ↓
What I would do
- 01
Start with an incident, not an atmosphere.
- 02
Work out whether it is the role, the manager, the organisation or the trajectory.
- 03
Write the list of what leaving would not solve. It is the useful list.
- 04
Find out whether you have actually asked for the change you want.
- 05
Decide what would have to be true for the answer to flip.
Test it
- 01
What happened, specifically and when?
- 02
What would still be true on your first Monday somewhere new?
- 03
What have you actually asked for?
The alternative
The expected conclusion is that the job is wrong. Two alternatives are commonly stronger. The fault may be one person rather than the job, which is a different and often shorter problem, and one that leaving solves at considerable expense when a conversation might have done it. Or the dissatisfaction may not be about work at all, in which case a new employer inherits it intact within about four months. There is also the case where the job is genuinely fine and the trajectory has stopped, which is a real reason to leave and a completely different argument from being unhappy.
Think about this
- One specific thing that happened, with a date.
- Whether it is getting worse or holding steady.
- What you have actually raised, and with whom.
- What would still be true on your first Monday somewhere else.
- What staying another six months would buy you.
Take this to Ask Mark
You have done the exercise. Now look again at what it found.
This looks at what you found and helps you understand it. It is not another exercise to repeat.
Take this to Ask Mark →Put this into practice
READ · BOOK
Working Identity
Herminia Ibarra
Read this if you have been reflecting on the same possible change for two years and have never once tried a small version of it.
Read more ↗
Was this useful?
READ · ARTICLE
One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?
Frederick Herzberg
Herzberg argues that what makes work tolerable and what makes it satisfying are two different lists. Fixing the first will not deliver the second.
Read more ↗
Was this useful?
Recommended by the TAIU community
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Finished the exercise?
What did this uncover?
Tell us whether it helped and what you discovered. It takes less than a minute.
Next tool
What is this job actually costing me
If the question is really about the price you are paying
Further thinking
Quit
Annie Duke
Working Identity
Herminia Ibarra
An Unfolding Model of Voluntary Employee Turnover
Thomas Lee and Terence Mitchell
See the thinking ↓
Book
Quit
Annie Duke
The counterweight to almost everything else written about avoidance. Duke argues that we are far better at persisting than at stopping, and that most of the cost of a bad commitment is paid after the point where we already knew. If the thing you keep postponing is something you have quietly decided against, this is the book that gives you permission to say so and a way to test whether you are right.
Book
Working Identity
Herminia Ibarra
Ibarra followed people through major career and identity change and found that almost none of them thought their way to an answer first. They acted first, in small reversible experiments, and their sense of who they were caught up afterwards. It is the strongest available argument against sitting still until you feel certain.
Article
An Unfolding Model of Voluntary Employee Turnover
Thomas Lee and Terence Mitchell
People rarely leave a job because of accumulated dissatisfaction. They leave after a shock, and often without a plan. Worth reading before you trust your own account of why you want out.
Article
One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?
Frederick Herzberg
Herzberg argues that what makes work tolerable and what makes it satisfying are two different lists. Fixing the first will not deliver the second.