When is the Right Time to Leave?

Knowing the right time to leave is very hard to get right. There are also many ways of knowing as some recent high profile resignation speeches made clear and there is more to knowing than purely analytical or intellectual calculations.

However any decision should be made following a rational analysis. Three areas to look at include:

1. Opportunities

What are your short and longer term opportunities and options to develop in your team or organisation?

Where do you figure in other people’s succession plans?

Where does the organisation see you in two/five years’ time?

If you are unsure about the answers to these questions, it is worth doing research and finding out. You may find out that some of your assumptions (either positive or negative) were incorrect. This in turn may prevent you from making a decision based on an incorrect assumption.

2. Long Term Goals

Look over your CV and review the goals you had for each move you made in the past. Ask yourself how those moves delivered on your goals at the time. Then look at the goals you had for your current role and ask firstly, is the role still delivering on those goals? More fundamentally, ask yourself, do the goals remain valid today?

If the answer to one or both is in the negative, it should prompt a review both of goals and role and what is missing. This will help you frame realistic goals for the next phase of your career and start to think about new roles and/or organisations/sectors you might consider that would better deliver on your important goals.

3. Values

Values in terms of work are the things that are important to you in your career and day to day working life. As such, many of your work-related values will change over time and vary according to different contexts.

Take a look around your team, organisation, stakeholders, sector and portfolio of work responsibilities and ask how satisfied are you in your job now? How are your values reflected in the work you do and the people you work with?

If the answers tend towards the negative, consider how your values could be better respected elsewhere.

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Once you have this information should tap into other aspects. These include looking at wants, dreams and wishes as opposed to purely rational career goals.

Asking yourself how you feel about balance in life, wanting to step up or step back, wanting to specialise or broaden focus, feeling a need to recharge or recover from overwork or overstress, even wanting a complete change are all great questions to ask as they complete the analytical picture and allow you to bring your sense of what you need into the equation.