If you've just been made redundant, there's a good chance someone has already told you it's "an opportunity in disguise".
Let's be honest. That probably isn't what you want to hear.
Redundancy can be unsettling. It interrupts your plans, knocks your confidence and forces you to answer questions you never expected to be asking. One week you're planning projects for next quarter. The next, you're updating your CV, refreshing LinkedIn and wondering where your career goes from here.
But once the initial shock begins to fade, there's a bigger question worth exploring. What if redundancy isn't simply asking, "Where should I work next?" What if it's inviting you to rethink how your experience creates value in the first place?
But somewhere between the shock of redundancy and the endless cycle of job applications, I started wondering whether I was asking the wrong question. Like so many of us, I'd assumed the goal was obvious: find another employer as quickly as possible. Get back to normal. Return to orbit.
The trouble is, what if "normal" isn't the destination anymore?
The advice everyone gives you is designed to send you backwards
When someone is made redundant, the advice comes thick and fast. Update your CV. Refresh your LinkedIn profile. Talk to recruiters. Network. Apply for everything that looks remotely suitable.
None of that is bad advice. In fact, if you genuinely want another permanent role, it's exactly what I'd recommend.
Almost nobody asks a much bigger question.
Why are we assuming another employer is the only answer?
If you've spent twenty years becoming exceptionally good at what you do, why is the default assumption that your only option is to find another organisation willing to rent your expertise forty hours a week?
It's such a deeply ingrained belief that most of us never stop to challenge it. We simply fire up Seek, polish the CV and hope someone else decides we're worth hiring.
Perhaps redundancy isn't exposing a lack of opportunity... hey, maybe it's exposing a lack of imagination.
I don't think you lost your job.
I think you lost your customer.
Imagine you've spent the last twenty years solving problems, building relationships, leading projects, calming difficult clients, training staff, improving systems or making good decisions under pressure. Where did all of that experience go on the day your role disappeared?
It didn't disappear, despite the lack of confidence you may be feeling at the moment.
One organisation simply stopped buying it, that's a very different story.
Because if one customer no longer needs your expertise, the obvious question isn't, "Who will employ me next?" It's "Who else might need what I know?"
You're no longer standing outside someone else's spaceship, waiting for permission to climb aboard. You're beginning to wonder whether it's time to build your own.
Here's the uncomfortable truth.
Many experienced professionals have accidentally spent decades building someone else's business.
Your ideas strengthened their brand, your expertise appeared on their invoices, your systems made their organisation run more smoothly, your relationships opened doors for them, your reputation gave clients confidence in them.
My friend, YOU were creating value every single day. The only problem was that almost all of it accumulated inside somebody else's organisation (and a crappy market).
I'm not saying that's wrong. Employment has been, and continues to be, an incredible path for millions of people. It offers security, camaraderie, learning and opportunities that simply don't exist when you're working for yourself.
But redundancy creates a rare moment in your career. For the first time in years, perhaps decades, you're standing outside the system long enough to ask a question that normally never crosses your mind.
What if I stopped building somebody else's rocket and started designing my own?
"But I'm not a consultant."
Fair.
But often it comes from people who have literally spent years advising colleagues, mentoring junior staff, fixing complicated problems and becoming the person everyone turns to when things go wrong.
Somewhere along the way we've invented this strange myth that consultants are a special species. They wear expensive jackets, speak in mysterious frameworks and emerge from business schools carrying PowerPoint presentations instead of personalities.
It's silliness I tell you.
At its heart, consulting is remarkably simple.
Someone has a problem, you know how to solve it.
They pay you for your experience.
That's it!
Of course, there's far more to building a successful consultancy than that. You need a clear offer, a compelling message, a network, confidence, pricing, systems and a hundred other moving parts.
But those are business problems.
They're not evidence that you have nothing worth selling.
Maybe the biggest risk was never redundancy.
The biggest risk is spending the next five years trying to recreate the last twenty.
That might sound provocative, but I genuinely believe we're living through one of the biggest shifts in professional work we've seen for decades. Technology is changing roles. Organisations are becoming leaner. Expertise is easier to package, share and sell than ever before. Businesses are increasingly comfortable bringing in specialists for projects instead of hiring permanent staff.
Yet many highly experienced professionals are still staring at the same careers page, hoping the right vacancy eventually appears.
What if the opportunity isn't on that page?
What if it's somewhere you've never thought to explore?
Exploration can feel uncomfortable because there isn't a map. That's why most people avoid it. They'd rather circle the same familiar planet than venture into unknown territory.
But every worthwhile discovery in history began with someone willing to leave orbit.
You don't need another motivational speech.
You need permission to ask different questions.
You can challenge assumptions that may have served you brilliantly for thirty years but no longer fit the world we're moving into.
Your knowledge might be worth more than your job title.
You should consider that redundancy may have closed one airlock while quietly opening another.
At From The Get Go, we spend a lot of time talking to people standing at exactly this crossroads. They're smart. Experienced. Capable. They don't need someone telling them to "believe in themselves". They need someone to shine a light on possibilities they simply haven't considered yet.
That's the real opportunity hidden inside redundancy.
Not another job...
It's a different way of thinking about your career.
One small step...
If you've been made redundant, by all means keep applying for roles if that's the direction you want to take. Employment remains an excellent choice, and for many people it will absolutely be the right one.
But don't let that be the only question you ask.
Spend some time exploring another one.
What if everything you've spent the last twenty years learning is finally valuable enough to sell directly?
That question changed my personal trajectory, it might just change yours too.
After all, the most interesting discoveries rarely happen when we keep travelling the same route. They happen when we're brave enough to leave the flight path, point the nose towards unexplored territory, and discover that the horizon was never the destination.
It was only ever the beginning.
