The Guardian has a question apparently from one of its readers. Essentially, the protagonist has a good secure job as a middle manager in a public sector organisation but feels their career has stalled - and that they may become an obstacle to change or new management. One additional difficulty is that they have a family (and presumably a mortgage) to support in London.
As someone who has been through something of the same in recent years, I'd suggest they have a few options:
Get some some side interests. People either work to live or live to work and it sounds like they are reaching the point where living to work is no longer doing it for them.
One idea is to simply think back on what you enjoyed doing as a child or young adult. Is there anything you'd like to have tried, but didn't get around to? For me, I always quite liked the idea of gymnastics - but lacked the upper body strength as a kid and had discouraging teachers. So I did a circus tryout class, found I enjoyed trapeze and aerial hoop - and booked some follow up classes. Similarly, I used to enjoy reading and so I joined a book reading group.
Consider a side-business. Despite all of the hype about twenty somethings and tech startups, it turns out that being in your mid forties is an ideal time to get going on your own business. I suspect this is partly because we've been around for a bit and learned a few life lessons along the way which are transferrable to other avenues.
The problem I suggest most potential business people have is that they think it's all or nothing with regards to running a business and that it requires lots of traditional crap like a business loan, business plan etc.
It doesn't.
Simply do a skills/stuff audit and figure out what you can/would like to sell. Can any of your skills be packaged up into a product or service?
Getting started could be as easy as listing a few things or services you might offer on eBay, Amazon, Etsy, Cafepress, Elance, People per hour, YouTube etc and then marketing initially to friends or relevant Facebook or other listings. That will tell you a lot of potential size of market, pricing etc.
Potentially, you can rope in the rest of the family to help with fulfilment, book keeping etc.
If it doesn't work, no real harm done and you can try another idea. It took me around five years of part-time experimentation before I hit on something that made a significant difference to my income.
Keep developing your skills. This could involve finding a mentor (probably outside of the organisation you work for), or a coach to identify gaps in terms of what you need to progress or maintain your current position, preferred learning styles etc.
How to learn effectively is a field which has come on in leaps and bounds since we were at school and university. Today, you can take your pick of speed reading, memory palace skills development etc which will make skills and knowledge acquisition much easier than previously.
Delegate or automate to free up time. As a middle manager, you are in a great position to delegate some of your work to others and it will (sometimes) even be appreciated as a career development opportunity. Also give some thought to what can be eliminated or automated.
For me, regular report writing was often time-consuming and lacked reward so I simply templated as much as a I could (including having a list of stock phrases to hand to cover most situations) and automated or delegated the data gathering.
Work on plan B. If you feel at some point your face will no longer fit then, it's time to consider what you can do to mitigate the risk of redundancy. Do you jump ship ahead of time, wait for a redundancy payoff, etc?
Other options are building a fund which is big enough to you to survive for a few months, and then once that is achieved consider keep going. Can you pay down or pay off the mortgage early? Or even build enough of a fund to retire early?
You can also simply make it known that you are up for a change in focus and see if a sideways shift to another department is possible.
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