Why haven’t you heard of the Boundaryless Career before?
The data suggests that the creative industry is structured and maintained by Boundaryless Careers. So why have you never heard of them before?
The boundaryless career was the title given to careers like yours and mine in 1996 by theorists Arthur and Rousseau. They sought to understand how freelancers develop and maintain careers over time, as they move from project to project. Research was conducted on creative careers right across the film industry in Hollywood, and further afield, to uncover how people entered the industry, established themselves and sustained their careers. From this work a theory was outlined, strategies identified and guidelines constructed. All aimed at understanding how successful freelance careers like yours and mine develop. These ideas have gone on to inform governments, arts council policies and artists’ development projects across the world.
So why haven’t you, as a freelance creative, heard of them before?
Well, you might have done if you work in arts policy, career development or perhaps as the result of a very random google search.
However if, like me, you only stumbled across these ideas twenty years after starting your own creative career, you might struggle to understand how that could be.
Surely if there was research like that it would be a part of every arts course in the land? You’d have heard someone throw the term around over a coffee or pint as you talked shop with a fellow creative? Some helpful soul would have dropped the ideas in your ear as you first spoke of your interest in pursuing a creative career?
The Boundaryless Career: Who’s driving the bus?
Boundaryless careers refer to careers that are not bound to any one employer, job or organisation. The name sits in contrast to traditional careers, the bounded ones; those that remain within the context of one employer, job or organisation.
A metaphor that is helpful here is to think of the bounded career as being a passenger on a company’s bus. The company decides the overall direction of travel, when you can get on or off, and where you sit throughout.
In comparison, the boundaryless career is one where you drive your own bus from project to project. You are responsible for driving, directing, maintaining and improving your bus as you go. It’ll be of no surprise to hear that the data suggests that creative industries are structured and maintained by Boundaryless careers.
But what’s new here? Haven’t we always had to find our own way in our career? Yes, we have, but the Boundaryless career theory offers us for a clear overview of how we do that effectively for the first time.
Boundaryless careers require a much broader set of skills and competencies than more traditional ones in terms of career management. Traditional bounded career-goers have less decisions to make, on a less regular basis, about the direction of their careers and get more support in making them. Most companies offer regular appraisals, career support through HR or career coaching and the option of popping in to your manager to talk about the next stage of your career when you feel you need to. All very helpful.
Freelancers by contrast, have more decisions to make, more often and have less support in making them.
Speak to any creative who’s just entered the sector and they will tell you how ill-equipped they feel to deal with the reality of their freelance career. They are trying to make their way on a bus they have no idea how to drive, with no map, and with little in the way of career support.
"For the individual worker (creative) project networks provide more varied work, opportunity, and development potential then do traditional firm careers."
Candace Jones
Every type of meaningful career, be it bounded, boundaryless or otherwise, will have its challenges and opportunities. Knowing about Boundaryless careers and being able to take an informed approach to your own means you can pre-empt challenges, build relevant skills and start from a place of knowing.
Boundaryless Career Stages
Much of modern career theory looks at how we best develop our careers in a world that is constantly changing. As a result, there has been a move away from looking at careers as a progression of neatly defined stages where you predictably move from one to the next. The boundarlyess career is dated in this respect but still offers us a useful frame to understand our career development blind spots and where we might be best invest our time and energy next.
Beginning: Getting access to the industry
Identifying gatekeepers and your tribe
Demonstrating interpersonal skills and making connections
Showing motivation and persistance
Crafting: Learning required skills and industry culture.
Learning technical skills and roles
Assimilating industry culture - norms and values
Demonstrating reliability and commitment
Navigating: Building reputation and personal networks
Establishing reputation through quality work
Expanding one's skills and competencies
Developing and maintaining personal contacts
Maintaining: Expanding the profession and balancing the personal
Mentoring and sponsoring others.
Balancing personal needs and professional demands
I think a more helpful way of exploring these stages is to think of them as a cycle. Like the seasons of the year. The more familiar we become with each season the more confident we become in managing them,. Change in our career becomes a natural process we learn to be on the lookout for.
Boundaryless Career Competencies: Getting granular
The theory moves on to explore what skills and competencies the creatives in the film industry were using to move across stages, and this, for me, is where it gets really interesting. Here is where we begin to see in detail what driving the bus of your creative career really entails.
The image that the authors of this theory use to describe the process at play here is one of multiple threads being spun together to create a unified, sustainable career. I think it's notable how many of these threads are missing from how we, both as individuals and as a sector, think about creative career development.
Typically our focus falls on just two strands. Knowing What and Knowing Where; training, creating work, gaining exposure and on the job experience. All of which are crucial but far from the full picture as you can see.
If we are interested in developing sustainable careers the Boundaryless Career reminds us to broaden our approach to a much wider and more holistic one. One that includes Knowing Why, Knowing Whom, Knowing When, Knowing How. This is quite different from our traditional approach to career development which is based primarily on bounded careers.
“Good interpersonal and communication skills are critical for career success in the film/creative industries because of the highly interdependent and ambiguous nature of the work"
Candace Jones
We are beginning to see things change. Support services for mental health within the creative sector have blossomed as we begin to fully acknowledge the challenges of maintaining a boundaryless career. Universities and third level training are also beginning to provide creatives with workshops in boundaryless career skills.
The cogs in the machine are beginning to move but as a freelancer you don’t have to wait for the machine to get there. You can start as and where you are. You are, after-all, driving your own bus and permission is not required to either pick a new direction, park up for awhile or do whatever you feel you need to develop your own career.
Next Steps:
Review the Boundaryless Career Competencies overview above.
Based on where you are right now in your career, identify some projects or actions in each area that you could do to develop your own career.
Now create a 'quick win' list for each section to get the ball rolling; a few simple 5-10min actions for each, to do in the next week or so. A single email, piece of research etc. just to get the ball rolling.
Identify which area you would reap the greatest benefit from focusing on right now. That could be an area you are already doing well that you want to build upon, or a blind spot that you have neglected.
Summary
The boundaryless career is far from the full picture. Criticisms made of it have been that it doesn't acknowledge fully the systemic issues that cut marginalised groups and individuals out. Neither does it address the level of uncertainty in our career progression or the role of random chance, which we know to be a significant factor.
Still, the boundaryless career offers us an understanding of the territory we move in as creatives and a road map for how we might begin to sustain our careers long term. It gives us the lie of the land. As such the Boundaryless career offers us a starting point from which to evaluate where we are in our careers and what the next best step might entail..
"One must seek out projects that challenge and expand ones skills. In project networks, the individual, not the organisation, is responsible for developing and enhancing skills.”
Candace Jones
Fundamentally, the Boundaryless career theory introduces us to the skills of a self-directed creative career for the first time. It highlights the need for creatives to understand and take ownership of the who, what, where, when, how and why of our careers. It makes clear the complexity of freelance creative careers and offers us all a prism through which to understand them better.