Adding Your Unique Value with Sandeep Achanta

The start of a new job or chapter in your career can be a sensitive, delicate time. It’s a moment when you’re trying to convince yourself you’ve made the right move. It’s also a moment when you’re trying to convince others you can do something, which may be very different from what you were doing before.

Moving onto something new is harder than holding on to what you already have, even if what you have isn’t bringing you joy. In episode 102 of the Career Relaunch® podcast, Sandeep Achanta, a former fitness professional in India turned service designer in the UK describes how you can discover what ignites you, bravely leap into a new professional role, and embrace your unique career journey.  I also share some thoughts on overcoming the mental hurdle of starting over during the Mental Fuel® segment.

💭 Key Career Change Insights

1. While you may be in a comfortable job with relative stability, you might still feel like something is off, like you could be doing more. When this happens, you have to ask yourself when you will cross a tipping point and make the leap to do something else.
2. The decision to change careers is separate from the transition process. The actual transition could take months or years to execute, which is just part of making a major pivot.
3. If you’re dissatisfied with your current role, you have broadly two options. You can either find a way to tolerate and manage your situation, or you can proactively attempt to do something else.
4. Humility is a critical component of making any career change. You may have to start over a bit, drop down to a lower rung on a corporate ladder, or report to someone who may be younger than you.
5. During a career change, we tend to discount or dismiss away our previous experiences that don’t directly relate to a new role. Those experiences are exactly what enables you to make your unique contribution.

📚 Resources Mentioned

• Sandeep mentioned he began his exploration of service design with the Interaction Design Foundation.

• Learn more about CrossFit at the official CrossFit website.

💪🏼 Listener Challenge

During this episode’s Mental Fuel® segment, I talked overcoming the emotional hurdle of starting over. My challenge to you is to identify one small, imperfect step you could take toward doing something that could allow you to feel more energized. Ideas include:

• Giving yourself a quiet moment to just reflect on how you’ve been emotionally feeling about your career
• Taking a small leap of faith.
• Taking stock of which skills or experiences you want to carry forward so you can more fully buy into making that leap.

Remember, you don’t have to have it all mapped out right now. You just have to start somewhere.

📖 Episode Chapters

00:00:00 Overview
00:01:07 Introduction
00:03:17 Chat with Sandeep Achanta
00:45:54 Mental Fuel
00:52:04 Listener Challenge
00:52:48 Listener Thoughts
00:54:59 Wrap Up

👤 About Sandeep Achanta

Sandeep Achanta is currently a Service Designer working at the Bank of England. After spending over a decade in the fitness industry in India across various roles such as trainer, business owner, and product lead, he decided to pursue a Master’s program in Service Design at Loughborough University London. During his time at university, he worked on projects with organisations such as Mind, the mental health charity, and the Hackney Council public health team. Sandeep is passionate about designing great services that are sustainable and improve health and well-being. In his spare time, he loves playing tabletop games and reading fantasy fiction.

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💬 Comments, Suggestions, or Questions?

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🎵 Interview Segment Music Credits

• Kevin Shrout – d’entreprise en feu
• Hazy – Letting Go
• Lotus – The Warm and Absolute
• Lama House – Lupina’s Dream
• Podington Bear – Lucky Stars
• Diet 75 – 66 Halos
• Joystock – Write Your Story

📄 Interview Transcript

Joseph: Okay, Sandeep. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me here on the Career Relaunch podcast. It is great to have you on the show.

Sandeep: [03:25] Thank you so much for having me on. Like I said, I’ve been a long-time fan and listener of the podcast, so it really is a pleasure and an honor to be on.

Joseph: Let’s start by talking about what has been keeping you busy in your career and your life at this moment. What are you focused on right now?

Sandeep: [03:45] I’ve just about landed on the other side of my career change journey. I’ve just started working as a service designer at the Bank of England. And so, what I’m really focused on is getting a sense of what it’s like to work in this field, and getting a sense of how to use a new toolkit that’s at my fingers, so to speak.

Joseph: For those people, like me, who are not exactly familiar with what a service designer does, I think it’s probably a less common job title. What exactly do you do for the Bank of England?

Sandeep: [04:20] A service designer helps manage the people, systems, processes, and interactions in the end-to-end delivery of a service. Basically, think of any common service that we interact with on a day-to-day basis, like a coffee shop. That’s the easiest example because you can sort of break it down from the beans to the cup of coffee in your hand and essentially, you’re thinking about all the different steps that it goes through, all the people that enable those steps, and then how all of those things fit together.

A service designer basically looks at that and says, “Here are some things that we can do better to improve the experience, to be more efficient at it,” or might even potentially create a completely new service getting coffee delivered to your doorstep, for example, is a service innovation, so to speak.

Joseph: How long have you been in this line of work?

Sandeep: [05:12] Three months.

Joseph: Three months, okay. This is really cool because we’re catching you right at the very beginning, which is nice because I can kind of hear some of your thoughts about the transition. I will come back to your time at the Bank of England, which I know is quite a new role for you. But before we do that, let’s go back in time. I know you haven’t always been a service designer for the Bank of England. Where are you from originally, and where did you grow up as a kid?

Sandeep: [05:36] I moved around a lot when I was younger, but I primarily grew up in Chennai in South India. It was a fairly normal Indian upbringing. I grew up in school, expecting to become a doctor, engineer. I guess it w