By: Rae Lutters, Vice President – Sustainability & Aerospace, Unify Consulting
For most of my career, I believed success came from having a plan.
A clear path. A defined trajectory. A sequence of steps that, executed well, would lead to the right outcome. As engineers, that’s how we’re trained to think — structure the system, reduce the uncertainty, optimize forward motion. For a long time, I believed careers should work the same way.
Then I learned something that changed how I see all of it:
The most defining moments in our careers are rarely the ones we plan.
They arrive when something shifts — inside us or around us — and we’re forced to reconsider what we thought we knew about success, purpose, and ourselves. And in those moments, the real question is never whether you have a plan.
It’s whether you have the courage to change it.
That’s where growth begins.
The Myth of the Perfect Career Plan
There’s a tendency, especially among high achievers, to believe careers follow a predictable arc. We look around, we see the milestones and the titles, and we start measuring ourselves against them without even noticing we’re doing it.
But someone else’s definition of success may have very little to do with your own.
At some point, many of us realize that achievement and fulfillment are not the same thing. The older I get, the more I keep returning to a single question: Why am I doing this in the first place?
That question changed my career. And it led to a second realization that took me far longer to accept: plans change — and that is okay. In fact, some of the best opportunities exist precisely because they do.
We’re taught to build five- and ten-year plans. There’s real value in direction. But there’s real risk in rigidity. Life happens. Priorities shift. Industries evolve. We grow. The person I am today is not the person I started as — and I could never have planned the experiences that shaped that change. Had everything gone according to my original plan, I would have missed some of the most meaningful chapters of my career.
Plans should give you direction. They should never become your cage.
There’s a line from Lean In that has stayed with me for years: careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder. A ladder only goes one way — up, and in a straight line. A jungle gym is movement in every direction. It’s exploration. It’s growth that isn’t always linear. Every role gives you new tools, new perspectives, new ways to create impact.
No experience is wasted.
When Curiosity Becomes Conviction
In 2019, I took on the role of ecoDemonstrator program manager and chief engineer at Boeing, and with it, the privilege of being a spokesperson for the company on sustainability. For years, I carried that message. I represented the company well. I became known in the industry as a sustainability expert, and it was genuinely incredible to be part of something so much bigger than myself.
But during that time, I noticed something that didn’t sit easily with me.
I knew what I could say from the script. What I didn’t always have was the depth to answer the next question. The harder one. The technical one. The “why does this actually work?” one.
So I leaned into that discomfort. And what I found wasn’t just my own gap — it was a pattern across the entire industry. Leaders everywhere were being handed sustainability mandates without always having the depth of expertise to navigate them. I stopped asking only what solutions existed and started asking why they worked, how they scaled, and what tradeoffs they demanded.
Curiosity became conviction. And conviction became purpose.
Sustainability is not about recycling. It’s systems thinking. It’s engineering. It’s science. It’s long-term decision-making.
Once I saw the depth of the opportunity, I couldn’t unsee it. That’s what led me to pursue a Master of Science in Aviation and Aerospace Sustainability — not because I needed another credential, but because I wanted to lead with real understanding instead of borrowed assumption. To ask better questions. To stop reading from a script and start writing one.
Purpose changes how you show up. It changes the questions you ask. It changes what you’re willing to call meaningful work. Once you see that, you can’t unsee it either.
The Courage to Pivot
That clarity eventually led to one of the biggest pivots of my career.
From the outside, pivots can look sudden. They almost never are. Most begin years before the decision is visible — through curiosity, learning, and the slow alignment of values and direction. By the time the change shows up on a résumé, it’s usually the final step of a much longer internal journey.
That doesn’t make it easy.
Courage isn’t fearlessness. It’s movement in the presence of uncertainty.
For engineers, that’s deeply uncomfortable. We are trained to eliminate uncertainty, not to operate inside it. But life rarely offers complete information, and some decisions have to be made on alignment rather than guarantees.
After 25 years in aerospace — with Boeing as a defining part of my professional identity — I joined Unify Consulting as Vice President of Sustainability and Aerospace. Leaving wasn’t easy. But it wasn’t a departure from my past, either. It was a continuation of it, in a new form.
There was uncertainty. There was also clarity. Because here’s what I’ve learned about knowing your why: it doesn’t make the decision easier. It makes it clearer.
Pivots are not starting over. They are building forward. Nothing is wasted — every experience becomes part of your foundation.
The People Who Move With You
There’s one more thing I’ve learned about navigating change: you rarely do it alone.
Years ago, when I was a brand-new engineer, I met my friend Michelle at a local industry event — one not so different from the rooms I still find myself in today. We became friends, then roommates. Then life evolved, the way it does. She married, had three boys, lived abroad with her husband, and made the decision to put her career on hold to focus on her family.
Fourteen years later, with her boys older, she was ready to come back. And like so many people returning after a career break, she found the path back in daunting — not because she lacked ability, but because the door felt impossible to find.
So when I was speaking at a conference in Houston around that time, I told her: come join me. It took some convincing. I promised her we’d have fun — and we did. At that event was a program built specifically to support people re-entering the workforce, and through it she connected with a company that genuinely believed in second acts.
Today she’s a Technical Program Manager — and absolutely loving it.
I share this because shift doesn’t only happen to us. Sometimes it happens because someone holds a door open, or simply says come with me.
Sometimes a pivot is small. Sometimes it’s enormous. What matters is how you navigate it — and who’s standing beside you when you do.
Shift Happens
One of the reasons I was drawn to Unify Consulting is a phrase that, at first glance, sounds like wordplay: Shift Happens.
But it isn’t a joke. It’s reality.
Shift happens in industries. Shift happens in organizations. Shift happens in technology. And most importantly, shift happens in us.
The careers we plan rarely unfold as expected. Priorities evolve. Opportunities appear. Interests deepen. Life redirects us in ways we could never predict. The question is never whether shift will happen.
The question is how we respond when it does. Do we resist it, or learn from it? Do we see it as disruption — or as direction?
The most meaningful growth comes from moving with shift, not bracing against it.
The Path Forward
Looking back, the most meaningful moments in my career were never the ones I planned. They were the ones I chose — because they aligned with who I am and what I value.
If you’re standing at a crossroads, my guidance is simple: spend less time mapping every step, and more time understanding your why. Because when you know who you are, what you value, and the impact you want to create, the path forward may not get easier — but it gets clearer.
Authenticity builds trust.
Purpose creates direction.
Curiosity fuels growth.
Courage creates movement.
And when those four come together, something powerful happens — not because the path becomes easier, but because it becomes yours.
Your career isn’t a ladder. It’s a flight path to design — and, at times, a jungle gym to navigate.
Because plans change. People grow.
Shift happens. And that is okay.
About The Shift Series
Shift Happens is a series exploring how organizations can turn disruption into direction. We write about the real, human side of work, where change, technology, behavior, and leadership collide in ways no framework fully captures.
Every article follows one of the five currents that shape modern work:
The Human Side of Transformation, the heartbeat beneath the strategy.
Change Management as the Missing Discipline, the discipline hiding in plain sight, quietly determining who succeeds.
Technology, Tools + Human Behavior, the space where logic meets instinct, and where most rollouts live or die.
Organizational Structure, Power & Governance, the lines, ladders, and tensions that decide how work truly flows.
Leadership Micro-Shifts, Governance & Operating Models, the small shifts that create disproportionate impact.
We combine lived experience with practical insight. The kind you can apply the same day, not someday.
Shift happens! But with the right mindset, it happens through you.
If your organization is navigating a shift in technology, structure, or culture and needs practical, human-centered support, reach out.
This is the work we love! And the work we do best.
