“working identity involves revisiting the basic assumptions we use to evaluate possibilities. To illustrate what basic assumptions are, it is useful to think of our career choices as a pyramid with three levels (see figure 4-1).4 At the top of the pyramid lies what is most visible, to us and to the outside world: what job we hold in what setting. Dan, for example, was an executive in a high-tech company. One level below are the values and motivating factors that hold constant from job to job and company to company. These are what MIT career specialist Edgar Schein calls our “career anchors,” the competencies, preferences, and work-related values that we would be unwilling to give up if forced to make a choice.5 Dan’s experience has led him to value himself professionally as someone who excels at turnarounds—at making troubled companies healthy. He could perform this role on a smaller or larger scale (for example, big company or small start-up), in an advisory or a hands-on role, and as a manager or an owner, but the constant is that managerial challenge is what excites him. Dan’s turmoil over the offer of a “perfect job” that would have again robbed him of his family time, however, belies a conflict between his professional and personal values that is rooted at a deeper level. In his search, therefore, he has to plumb deeper: He must explore the final, bottom level of the pyramid to understand the basic assumptions—our mental maps about how the world works—that truly drive his behavior.”