Active Planning – A Modern Age Career Plan
Your career may span several decades of life and so executing your career plan will go on that long as well. As they say, hope is not a strategy so the final part of the whole career framework is setting up and executing your simple but very effective career plan.
A career plan is just a set of milestone-like experiences that have to be attained in order to attain your career aspirations.
Some experiences can be forecasted. Some appear as unexpected opportunities and some as threats to disrupt your career. Careers rarely go exactly as originally planned, life doesn’t either, so your plan has to be able to adapt to changes.
“A career plan is just a set of milestone-like experiences that have to be attained in order to attain your career aspirations.”
A Very Flexible Plan
Although any and all of the four elements of a good career can change over your lifetime, those around motives and fit seems to be the most stable.
It makes sense as the things that motivate you as well as the manner in which you do things are largely personality based and personality usually doesn’t change a whole lot once established. You can always flex behavior driven by your personality situationally, but permanently changing yourself is a lot of work. Most people don’t even try but instead find roles and situations that fit their personality as it is.
Your aspirations and your strengths on the other hand can, and often do, change as time and life go by and as things happen in your world.
Strengths in fact should change. Your skills should get stronger as you go from novice through to mastery of whatever hard and soft skills you choose to employ.
In addition, as your career progresses you will probably need to develop some average skills into strengths. For example, if you have always been an individual contributor and decide to work towards getting a promotion into management, that move requires you to develop strengths in interviewing, assigning work to the right people on your team, and giving constructive feedback. All things you didn’t have to do as an individual contributor.
Adding to all of this, the demands of the modern workplace have changed. Most companies these days have a flat organization chart with very few “assistant” jobs that were once used for development of staff. So unless the organization is growing fast or has high turnover there is not as much opportunity for promotions into those few positions.
In addition, jobs can go extinct and jobs can be created. Reviewing the current and future “demand” environment for jobs you are interested in will highlight the need for your plan to be flexible in order to take advantage of opportunities that appear and to steer away from career threats, mainly stagnation, boredom and obsolescence.
In other words the bigger situation in which you do your work is always changing. That’s why the responsibility to manage your career is 100% yours. You are the only one who cares about what all the changes mean to your career! Here is what a practical, controllable, modern day individual career plan looks like.
Your Plan
By thinking of the third job in the lineup first you can research and network with incumbents and their bosses to see what experiences you would have to have in your background in order to be considered a viable candidate for that type of role.
The plan starts by plotting out a line of three jobs in a row. First is the job you have now. Next is the third job out. Then finally, the second job. This is not a typo, that is the correct order. The key to the plan is always identifying the third job out you would most want at any point in your career, and then talking with people who have that job to determine what skills and experiences are needed to be a viable candidate for that type of role in the future. The next job then prepares you for the third one, given what you discovered you need as experiences. And in your current job, you should look for ways to get the experiences you need to be a viable candidate for the next job. It is a continuous process, or put another way, a never ending chain of events.
Now, when hunting for your next job, you know what elements have to be a part of it in terms of experiences, skills, relationships, and visibility in order for that role to prepare you to be a candidate for the third job out in whatever company that has the opening. Be open to the possibility that it might be your own company as this is an excellent way to help determine if you should work for yourself as well.
After moving up, the new role becomes your new current job and you think of a new third job to start the networking and research process all over again. Rinse and repeat for as long as you want to be challenged!
This planning process has so many advantages. First of all, it’s active management on your part. You are not waiting for a company to give you a promotion, you are getting it yourself. When you see the opportunities that will prepare you, go after them when you mostly ready. They do not have to be in your current company. Using this process puts you in more control of your own advancement.
Second, by getting advice from multiple actual “owners” of the third role, you are getting the most accurate info possible relative to what skill and experiences to learn and develop in todays marketplace. No guessing and no getting derailed by old and outdated advice.
Finally, the third job discovery part will help you build the right professional relationships. The networking component puts you in a position to find great mentors as well as to grow the perfect network to find that third job when the time comes. You will have the network in place before you actually need it. You can also target people in the best companies, close to your home, that have a purpose and mission that excite you. Why not!
Career Self Reviews
Managing your career is an ongoing process, just like managing your retirement plan is. Every six months’ review where you are and if you are hitting your milestones, meaning learning the things you need to learn to advance and getting the experiences you need on your resume. Try January 1st and July 4th so you can easily remember to do it. It’s your career new year and your career independence day! The review includes counting up how many networking meetings you had, how many are scheduled and what assignments you took on or volunteered for. It includes a review of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in you, in your industry, and in the economy in general.
Questions to ask yourself include:
Are you using your strengths most of the time in this role?
What isn’t a strength that needs to be if you want to attain your third job?
What are you going to do about that? Meaning what assignments do you need to ask for or volunteer for?
What is the demand for your third role in the market place? Is there a threat it will be automated or outsourced away sooner than later?
If some new opportunity appears, how will you evaluated it and decide to pursue it or not, even if it wasn’t in your plan?
Are the compensation and benefits fair enough?
Aspirations, Strengths, Motivations, Fit, Time, Planning and Compensation
These are the elements of a whole career planning framework. Each additional post will add a bit more detail to each of the elements. If you get stuck or lost in the process my advice is to re-review your choices in these elements in the order above, the bigger picture items first. As you do so remember ….
A career is a subset of life. And there are lots of ways with the same strengths and motivations that you can build a successful, rewarding, fulfilling and happy life.
Life and career isn’t a balance because they cannot be separated. You bring home to work with you and you bring work home with you. Instead it is a blending of both. Just plan to make it a blend that delivers on your aspirations.
I hope this framework helps you to take control over your career so you realize your potential and have a successful and enjoyable life!
Dave