What’s that saying? Fail to plan then your planning to fail? There are better versions of the same but that will do. I can’t tell you how many people fail to put even a loose plan around their career. Frankly, without a plan you will likely be stunted, stifled and frustrated. You don’t need an aggressive, leave-every-one-in-my-wake approach as some people may appear in this dog-eat-cat world.
I met with John, a HR Director yesterday, and I asked him about his career plan. He said “ I never targeted a job, I just targeted an idea “, so I am thinking sure I have done the same, I like to take-over teams that are broken or new, so if it was in sales then I wouldn’t care what the team was – but no, he meant even more left field.
John went on to say, “My first objective was to ‘ manage a team ‘, I thought I could make a miracle out of anything and they gave me a team “.
“After a few years my next objective was to appear on the ‘Top 100 Employees Chart ‘ and didn’t mind how I got there “ he said. So here I am thinking ‘yeah, that’s pretty weird but OK ‘and low and behold in his next job he appeared on the Top 100 Chart.
John, who had been in sales for 20 years, decided that for his next role he wanted to be an Executive. He went on to say, “ I was surprised when the Executive role was Director of HR and people thought I was mad leaving sales but I figured all executive roles are pretty interesting and important so went in head first “ . John often tells me how much he loves being the Director of HR.
So yesterday when I asked John about his next career move, considering how he loves his current role, he said, “I would like to have ‘VP ‘ before my name before I retire “. Pretty simple stuff but it works for me and I have no doubt he will be ‘VP of something ‘ before he retires.
If you don’t have a career plan, get out some paper and start thinking. My suggestion as a starting place you are looking for:
1. Your next 4 roles – they don’t need to be specific just focus on what you would like to be doing and the experience you would like to build on.
2. They should be spaced out anywhere from 2 to 5 years apart.
3. Try to identify the skills you will need to acquire before moving to each role.
4. Try to identify the network you will need to develop and socialise with before moving to each role.
This will provide you will an excellent foundation of a career plan that you can continue to work on with your manager, Executive or mentor.
I will be writing future articles how to identify roles you may wish to target.
So, do you have a career plan? What has or hasn’t worked for you? Write to me and tell me – also write to me about any other topics you want to hear about.
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