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Build a Personal Strategic Plan for Your Career

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Many moons ago, at the ripe young age of 32, I felt like a beached whale. Over the first decade of my career, I had been very successful in two different careers, i.e. prep school teaching/coaching and insurance sales. I was very successful. I was miserable. Something was very wrong but I couldn’t figure out what. Being Irish, I blamed myself.

My instinct told me to inventory my background and my skills in order to take control of my career and my life. Three concrete steps came to me.

First, having undergraduate and graduate degrees in Classics, I reverted back to this disciplined training with its many messages of “study the past if you would divine the future.” This was the beginning of me taking control of me. So, without much idea of where it might lead me, I wrote a life history. Data! Patterns were noted and genuine insight ensued.

Secondly, I took my in-depth insurance training and applied this to myself. In sales, we had been very well trained (by a great company, the Northwest Mutual) in the following manner:

  1. Understand your product well
  2. Position this product in the marketplace by developing your “ideal prospect”
  3. Build a comprehensive sales strategy (the approach)

I took these three “product marketing” directives and came up with three corresponding questions to relate to my dilemma:

  1. Who am I? (Product Knowledge)
  2. What do I want? (Product Positioning)
  3. How do I get it? (Sales Strategy)

This helped me create a lot of hard data. I came to understand why I was wandering in the desert and began to compile snippets around a picture of the ideal job for me.

Thirdly, I decided to take the pressure off of myself of trying to find the exact next job at age 32 simply because, even armed with all this data, I was still in a fog about the “solution” to my problems. Instead, I decided to try to create the “last job” in my career (age 55-65). I will explain more on this in a later post but it was this exercise that allowed me a way to portray how I would define success on my own terms. The answer was so very simple but it only came by asking the right question.

I knew what I wanted (question two: what do I want) and it was driven from some very comprehensive work on question one (who am I, really?). It was all I needed.

So I was my own first client. This same “front-end piece” is precisely what I have taken thousands of clients through for all these intervening years. Like me, each person starts to “get it” quickly. Momentum is created. A body in motion…

Take the time to know yourself

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I encourage my clients to look for career options that use both their signature skills as well as ones they will enjoy. Money is important too – everyone likes to have physical and financial security, but for most it is not the best marker for career satisfaction. Nevertheless, as a current career segment draws to a close – voluntarily or not – individuals can get nervous about “what’s next” and begin to rationalize why taking on an assignment that is available in the moment, even if it lacks fulfillment, is the right move. Make a couple of those rationalized decision in a row and all of a sudden your career may be off the rails.

It is an axiom that what got you to where you are today may not get you to where you want to go. Regular self-assessment is one way to make sure you are working towards your career goals with the right skills. The process of self-assessment should be a reflective process. What can you learn about yourself from your recent history? Your not so recent history? Ask yourself some thoughtful questions and write down the answers.

Take time daily in small increments

Most people find “self” time is hard to find and when found doesn’t come in large blocks. Be creative and, if necessary, start out by taking snippets of time from other activities.

If you delay starting until you can find 4 hours per week to devote to your career remodel it will never happen. Instead, look at your schedule for tomorrow and find 15 minutes. As you begin this process you should focus on creating motion and progress and not be concerned with how fast results are realized. Once you get in the habit of saving time for investing in your career work you will be surprised how quickly the results will come!

Start with self assessment

Career change is not just about what’s next. Good career development is taking time to fully understand the product offered by you (Me, Inc.) in the marketplace; creating a future for the product in your mind’s eye and going about achieving that vision. You may be tempted by, and take, some detours along the way – and that’s ok. Keep your motivation close and refer to it often. For most, your ability to realistically document your vision and what you want to change will help fuel your motivation for the paths ahead. There may be many curves in those paths, but the journey is as rewarding as the destination!

Where to begin? Here are some suggested questions to begin your self assessment:

  • What do I do well? What can I do better?
  • What brings out my best? What blocks me from bringing out my best?
  • What are my areas of concern that need further development?
  • What the three key events in my career that were critical turning points? Why?

There are literally hundreds of good questions. Find the ones that are right for you.

The 3 simple questions that guide your career

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Career planning is no different than strategic planning for an organization.

First, you must know and understand the history of your “company”, aka Me, Inc. We call that the WHO AM I? phase, or the PRODUCT KNOWLEDGE phase. Without history, we cannot learn from the successes and failures of our past. We refer to this as “No Data, No Plan.”

Once you have historical data and themes (otherwise known as PRODUCT POSITIONING), you can start seeing strengths and barriers that have been hidden for most of your life. You will learn what it is you want to “sell” from Me, Inc. You’ll learn what you are an expert at and what is holding you back from reaching your potential. We call this – WHAT DO I WANT?

Finally, once you’ve defined the product and positioned it in the marketplace, you can make a step by step plan to get to the place you want to be, which is the HOW DO I GET THERE? Phase.

So it’s as simple as that:

  1. Who are you?
  2. What do you want?
  3. How do you get there?

Only four things can prevent you from doing this planning:

  • lack of purpose
  • lack of tools
  • lack of motivation
  • lack of time

Think about these barriers. Each one is a deal breaker if your goal is to take control of your life and your career. There is neither other way nor any other person to help you. Only you can help you. Once you are the owner and driver of your own change process, others can help you. But you must be the president of Me, Inc.

It’s not easy to work through these things but if having a career that you are excited about every day means something to you, maybe it’s worth the time and effort.

No Data, No Plan

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I would like to offer an analogy to compare career and life planning with business planning. I realize that most of you are business people and could never imagine trying to help a client or start a project where you were given no data about the client/project’s history. In other words, they were unwilling to give you any data for you to analyze and all they really wanted from you was a crackerjack marketing plan. Wouldn’t you say that’s a rather impossible task? The same would hold true for any consultant. For example, if you are a CPA or a financial consultant, how could you ever create a financial forecast if you are not able to study the historical financials?

How old are you? Let’s say you are 30. Say you are a 30 year old company. How much data do you have on your company?  The idea here is that it is virtually impossible to help somebody build a career plan and life plan without very carefully analyzing the history of this 30-year old person. To whit, how much data could you come forward with if I asked you by tomorrow to bring all the data on You, Inc. and organization that was incorporated today? If you are like most people, you could come up with virtually no data!

In this case, as with business planning, if we have no data, there can be no analysis, and no business design and therefore no plan in effect. Both you and this mythical company are stuck.

So the difficulty here is that with no data, there can be no plan. What everyone ends up with then is pure and unadulterated emotion. When asked “what should I do” – I am stuck, frustrated, angry and feeling very blocked. Emotion, here, is our enemy.

Why you should read a commencement address every year

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Each year, we are inspired by successful individuals who are asked to share their knowledge and wisdom to graduating seniors. What better time to inspire students than just before they are heading out into the work force, right? Well, we try to continue to stay inspired by reading commencement addresses if we are not in attendance. This is a favorite of ours that we often refer to in order to remind ourselves and others that it is possible to “give meaning to your life” once you decide to take the reigns:

“You alone will have to define the feedback which is essential to give meaning to your life.  For some, that feedback will include things like money, power, fame, status or countless other ingredients that are available to you.  Down deep, you will come to know that you – you alone – have to decide this question or live your years in anguished unfulfillment.  In connection with this point, you should also be aware that for a good part of your life you will be playing to those in the grandstand, a grandstand which includes your parents, your teachers, and your peers.  At some point, however, you will discover that that grandstand loses its preeminence or, at least, that a more important grandstand exists inside yourself.  So as you work to define your required feedback, remember that ultimately it is a lonely enterprise, for your deepest satisfactions must finally be internal not external.” Read the full commencement address.

Robert Ward, May 28, 1979.