Do you have a career strategy?
Regardless how you respond, the real answer is YES.
Either you are explicitly driving your career or you are implicitly letting your career drive you.
Just as young people entering the workforce often view success as getting any job; mid-career professionals often view success as either keeping their current position or getting a promotion.
Sure, when you are starting out, you may have to take whatever work you can to make ends meet. Once into the steady pace of your career and facing the personal pressures of family and finances, just keeping what you have may fill your plate.
So, if you’re like most people you are probably feeling so over-worked, over-tired, overwhelmed and under-appreciated that you simply don’t have the ‘head space’ left to think about one more thing. Working parents often tell me their ‘strategy’ is to just make it through the week… and that’s the difference between surviving and thriving in your career.
Strategies are simply plans to help you achieve a goal. Your career is too important and consumes too much of your life (2,080 hours a year for 40+ years) to simply survive it. It’s worth your time to think more purposefully about your career. Here are a few questions to get you thriving:
- What is your greatest natural talent/skill? Are you getting paid to do what you do best and love doing? If not, what can you do to change that in your current organization or another?
- If you retired doing what you are doing now, would you be satisfied to “call it a life” and move on to your golden years? If not, what can you do between now and your gold watch to fill the gap?
As my grandma used to say, “if you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there!”
PICK A ROAD!
