Mistakes

Let's talk today about career planning it period most people do career planning at exactly the wrong time. You do it when you're angry, freaked out desperate, pissed off, stressed out – – every quality you should not have when you're trying to plan a career. That's your mindset at those times.

You're angry at your boss. You stressed out from your work, from fear of making a career change, or you’ve been out of work for a while and you're asking yourself, “oh! Is there any future in this for me you?” Exactly the wrong time.

If you’re in that mode now, this video isn’t for you. That’s because you really shouldn't be thinking about career planning at these times. Yes, you can think about insofar as the choice that you make but I want you to think bigger picture. You see, in operating under these circumstances, you are in the wrong mindset. You can't do research because you're in survival mode, right? You have to land that next role that.

Instead, once you land that role, I want you to sit with yourself. I want you to think about where you want to go and how you get there. So the classic example I give is if you were driving from San Francisco to LA or Denver to Salt Lake City and you didn’t have a map, you might be able to figure it out but it might be by accident. You might have a vague idea of how to get there but you really wouldn't know how to get there (yes, I know. You can use your GPS on your phone. HA! HA! HA! But you know what I'm talking about).

You have to get concrete about these sorts of things and really, at the point where you or job hunting, this is exactly the wrong time. Instead start meeting with people in talking with them about the goals that you have, where you are now and start planning ahead. Thus, even if you land this role, I want to be thinking about what you prize is. What's the destination that you want to get to period where you want to be five years from now. No, I’m not thinking of this from the standpoint of an interview question. I am thinking about you. I want you to be thinking about your career period where you see yourself five years from now. Do you know how to get there?

You see, most people have this vague notion that “I want to be in the C suite,” or “I want to be an important individual.” They don't know how to get there. They just think that if you do your job well, you are going to get promoted and that's an industrial age mindset. It doesn't work that way.

Number one in career planning is you need information. Number two in career planning is you are probably going to have to change organizations with some regularity because the frequency with which someone rises from the mailroom (to use that classic industrial example that we’ve all been bred with) to the C suite – – let’s is start counting the number of people that we know who who's done this.

None, right?

It doesn’t work that way, but we will think that that's how it's can happen for us because we are different. We have been trained like chimps to believe this way.

So, start thinking ahead. Where do you need to go. Start doing informational interviews with people who've gotten there or are close to there or at the next wrong or the next two rungs up from you and start talking with them about their career progression. What has their journey been like? What have they been doing? We did they do to advance themselves so you can learn some of the strategies and operate from a big picture perspective, rather than in the weeds all the time.

What happens with most people is they start thinking about the job and executing their job well. That is important period but there's the bigger picture about looking out for you and thinking of yourself as the chairman of the board of your own organization with the stockholders being yourself, wife/husband or partner. You have kids there in the mix as well; minority shareholders as you will. You have to think of yourself as being a company of your own.

How can you deal with your assets best? If your significant other has an important career where they’re the dominant earner and has the dominant potential, then, you have to do things to support them with you in the secondary role, focusing on their needs. But not operating reactively. Operating proactively.

Do you need to go to grad school? Do you need to get supplemental training? Do you need to start getting involved with networking and business groups in order to build your network of relationships? Do you start needing to get together with consulting firms or accounting firms and their partners in order to to get known to them? That’s because, often, they are the recommending source for a lot of opportunities.

Again, think strategically here and start looking ahead to what you need to do in order to advance.