Dilip Saraf ? Blog Archive ? Learning to Plan Your Career!

Aug 21st, 2011 by Dilip Saraf

Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.

?Charles F. Kettering, Inventor, businessman (1876?1958)

Most professionals do not plan their careers as well as they should. They decisively choose a certain track during their early academic life with care, but once they graduate and land their first job, they often rely on resources at their company or on their company?s career advancement process, attending local conferences, and searching for various online resources, which they think may be helpful to propel them forward. This is not the most effective way from what I have learned over the years guiding thousands of professionals in their careers! As the quote at the head of this article suggests only your imagination can limit how far you can go in your career (corporate, academic, or entrepreneurial).

Here are 10 takeaways from my own experience to think about:

1. One of the common myths about career plans is that such a plan requires you to anticipate how the future is going to bring changes to technology, economy, business, and the world. Change is constant, so learn how to see patterns of change and how they will affect your future growth opportunities.
2. A career plan is based on your own growth and on creating increasing value to the business in which you are employed (this also applies to entrepreneurs, solo professionals, and business owners). So, making a growth plan is the foundation of a solid career plan. A growth plan requires a growth mindset, not a fixed mindset (Read Carol Dweck?s, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success)!
3. If you lack clarity in your vision for yourself, look around and see after whom you can model your growth. Talk to people that you think are successful and seek their guidance?even mentorship?in creating your own vision for yourself. Do you have a role model who inspires you? Can you get them to mentor you? If not, can you follow their blogs and activities online?
4. Once you nail down your vision, break that into a time-based action plan. Then look for career paths (on LinkedIn, for example) of those, who are already there.
5. As we advance in our career we go through different points of inflection. Each point of inflection requires a specific mindset and an intervention. For example, going from an individual contributor to a manager requires not just doing great work as an individual contributor, but also an ability to fundamentally shift how you pivot around that success to become a people manager/leader and an ability to get work done through others. A similar point of inflection occurs when you are moving up from being a manager to a senior executive. Here, you need to learn how to shift from being an effective manager to running a great business.
6. Find mentors, who can work with you to help you in your career and share your plan with them. Learn from their experience to accelerate your own growth. Be a mentor to someone else.
7. Volunteer your time to some cause that is important to you. In many volunteer organizations it is easy to be working alongside with someone, who has already made a name for themselves in their field. Become visible by doing great work in your own area of expertise, or use that platform to professionally grow in a direction that is new to you. Volunteer organizations rarely ask to see your r?sum?, but that experience can be showcased in your r?sum? for your own growth!
8. Learn and acquire some of the basic skills that are expected in your position of increasing responsibilities that come from your career-growth plan. For example, as an executive you are expected to have excellent communication skills and executive presence. These are learned skills and not nature-given!
9. No matter where you are in your career and on your growth plan, never assume that the next promotion is automatically yours to have. Do great work by first stating what you are going to do, exceed the expectations, and then claim your prize. Do not assume that you are going to get it just because you did great work!

10.? Above all, be nice to others, respect them as you respect yourself, and have fun!

Good luck!

Posted in Career Repositioning, Career Tips, Enterpreneurship, Job Search, Life & Living, Mentoring, career growth, leadership

Source: http://blog.dilipsaraf.com/2011/08/learning-to-plan-your-career/

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