Career planning experts generally say that you have to set a career goal – three years, five years, whatever. Then you can stay focused, learn the necessary skills and make decisions that lead you closer to your goal. In career discussions with your manager, they will probably ask you “where do you want to be in three years?”
I’ve always found this question frustrating. In fact, this is a recipe to make you mediocre. I’ll get back to this point in a moment.
First, it’s difficult to know where you want to be in five years. A colleague once asked me: “Think about where you were five years ago. Did you think you would end up where you are today?” The answer is, no. My career path has followed a twisting road I could not have anticipated or planned. I’ve learned only through experience what I love and what I don’t love, and have followed new roads as new opportunities for personal and professional growth have unexpectedly presented themselves, and as I’ve changed as a person.
Second, the truth is I’ve far exceeded what I thought I could have accomplished in five years, so setting goals can even be career-limiting. One of my favorite sayings is “It’s better to set a difficult goal and miss it than to set an easy goal and achieve it.”
Third, we start to make decisions for the wrong reasons. We set a goal of being Director or General Manager or VP and we become too political. We choose projects based on their visibility. We try to present our work in the best light, and are reluctant to be critical of ourselves. We talk ourselves into doing things that are distasteful, because it will get us closer to our ambitions, and work becomes a chore. And then we arrive at a goal we set for ourselves five years earlier only to discover it wasn’t what we thought it was.
Fourth, we turn down opportunities that don’t fit our career plan, but that would have been personally fulfilling and ultimately where our skills would have been a better fit.
Steve Jobs talked about his career path, in his famous “Connecting the Dots” speech to graduates at Stanford. Jobs dropped out of college, and used his free time to study calligraphy because he was fascinated by it. It had no practical application in his life. But years later, when Jobs was designing the first Mac, his appreciation for typography was designed into the Mac, giving us a personal computer with aesthetically pleasing fonts, and influenced other software makers.
Jobs sums it up this way: You cannot connect the dots looking forward, only looking back. So follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn road, and trust that the dots will connect in the future.
Focus on Skills, Not Goals
The bottom line is: setting goals for your career makes you say “no” to things that might lead you to a better destination, and “yes” to things you are not naturally attracted to.
I am still a believer in setting goals, and pursuing them. But not in setting five-year career goals. I focus on building my skills, trusting that excellence will take me to a good destination.
Anyone who knows me knows that I love Asian philosophies on leadership and management. Asian philosophies are very organic, focusing on the way things work naturally and then fitting yourself to your environment. This is very different from the Western philosophy, where we think cowboy-like that we can lasso our environment and bend it to our will.
Think about a river. A river starts as rainwater or melting snow high on a mountain, which first gradually, and then forcefully, drives down to the bottom of the mountain and merges with a stream or lake. A raging river is a powerful force of nature that either cuts through, or bends around, anything in its path. It can carve a groove through volcanic rock or knock down forests of rooted trees. Or, if it can’t penetrate an obstruction, it easily glides around it and continues its powerful fall down the mountain.
Now here’s the important part. A river doesn’t have a goal of where it wants to end up. It turns itself into a powerful and unstoppable force first, but stays agile enough to move around barriers. Then it follows a natural path down the mountain and manages around any obstacle in its way.
A river doesn’t have a goal of where it wants to end up. It turns itself into a powerful and unstoppable force
By understanding how rivers move, this is my philosophy to career advancement.
1. I decide what I want to be powerful at and I invest in my strengths. For me, I want to be powerful at solving complex business and marketing problems, asking great questions to drive to the core of an issue. That’s what will make me a powerful force.
2. Invest equally in your personal characteristics, especially humility, empathy and ethics. Your career path will be littered with distractions that appear to offer short-term gains to those looking for quick fame and fortune. Integrity is the only thing that will keep you on your true path.
3. Invest only minimally in your weaknesses. If someone is great at financial analysis but has less than average communication skills, I would rather develop elite financial analysis skills and remain a below average communicator over remaining a great financial analyst with average communication skills.
4. I do not set financial or job level goals for myself. I don’t care about the size of my team or my title. I measure my success based on whether I am using my core skills to their maximum, and whether I am enjoying the work.
I arrived at these insights over time. It’s refreshing for me to see that many of these insights show up in the six laws of career planning in Dan Pink’s new book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko.
The typical career path is meant to serve the corporation’s interests, because they need leaders to strive through the ranks, taking on the unthankful tasks. They are also happy to have everyone with average to above average skills. People with weaknesses are sand in the machine. Corporations don’t realistically expect you to develop elite skills. People with elite skills demand more money, they leave to work for competitors or start their own companies.
The corporation has a recipe to make you mediocre.
The only real job security is having powerful skills and the agility to maneuver around any obstacle.
So, be like the river. Invest in developing world-class skills, along with strong character, and don’t worry as much about your weaknesses or where you want to be in five years. This will turn you into an unstoppable force. Don’t worry about your long-term destination; focus primarily on doing outstanding work. You may not know exactly where you’ll end up, but then again, you never do. You will arrive somewhere, and if you ride your elite skills to your final destination, you’ll be successful. And you’ll enjoy the ride more.
Posted by brucegab 
