Hacking your career growth: three steps to getting where you want to be

As someone whose career path has been anything but linear, career progression and self-development are things that I’ve given special attention to. I am passionate about this topic because it’s relevant to us all, regardless of our present or future aspirations.

This post will focus on frameworks, tools and techniques, rather than topics such negotiating pay rises or even looking into specific role frameworks (which are all really important) — I want to focus on more practical steps that can help regardless of your role, position, or where you want to get to.

Before I delve into the above, I wanted to do a quick poll:

Having come from a non-tech background before working as a Product Manager, I’ve felt a mixture of all of these. So the desire to learn, grow and progress once I got into tech is something that has been very present since the beginning. This particular subject resonates with me because many times in my career I haven’t felt supported as I thought I should’ve been, so that made me take a DIY (do-it-yourself) approach to career development.

With the steps that I’ll go through today I have been able to change careers, beat impostor syndrome, progress in my role, take on more challenges and responsibilities, and even negotiate pay along the way. I feel that if I hadn’t taken the time to do this, I wouldn’t have progressed as much as I did, or even be as proud of what I have achieved than I am.

What I want to convey here is that personal development isn’t synonymous with performance reviews, and it’s up to you if or how you develop and progress in your career.

What I’ll cover

I’ll be dividing this post into three steps:

• Where do I want to be?
• Where am I now?
• How do I get there?

I’ve found at times thinking about career development or progression can be overwhelming, especially when you already have lots going on at work. So, as a rule of thumb, I like to keep things simple and attainable. And that’s what I sought to do with my approach to hacking my career growth.

I’ll be exploring evaluating where we want to get to, where we currently find ourselves, and how we can get to where we want to be. This may sound cliché or very simplistic — and that may be true — , but these steps are effective; take from it what you will, and I hope that there are some nuggets of inspiration along the way.

Where do I want to be?

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

I want to start with this question, because it’s likely that your aspirations have changed (unfortunately, I haven’t turned out to be the archaeologist-fashion-designer that I dreamt of). But this is OK, because things change.

So, when thinking about setting a career goal, the best place to start is where you currently are in terms of wants and needs — whether the goal is to get a promotion by the end of the year, or be on a 10-year plan to become the next CEO at your favourite company.

The first step to hacking your career growth is asking yourself: where do I want to be? Two things are important to answer here are “why?”… and “why?” again. Taking time to articulate the why behind your goal is important to help you focus and stay motivated. I cannot stress this enough because if you, like me, can at times feel demotivated, having a goal at the back of you mind will keep you going even in the hardest of times.

So, where to start? You may already have a clear direction or goal in your head. If so, great! But if you don’t, look for some inspiration.

This is where frameworks come in (as a Product Manager I couldn’t not bring them up!). Frameworks will help you articulate your goal — which can be role-specific or personal. If you want to choose a career progression-oriented goal, you may want to go with a competency or role-based framework to help you step up to the next level. Or, for example, if you are looking to work on your leadership skills, you may want to find a more in-depth skills framework that breaks down the different facets of leadership.

The frameworks and tools below will help you articulate your goal:

Ikigai

Source: Forbes.com

The Japanese concept of Ikigai translates into “reason for being”, and postulates that the balance is achieved at the intersection where your talents and passions meet with the things that the world needs and is willing to pay for. This is an ideal framework to use if you’re not sure where to begin, or want to go back to the basics. Just take this framework and fill it out with as many answers as possible, you’ll start seeing some patterns, combinations or alternatives which will spark some interesting thoughts or revelations along the way.

LinkedIn

Yes, LinkedIn. This one if for the curious professional stalkers. You may lack frames of reference as to what is possible in your career, or you just may not have seen what people in the same position as you have the potential to do. So, that’s why I love looking at people’s profiles on LinkedIn; you can see where they started and under what conditions, and where they got to, with all the juicy journey in between. What I also like looking at is how they communicate what they did and the value they created. This is a really helpful skill when articulating your goals.

Have a look on LinkedIn. Look for people with similar roles, but different journeys: how did they get to where they are, how do they talk about their achievements? Look for people at the top of their game, what makes them stand out? What inspires you?

Moving Motivators

Source: Management 3.0

Moving Motivators is a Management 3.0 tool. It is used to reflect on your motivations. I personally use this one a lot because it affords me the opportunity to dig a bit deeper beyond my day-to-day role.

There are 10 pillars, each of which has a definition, as listed below, which encourages you to reflect on how you are currently feeling towards each one.

1. Curiosity: I have plenty of things to investigate and to think about
2. Honour: I feel proud that my personal values are reflected in how I work
3. Acceptance: The people around me approve of what I do and who I am
4. Mastery: My work challenges my competence but it is still within my abilities
5. Power: There’s enough room for me to influence what happens around me
6. Freedom: I am independent of others with my work and my responsibilities
7. Relatedness: I have good social contacts with the people in my work
8. Order: There are enough rules and policies for a stable environment
9. Goal: My purpose in life is reflected in the work that I do
10. Status: My position is good, and recognised by the people who work with me

Skills frameworks

There are frameworks that focus on skills and competencies rather than roles or responsibilities. The Mind the Product’s Product Skills Assessment is an example of this; it lays out general skills that should be developed if you work in product regardless of your role, and it’s broken down into “human” and “technical” skills.

Career framework

Different to the skills framework, a career framework focuses more on specific roles and responsibilities, describing the different levels of a profession in more detail. For example, if you are a Product Manager, you might see the different expectations of the different levels, such as Associate PM, Mid-Weight PM, Senior PM, Group PM, and Chief Product Officer.

Many companies will have their own career frameworks which make it easier to guide yourself with, and really understand what you need to do to get to the next level. However, some companies don’t have this, but you can still get some inspiration from other companies and use them to think about your own personal development; have a look at Progression.fyi, a comprehensive repository of open-source career frameworks from tech companies that you can take a look at.

Those were some frameworks that you can use to think about where you want to go. It is also helpful to set a timeframe for yourself too, so that you have something to strive towards. This will depend if it’s a short, medium, long-term, or even a lifetime goal! Think about what you want to accomplish in the next 6 months, 1 year, 5 years… write it down on a piece of paper and then come back to it after you’ve gone through the three steps in this post; think whether anything has changed or surprised you.

And one tip: your goals are great to keep you focused and moving in a direction, but don’t worry if things change, just repeat the process based on your current situation. It’s an initial goal, so don’t put yourself down if things change. As I have to constantly remind myself… be kind to yourself!

In a nutshell, thinking about where you want to be is the first step to hacking your career growth, and using a framework helps you draw up points of reference that will help you get there. Which takes me to the next step…

Where am I now?

The next step is to ask yourself: “Where am I now?”.

Once you have a framework, you’ll have your frame of reference. So, the next step is to figure out where you currently are compared to where you want to be. Again, this is really simple, but the key is to be candid with yourself. You are doing this to highlight where you’ll focus your attention next, and not to put yourself down.

The following techniques will help you benchmark yourself in relation to your goal:

Sliding scale

On the sliding scale, you determine the two sides of the spectrum; it can be 0 to 5, or “needs a lot of improvement” to “awesome”. You can get creative here. The objective is to set diametrically opposed markers, and then place yourself within that continuum.

Spider diagram

A spider diagram is another great way to visualise your current situation, and provides a more holistic view of your capabilities. Decide what skills/competencies/criteria you’ll use (the example above uses the Mind the Product framework), and then plot them on each axis. The middle where the lines all meet is 0, and the top of each line is 5/10/100. Again, think about where you sit in relation to each of these lines. Then join up the dots; it will form a shape (radar chart) you can use to better measure your progress with the passing of time — the example above demonstrates how you can overlay your first assessment with the second to see how you’ve developed.

Career journal

Lastly, I wanted to bring one that I use myself. I’ve called it Career Journal, and it uses the Moving Motivator framework. I’ve created a template on Notion that you can duplicate.

I’ve listed out each motivator, so I can then assess myself on a scale from 0 to 3, and also describe why I’ve given myself that score. Next, I can add a description of what success would look like for that motivator in 6 months’ time. This has been instrumental for me as I have to properly articulate the “why” of my score, which is also interesting to revisit later on as I then see how far I’ve come.

The critical point here is, regardless of the technique you decide to go with, you should take time out to have that open, honest conversation with yourself. The point of this exercise is to identify your areas for improvement, and even spending 30 minutes doing this will give you a boost and a sense of direction.

How do I get there?

Now, it’s time to ask yourself: “How do I get there?”.

Take a look at the benchmarking you’ve just done. What jumps out at you? Are there any obvious areas for improvement? or ideas you have to get better at each of them? List them out on a piece of paper.

Next up, for each area for improvement, take some time to think about what’s holding you back. This could be one thing, or a list of things, but it’s important to take some time to take stock of the things that can get in your way so you can mitigate them down the line.

It’s nowtime to prioritise these, so I wanted to bring some of my favourite techniques:

Dot voting

Dot voting really forces you to prioritise. Give yourself a limited number of dots (let’s say 3), and vote on the ones that you consider to be top priority.

Impact vs. Effort matrix

This is a variation of the Eisenhower Matrix. Write each blockers, ideas, or tasks on a piece of paper, and place them on the matrix along each axis. First, think about the impact that this will have on your life if you solve it (or finish it), and then think about the effort required to do this. You’ll then have each piece of paper on a quadrant on the matrix. Start with the quick wins, and then go on to the big bets which will require more planning or breaking down. Don’t focus too much energy on the ones below, as they don’t bring as much value to your life.

Circles and soup

The Circle and Soup activity helps you focus on the areas you can change or impact, and forget the ones that you can’t. Similarly to the matrix above, you’ll plot each blocker, idea or task on the circles. The inner circle is dedicated to the things that you can directly change. The middle circle are the things that you can influence and take persuasive actions to move ahead. The outer circle, called the soup, are elements of the environment that cannot be currently changed, and that you must adapt to. Ideas that stem from the inner and middle circles will help you to identify ways to respond or mitigate issues in the soup.

Mini brief

The activities above will help you prioritise what to focus on first. Once you’ve picked the ones you’d like to tackle (whether that’s one thing, or your top 3), create a mini brief for yourself. It doesn’t have to be long; put just enough information so that you remember what the goal is when you come back to it later. Take some time to think about why you are doing it, what steps indicate progress, and how you will think and feel once you’ve accomplished it. You can even add how you’ll celebrate when you achieve a milestone.

The important bit here is to break this task down even more. This is where many plans fail, because they are too big, or not actionable enough, so make sure you break the steps down. This could be something like writing one blog post a month rather than writing 4 posts every month, or scheduling a 1:1 with someone rather than trying to tackle a breakdown in communication with a whole department.

Review and check-in

The last step is to review your goals and actions and to decide when you’ll do a check-in with yourself. A good technique to instil a sense of accountability towards your action plan is called 10–24–7. When introducing a new practice or behaviour it is helpful to review it regularly, so there’s a teaching theory that suggests that to better remember something you should review it in 10 mins, 24 hours and 7 days. Review your goals and actions at the end of your session, ask yourself how you will remember them and how will you make sure you are following up on them. Then, check in the next day and also the week after to see if there are any edits or changes you’d would like to make to your plan once you’ve had some time to mull things over. If you want to go even further, tell someone about your plan, and you’ll have an accountability buddy!

So, the important thing to remember here is to start somewhere, anywhere, and start small. This is just a guide or direction, so celebrate your wins if you achieve a milestone or your goal, and if not, reflect on what didn’t go as expected, and just start over from where you find yourself at that time.

Recap

These steps seem very obvious and simple, and they are! The steps above are not time-consuming, but they do require us to carve a small amount of time out to properly articulate where we want to get to. But once we’ve done that, we’ll be left with some actions that will help us progress towards our goals.

So, to recap…

1. First of all, personal development isn’t just something you do at work for performance reviews. Do it for yourself.
2. The first step is to think about where you want to be, or even who you want to be. Thinking about this is the first step to hacking your career growth, and using a framework helps you draw up points of reference that will help you get there.
3. Second, ask yourself: “Where am I now?”. Regardless of how you go about it, you should take time out to reflect on where you are right now compared to where you want to be. The point of this step is to identify your next areas for improvement.
4. And lastly, think about how you’ll get there. Break the plan down into steps, and make sure that first step towards your goal is attainable. You’ll be more likely to follow up with the plan if you see yourself making progress early on. Plus it’ll give you that warm sense of achievement 🎉