Take Control of Your Career: A Three-Step Plan
Are you feeling stuck in your job or unsure of your career path? It’s time to take control! In this three-step plan, I’ll help you pinpoint what’s holding you back and create a plan to achieve your goals.
With a little self-reflection and effort, you can be the captain of your career and steer it in the direction that aligns with your goals and aspirations.
Let’s get started!
Step 1: Identify your starts/stops.
Your Stops
If your fairy godmother showed up and said, “I can use my magic wand and make three things you have to do at work go away in an instant!” what would you ask her to get rid of? Identify three of these, and write them down!
Some examples include:
- remedial / non-value add / busy work
- constant firefighting in work-related emergencies
- or working on dead-end projects
Your Starts
Same idea as above, what are you not doing that you would like the ability to do? This could be something you are not doing at all today or something you are doing a little bit of that you would like to lean into. Identify three of these, and write them down!
Some examples include:
- being more confident in sharing your ideas
- taking risks
- working on an interesting project you want to be involved in
- or being perceived as a leader in your domain
Identify Correlations
Now that you have your starts and stops, self-reflect and see if you can draw connections between them. Are there things in the stop category that are keeping you from starting any of your starts? Are there things in your start category that are keeping you from addressing the stops? Or my favorite, are there things in the start category that relate to one another?! This is an important reflection as you may find that there are correlations here that may help you prioritize where you focus long term. Take this step, identify the correlations, and make a note of them, this may help in deciding which area to prioritize.
For example, you may have “I want to stop firefighting emergencies” and find you also have “I want more time to work on impactful projects.” These are highly correlated, how are you going to find more time to work on impactful projects if you are constantly firefighting?
Prioritize & Focus
Now that you have a good starting point of what to change. Prioritizing your stops and starts will help give you something to focus on today and something to come back to and work on in the future. Remember, one small step in the right direction is better than no steps at all. Be critical in prioritizing this list, feel free to co-mingle or join a stop and start to each other based on the previous correlations.
Prescribe an Impact
Identify three ways you can better impact your highest priority items. There is no other way to describe what I mean here than to give you an example.
Let’s say your highest priority is a stop that states “I want to stop firefighting emergencies” Three ways you can better impact future potential emergencies are to:
- Mitigate Future Emergencies
- Share Knowledge
- Find Operational Issues
Your version of firefighting may be different than the examples I am thinking of but nonetheless, there are specific things that can be done if you take a step back and think about it. So take the time to identify three ways you can better impact all of your starts and stops.
Step 2: Make a Plan!
Identify your first steps
You do not have to play this out to the end, you never know what small steps will drive the biggest impact, so look at the impact statements within your priority area and identify one single step you can take to drive that impact.
Let’s revisit my favorite example around firefighting emergencies. We discussed potentially mitigating future emergencies. Well, how does one go about that?
For this example, you can assess historical emergencies that have happened, are there themes I can plan for in the future? Is there a fundamental issue that should be fixed once and for all to ensure this doesn’t happen again?
Take that step… now you are moving closer to closing down a stop and giving yourself room for more starts!
Step 3: Be the captain of your ship!
Revisit, Review
This is not a one-time effort. This is a life-long journey you are taking to enable you to do the work you are passionate about. Therefore, you need to revisit and review and evolve your perspective often.
Personally, I take this approach every three months now and I am entering the second half of my career journey. Earlier in my career, I did some form of this every month.
I am sharing this because I see so many talented people do what they are told to do and continuously feel like they have no power in shaping their own careers. You do have the power, but it takes work — real honest, self-reflecting work.
Until you sit down and take thoughtful account of your starts and your stops you will continue to simply follow someone else’s path of what is right for you. Careers are long roads, think about it, it can take up to 40 years of your life. So be patient with yourself, do not compare yourself to others, and lay it all out early and often.
If you plan to take this approach I would love your feedback, please comment below and provide your own learnings. Would love to hear from you! If you have specific challenges you are struggling with and would like advice on, feel free to reach out at info@thecareerfieldguide.com and we may just provide what you are looking for in our next entry!
