Having spent the last few years aiding high performers in the planning of their career, I’ve learned that even the most educated and most successful constantly manage their goals and activities to keep their career moving upward. Lifetime employment is unusual in today’s business, forcing the need to plan for change much more often than my parents did. In this post, I’ll share a few tips that will help you plan your career in the same way the highly successful plan their own.
When I began working with professionals who wanted to get more out of their careers, Most of my clients had a degree and a job. They had been working for many years and had become complacent in their position. Unfortunately, that complacency doesn’t last long. Just a couple of years later, they feel the itch to do something different. The novelty wears off, the challenging work ceases to challenge them and their pay fails to reward them.
These high performers work hard. They take on the most challenging jobs, travel around the globe and put in late hours and weekends. Their jobs aren’t easy. Yet, despite all of this, high performers keep pushing to do more and get more. This internal drive forces the constant upgrading of skills, development of strategy and pursuit of expertise to assist their efforts.
High performers aren’t average professionals. They have ‘mad’ skills, as my kids would say. Many of my clients have multiple graduate degrees and PhDs. You wouldn’t think these individuals would need to plan as much as they do, considering their credentials. But they do. Let’s look at them a little more.
Building A Yearly Career Plan
For many of us, creating a career plan is difficult. The biggest difficulty is defining what we want to accomplish. We are always reaching for the brass ring, yet most of us don’t really define what the brass ring really is. For high performers, they don’t strive to reach their brass ring, or end goal, every year. They realize that getting to their career goals in one giant leap won’t happen. It takes a lot of time to get to there. So, it isn’t helpful to build a 5 or 10 year plan. You can’t really execute to a plan that spans that many years.
High performers choose to develop a plan that they can execute and achieve goals on a yearly basis. The plan defines goals and activities that are to be accomplished in the near future. This allows them to have visibility to their smaller brass rings (goals that are done in 6 months to 1 year). Achieving these intermediate goals also serves as a motivator, satisfying their need for gratification, but not enough to curb the internal desire to keep moving to their end goals.
The yearly career plan helps keep their activities on track and aligned with their end goals. It also provides the needed flexibility to adapt and change with the changing face of business. Everyone knows companies transform themselves almost every year, by mergers and acquisitions, downsizing, spinoffs and so on. These events can impact your plans since these organizational transformation often rearrange the corporate ladder and reassign the players in the corporate game.
Acquiring Resources
When it comes to finding the resources they need to continue their plan, high performers are great at getting what they need, both internally and externally. They identify what they need and then go get it. They don’t wait on anyone to do it for them.
Internal resources are the knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) required for moving to the next level of their career. Higher performers do a couple of unique things to identify what they need. First, they build a mentor group of working professionals. They find people who are in the position they want to be in and other professionals above and below it. This mentor groups is contacted weekly to discuss issues and challenges. Their advice is critical to the success of the yearly plan.
The second activity is networking. High performers aren’t afraid to reach out to professional and social groups to meet new people and learn from them. They realize that the next opportunity isn’t handed to you because you do a good job. The next opportunity comes because you are in the right place. To improve the probability of being in the right place, you have to be in different places. That’s where networking comes in.
External resources are sought for specific needs. As I mentioned before, high performers develop yearly goals and activities. Often, the identification of the KSAs is not so easy, especially if the goal requires a career change or a jump from middle management to upper management. High performers will engage with consultants that have specific expertise in these areas. They don’t spend a great deal of time with these experts, usually just long enough to get the direction they need.
As I have heard from the extremely successful, some of these people were billionaires, it doesn’t do you much good to waste a lot of time on something you don’t understand. Find someone who has the answer and move on. Navigating the waters of corporate America is difficult and requires more knowledge than any one individual possesses. You must reach and drain the expertise from as many people as you can. Then, when you reach higher levels, you put brilliant people under you so your organization can continue to grow exponentially.
High performers are deeply driven to succeed. Nonetheless, they understand the success isn’t easily obtained. It requires planning and more planning. Every single year they plan and access where they are. This review isn’t like what your company gives you, you know, 15 minutes for you to tell them what you’ve done. This assessment tells them exactly what they have done according to their plan, where the weaknesses and strengths are and what changes need to be made. High performers are critical of their own abilities and strive to make sure they are always at the top of their game. Is that a lot of work? It sure is, but they don’t do it all by themselves. High performers build teams, network and grow their own support group.
If you’re hoping for more success in 2010, learn from High Performers; that is, decide what you want, choose the best methods for getting it, plan what you (and others) have to do, and then execute.
Decide, choose, plan and execute. Over and over. Year after year. That’s how you build success.
Author:
Todd Rhoad, MSEE, MBA is Director at BT Consulting, a career consulting firm in Altanta, and author of Blitz The Ladder. Stay tuned for his upcoming book, The MBA Owners Manual. He can be reached at todd.rhoad@blitzteamconsulting.com.
