The simple, 4-part strategy of the successful career move
How do you treat your career moves?
Most people tend to have vague idea that they’d like to go for promotion or new position elsewhere and they sometimes even have a concrete goal and plan and then they fall at the systematising and tracking stage.
These same people are often fantastic operational managers, project managers and can lead through complexity in their organisations yet somehow don’t apply the same principles when it comes to their own career changes.
Lack of systemising and tracking puts them at a serious time and energy disadvantage and they start to:
• Lose momentum
• Feel like they’re getting nowhere fast
• Forget where they’re up to in putting their plans into action
• See dedicating time to career moves as fruitless and pointless
And ultimately they come to a grinding halt and stay stuck where they are in a career that’s not working for them.
Having helped so many clients get systems in place to be able to juggle career planning alongside a busy life I can tell you that a great system is the difference that makes the difference.
Systemising your career move saves you time, effort and energy and makes you much more likely to succeed in your plan.
I’ve identified how successful career activists make this work in 4 simple steps:
1 Shift Your Mindset
If you think you’re going to fit in career activism activities around everything else and expect it to magically yield fruit, think again. That was the old you! Career activists prioritise and treat their career planning as a project.
The moment you shift your mindset to allocating both time and a name to your plans, everything will start to change.
2 Choose Your Software
You may already have a nifty tool at your disposal such as One Note.
If not, Trello and Evernote have free versions you can use.
This is what you will use for your project planning and tracking.
3 Create Your ‘Pots’
If you’re running a career move project then your pots might look like this:
Your pots will require more or less attention depending on where you currently have deficit, perhaps in your network or your skills set.
Maybe you’re ready to go full throttle into a job search project, in which case your pots may look slightly different:
Feel free to use these templates (make a copy and rename them) for your own career moves.
4 Review and Refine
Evaluate your efforts frequently to check what’s working and what needs more input/change of strategy.
Ask yourself some questions:
What’s working well?
What are you doing that’s making that work?
Where do you need to spend more effort?
Where’s the resistance to that?
What other questions do you need to interrogate your data?
Just taking these 4 steps will radically change how you approach taking control of your career moves and I’d bet my pinky finger on it creating shifts in your results too!