3. Craft what’s next and get into action.
With a future vision and perhaps having taken a break, you’re ready to build a plan towards what’s next for your career, charting a course that’s uniquely right for you.
You’ll want to get clear on what’s important to you, paths you could possibly take and want to explore, and then develop a plan for prototyping and testing the paths, getting into action.
Below are five steps to consider when crafting a direction that’s uniquely right for you.
1. First, identify what’s important to you in your next career path.
Pull out your earlier exercises—your Career Hygiene Audit and your Decade by Decade Horizon Map—for reference and consider: are you ready for the next big challenge on your chosen career path, or are you ready for a career pivot? Never think it’s too late to follow a new ambition or jump into something new. There are many examples of “late bloomers,” if you will, from Madeline Albright to Nancy Pelosi to Martha Stewart who found the next stage of career success at a later age. It may not be the easiest path, so you should go into it with eyes wide open, but it is possible. Also, don’t think that you need to start completely new; consider from your Horizon Map what you might want to be pulling forward and leveraging from your past into what you want to create now. There are always transferable skills and wisdom gained from our past; make the most of what you’ve learned.
Build a guide map that brings together all the career consideration factors to focus your efforts and help you know when you find the right thing as you start to explore options. The acclaimed book “What Color is Your Parachute” offers a good approach. Our Career Search Master Plan starts with having you focus on your What, Why, and How Far. This also needs to be complemented with considerations for:
The How & With Whom. We think about this as your Personal IQ and EQ, what makes you your unique you, considering how you like to work and with whom. What are your skillsets, strengths, and expertise? What is the knowledge you have amassed and bring to your work? What is the unique way you add value? What are your personal traits and characteristics that make you unique? How do you like to engage with others? With what type of people do you like to work? What type of working conditions do you prefer?
The Where. You’ll want to evaluate industries and companies to ensure they are culturally a match for you. Also consider if they value their people and deliver on aspects of making a motivating work environment, such as being clear on a company purpose and ensuring people have a high degree of autonomy in their work.
The When. Pull out that Decade by Decade Horizon Map again and consider by when you might want to achieve what.
The Practicals. Only after you map out the above should you capture the practical details that are important—where do you want to live, are you willing to move, what kind of commute is acceptable, what are your salary and benefit requirements, and other details that are must have’s or nice to have’s. But don’t ignore these either. You need to be realistic about these needs, as well.
2. Know there’s more than one way to craft a career.
At this career stage and especially in today’s marketplace, consider that work doesn’t have to take the shape of traditional career paths. Society often presents standard job and career roles, but there are different ways to make a living. Marci Alboher writes in her book about people who create “Slash Careers” that compose multiple workstreams to fulfill more than one side of themselves. Frankly, many actors and artists take this approach, for example waiting tables while they pursue their acting career or cultivate their art. It’s also a reminder that you don’t have to wait to have what you want in your life now. If you are seeking meaningful work, consider how you can bring it into your work now. It might not be your main job, but could be a volunteer activity, for example.
One cautionary note here if you want to follow this path is to make a financial plan that allows for an income ramp. Starting such ventures doesn’t always deliver on your revenue goals right out of the gate. You can either plan for such a ramp, saving money ahead of time, or consider starting with a side hustle that allows you to test a business model and establish a foundation before making the leap to it full-time or to a slash career where you layer on additional income streams.
3. Chart multiple possible paths.
Often times people think that charting the next phase in a career path means there is only one option and that choosing one path means closing the door to others. We need to change that way of thinking. There often isn’t a singular, clear path to take, because most of us have multiple interests and curiosities. We aren’t one note. In the book, “Designing Your Life,” authors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans advocate creating multiple Odyssey Plans. In fact, they even offer workshops to help you craft these visions and start to prototype and take action around them, as we’ll reference below.
So, identify at least three different, plausible paths you could conceive taking at this point in your career. You can follow the approach in the “Designing Your Life” book or create something we call the “Alternate Career Futures.” (Get the templates here.) Each Future can include (but you can pick which exercises inspire you most to bring the idea to life):
A name. Give the path a unique, descriptive name.
Bring it to life visually. Draw what this path might look like day to day. Visualizing a path can make it more real. Think about it like a movie you are watching. What might you being do in a day or week, what types of activities are you doing, what are you creating and producing, who else is involved, where are you working, when are you working. Consider drawing this in a comic strip like format. And don’t worry about your drawing skills—Pictionary-style drawings are perfect here. Just imagine and have fun with it.
Write a Story about each Alternate Career Future utilizing a story framework inspired by Pixar.
Create your future persona in this Future View. Write a short bio for yourself in this new career view, including an accolade that you received. Articulate what you are looking for in this path, “I’m looking for a career that….” Note the goals you want to achieve.
Looking back at your visual, capture your What, Why, How, and Who. The tool provides additional questions for you to consider.
Now go back to the first page of the exercise. At this point, you have a better sense of what this Alternate Career Future might represent. Start by filling in the center and answering what motivates you to follow this path. Why are you excited about it? What attracts you to it? What detracts you from it?
Then, give the Alternate Career Future 3 adjectives to describe it. Also give it a rating on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being low and 10 being high. Rating the Alternate Career Future can help you evaluate one to the other and get a sense of which is drawing you most.
Finally, consider When. Pull out that Decade by Decade Horizon Map again and consider by when you might want to achieve this Career Future.
It would also be helpful before moving on to the next step to note what assumptions might you be making and need to confirm and skills or knowledge you’d need to gain to fulfill that path. Does one of the paths fall out? Do certain paths become more interesting to you? Do new paths emerge?
Note that we also offer a simplified tool for Alternate Career Futures if you’d like to do the exploration in more of a sprint type session. Refer to the Tool Workbook.
4. Plan to prototype and experiment your way through your options.
It is important to test your paths to see which resonates most strongly with you. Testing is a very important approach, especially in this stage of your career. You aren’t in your 20’s and 30’s and likely don’t want to wander aimlessly for too long. Instead, use an intentional testing plan to identify what attracts and draws you at this time. Activities might include networking, attending events on topics of interest, taking classes to expand your skill base, or doing a consulting assignment to test a transitional function. Start by building a Prototype & Experiment Plan against your Alternate Career Future views, noting what you want to test, how you’ll test it, any assumptions you want to understand, and capture learning as you execute your plan. You may need to focus if you don’t have time to test all of them at once. So, start with the path that is most appealing to you. Then, consider if there are ways for you to do small, quick tests on the other paths to see if one drops out or is still of less interest than your primary one.
5. Finally, get into action and take the first step.
Now that you have a testing plan, you need to take advantage of your forward momentum. Identify the very next step you are going to take against your plan, commit to a time you are going to take that action, and hold yourself accountable to it. Even better, before you leave your planning session, take action on at least one thing you can do right now to get into motion. And as you move forward, keep telling yourself along the way, “Just take the next step, stay in action.” By doing so, you’ll make progress.
A final note.
As you start this process of identifying options and exploring them, know that it isn’t easy and that you are likely to get frustrated or discouraged along the way. That’s normal. I don’t note this to put a damper on things, but rather to encourage you to stay committed to your goal and continue to be in action, because with small, and big, steps you will find your way. Herminia Ibarra, a professor at London Business School and an expert in career development, has shared that if you are making a more significant transition, it’s a process that can take some time and longer than you might anticipate. It’s a discovery process that is non-linear and can be messy. So, it’s important to follow your curiosities, prototype, experiment, and learn your way to your next path.