For years and years we've been telling entrepreneurs, "Make sure to spend time planning your business, not just filling orders and sending out invoices." The mantra for entrepreneurs has always been "Spend as much time working on your business as working in it."
For an entrepreneur, that means carving out time in your schedule to plan and to think about the future. There will always be another catalog to send out and another customer call to return. You could do those things all day and all night, but you have to save time to think about the long term. It's no different for salaried people. We have to focus on our careers at least as much as we think about doing our jobs, but how many working people do that?
We think "I'll just do incredibly well in this job, and everything will work out perfectly." Maybe it will. I hope it does. But what if things change?
Your job could go away tomorrow. I don't say that to be mean. It's true! I know, because our phone rings day and night and the people on the other end of the line say "I thought my job was as solid and secure as a job could be. Poof! They sold our division, and I'm out of work."
Even if your job remains stable, is your current job the best avenue to your career goals? Do you have career goals, apart from pleasing your boss and getting a good review at the end of the year? This new millennium workplace is different than the one our parents knew. We are all entrepreneurs now, no matter how we get paid. We can't afford to merely do a tremendous job in our current role. We have to think about ourselves, about our futures and what we'd like to do a year and five years from now. We have to make our own plans, completely separate from the plans our manager may have for us.
Some managers don't have career plans for their employees. They don't want anything to change. One client of ours told us "My manager told me that he'd be delighted if I stayed right here at this desk until I retire, twenty or twenty-two years from now. Mind you, my manager isn't giving me any kind of employment guarantee. But he doesn't want to train me in anything new. He doesn't want me to grow. He doesn't want to disrupt our current setup. It's me who'll be hanging out to dry when somebody decides the company wants to go in a different direction!"
Of course, she is exactly right. You need to devote half your brain and body to performing your current job. The other half will focus on your own path, and that plan may be something that you keep to yourself, because in this new-millennium talent market our employers' plans for us and our own plans can contradict and fight one another. In the end, it's your plan that has to win out.
Most of us aren't used to thinking about our careers. That's the new set of muscles we're growing. Answer these questions to get started:
- Assuming that my employer doesn't make any changes to my role, do I want to be in my current job a year from now? Is there a year's worth of additional learning and resume-growing for me to do here, or is this job tapped out in the learning department?
- If I do stay in this organization, what's the next position I could take on that would continue to grow my flame, my earning power and my marketability to other firms?
- If I were thinking about leaving this job in 2015, what kinds of jobs would I be looking for? Which employers have the type of Business Pain I know how to solve?
When you start to get altitude on your career, get out of the weeds and think about your path going forward, you'll feel more powerful. You'll see that whatever your relationship is like with your current boss, it doesn't matter over the long term. This is just a spot on your path. You are in charge, not your boss or anyone else. It's up to you to decide what you want in your life and career and then to go get it.
You are more than capable of having the career you want. Now, it's a question of focus. Consider this column a tap on the shoulder, and get moving!
