Most people have a job. Far fewer people have a career plan.
There is nothing wrong with having a job. A job provides income, experience, relationships, and often a sense of accomplishment. But if you want your work to lead somewhere, eventually you have to ask yourself a simple question: I’m on a path here, but, what is the destination?
I have learned that career planning starts with a different question than the one most people ask. Instead of beginning with, “What job should I get?” begin by asking, “What would a successful future look like for me?”
Think of it as a journey. Before you can determine the directions, you have to know the destination.
Your Vision Is Your Destination
Your career vision is a picture of the future you want to create for yourself. It is more than a job title. A job title tells you what you do. Your vision describes the conditions under which you would consider yourself successful.
Start with the financial side of your vision. Money isn’t everything, but it is an important part of most people’s definition of success. Ask yourself:
Financial
- What annual income would make you feel financially successful?
- How important is financial security versus maximizing income?
- Do you want to own a business, work for an organization, or have a combination?
- How much financial independence do you want?
- Do you want your work to provide the ability to retire early, travel, or support other priorities?
Then think about the work itself. Some people enjoy working with their hands or solving technical problems. Others would rather coordinate people, manage systems, teach, sell, advise, or lead. Some people need variety while others prefer knowing exactly what their responsibilities will be each day.
Work itself
- Do you prefer working alone, with a small group, or with a large organization?
- Do you want to do the technical work or oversee people and systems?
- Do you prefer creating, analyzing, fixing, selling, teaching, organizing, leading, or advising?
- Do you want predictable work or constant variety?
- Do you prefer projects with a definite beginning and end or ongoing responsibilities?
- How much autonomy do you want?
- How much responsibility are you comfortable carrying?
The environment in which you work can also have a significant effect on whether you consider your career successful. A person who loves working outdoors may be miserable in an office, while someone who values quiet concentration may find a constantly changing field environment exhausting.
Work environment
- Inside or outside?
- Office, field, home, or some combination?
- Quiet or active?
- Structured or flexible?
- Local, regional, national, or international?
- Do you want to travel?
- How much travel is acceptable?
Then consider the people you want around you. This is a big one. Some people get energy from interacting with people all day. Others need considerable independence. Some want to lead. Others would rather become highly skilled at what they do without supervising anyone.
People
- Do you enjoy working with people all day?
- Do you prefer working independently?
- Do you want to lead people?
- Do you want to mentor or develop others?
- Do you want to deal directly with customers or clients?
- How much interaction with the public do you want?
- Do you want to work with peers, subordinates, executives, specialists, or some combination?
Your career also has to fit into the life you want to live. A position may look attractive because of its salary or title, but if it requires a schedule that prevents you from living the life you want, it may not fit your definition of success.
Lifestyle
- How many hours a week do you want to work?
- What kind of schedule do you want?
- How important are evenings and weekends?
- How much vacation or personal time do you want?
- Do you want your career to allow you to live wherever you choose?
- How much time do you want available for family, hobbies, travel, community involvement, etc.?
There is also the question of status and recognition. Some people are motivated by professional recognition and authority. Others don’t care about titles at all. Neither is right or wrong. What matters is knowing what matters to you.
Status and recognition
- How important is professional recognition?
- Do you want a position of authority?
- Do you want your accomplishments to be visible?
- Does having an impressive title matter to you?
- Would you rather be highly respected within a small professional community or broadly recognized?
Then consider purpose. What do you want your work to accomplish beyond providing an income? Perhaps you want to help people, solve important problems, build something that lasts, or contribute to your community.
Impact and purpose
- Do you want your work to make a difference to other people?
- Who do you want to help?
- Do you want to solve significant problems?
- Do you want to build something that lasts?
- Do you want to contribute to your community?
- Is doing meaningful work more important to you than maximizing income?
Your vision should also include how you want to grow. Some people want to keep learning throughout their careers. Others eventually want to settle into a specialty and become exceptionally good at it. Some want increasing responsibility while others want to remain highly skilled individual contributors.
Growth
- Do you want to keep learning throughout your career?
- How important is advancement?
- Do you want increasing responsibility?
- Do you want to become an expert?
- Do you eventually want to teach or mentor others?
- Do you want to keep changing what you do or eventually settle into a specialty?
Finally, think about risk and security. A high-paying opportunity may involve considerable uncertainty. Owning a business may provide independence but also financial risk. A government or corporate position may provide greater security but less autonomy. Again, there is no universally correct answer. You need to understand your own tolerance for risk.
Risk and security
- How much employment security do you want?
- How comfortable are you with income uncertainty?
- Would you rather have a predictable salary or the possibility of substantially higher income?
- Would you consider starting a business?
- How much career risk are you willing to accept for a potentially greater reward?
Once you have worked through these questions, you should have a much clearer picture of what success means to you.
That picture is your vision.
And your vision is your destination.
Once You Know the Destination, Determine the Directions
A hiker who knows where the summit is still needs directions.
The same is true of your career.
Once you have established your vision, you can begin determining what you need to do to get there. This is where career development becomes practical.
Start with what you already have.
Look at your training. What education, courses, certifications, professional development, or other training have you already completed that supports your vision? What additional training will you need? What training should you acquire this year? What might you need next year?
Then look at your experience. What have you already done that prepares you for the future you envision? Have you led projects? Supervised people? Managed budgets? Worked with customers? Solved difficult problems? Made decisions under pressure? Worked in the field? Designed something? Sold something? Taught someone else?
Experience is important because there is a difference between knowing something and having demonstrated that you can use that knowledge.
Next, examine your skills. What can you do well today that supports your vision? What skills do you need to strengthen? What skills don’t you currently have that your future will require?
Then consider knowledge. What do you already understand about your profession, industry, organization, customers, technology, or area of expertise? What do you need to learn?
Look at your relationships as well. Who do you already know who can help you learn? Who can provide advice? Who might become a mentor? Who works in the type of position you eventually want? Who can introduce you to people or opportunities that support your direction?
Your accomplishments matter, too. What have you already accomplished that demonstrates your ability? What results have you produced? What problems have you solved? What responsibilities have you successfully handled? What future accomplishments would demonstrate that you are becoming the person your vision requires you to become?
Finally, consider your personal characteristics and habits. What behaviors will help you reach your destination? What behaviors might get in your way?
When you look at all of these areas together, you begin to see the route.
Determine the Gaps
Now comes one of the most important parts of career development.
For each area, ask yourself four questions:
What do I have?
What do I need?
What is the gap?
How will I close the gap?
Suppose your vision is to become a department manager. You may already have extensive technical knowledge and strong experience performing the work. But perhaps you have never managed a budget, supervised employees, handled personnel problems, or developed an operating plan.
Those aren’t reasons to abandon your vision. They are development opportunities, and your career development plan should identify those gaps and determine how you will close them. This is also where I would caution against thinking that career development simply means taking more training. Training may be part of your development, but it isn’t the entire process. If you need leadership experience, another leadership course may not be enough. You may need an opportunity to actually lead something. If you need experience managing money, you may need responsibility for a budget. If you need experience speaking to groups, you need opportunities to speak. If you need to become better at resolving conflict, you need opportunities to practice resolving conflict.
Development isn’t simply acquiring knowledge. Development is “getting better” … becoming capable of doing something you couldn’t previously do, or couldn’t do as well.
Turn the Gaps Into Directions
Once you have identified the gaps, you can determine the directions you need to take. Perhaps you need additional training, a new assignment, an opportunity to volunteer for a project, a mentor, a particular skill, or stronger relationships within your profession. You may need several of these things at the same time. This is where the career plan begins to become a map. Your vision tells you where you want to go, your assessment tells you where you are, and your gaps tell you what stands between the two. Your development activities then become the directions you will follow.
Those directions should become increasingly specific. “I need to develop leadership skills” isn’t much of a direction. “Complete a leadership program this year, ask to lead a project team, and obtain feedback from my supervisor after the project” is a direction. Likewise, “I need more professional contacts” isn’t much of a direction. “Meet with two people in my target profession each month and establish three professional relationships this year” is a direction. The difference is action.
Establish Your Waypoints
A career journey doesn’t have to be one enormous leap from where you are today to your ultimate vision.
In fact, it usually isn’t.
Think about the hiker again. The hiker may have a destination in mind, but the mountain may be too large to navigate by looking only at the summit. The hiker identifies the next waypoint, reaches it, checks the route, and then determines what comes next.
Your career can work the same way.
Your ultimate vision might be to become a senior executive. Your next waypoint might be becoming a supervisor. After that, perhaps your next waypoint is managing a larger team. Then you may need experience managing a department or overseeing multiple functions.
Each waypoint should move you closer to your vision while giving you the training, experience, skills, knowledge, relationships, and accomplishments you need for the next part of the journey.
This is why I believe a career development plan should be more than a list of courses someone wants to take.
It should show where you are going, what you already have, what you need to acquire, what you are going to do about it, and what milestones will tell you that you are making progress.
Make It an Annual Plan
Your career vision may extend several years into the future, but your development activities should become much more specific as they get closer to you.
Ask yourself what you need to accomplish this year to move closer to your vision.
What training will you complete this year?
What experience will you acquire?
What skills will you develop?
What knowledge will you gain?
What relationships will you establish?
What accomplishments will you produce?
Then do the same for the following year.
You don’t need to know every detail of your career ten years from now. You need to know what you should be doing now to make that future more possible.
That is why the annual component of a career development plan is so important. It turns a distant vision into today’s decisions.
Your Plan Can Change
A career plan is not a contract with your future self.
As you move along the path, you will learn things. You may discover that you enjoy something you hadn’t expected to enjoy. You may discover that you don’t like something you thought you would. An opportunity may appear that you hadn’t anticipated. Your circumstances may change.
When that happens, reassess your destination.
Maybe the destination remains the same, and you simply need a different route. Maybe you have discovered a better route. Or perhaps you have discovered that your original destination isn’t where you want to go after all.
That’s okay.
A hiker who discovers that a trail is closed doesn’t throw away the map. The hiker finds another route.
Your career works the same way.
Your Career Belongs to You
Your employer has a role in your development. A good employer can provide training, mentoring, assignments, opportunities, feedback, and other resources. A good supervisor can help you understand what you need to develop and provide opportunities to gain experience.
Take advantage of those resources.
But don’t make the mistake of believing that your employer is responsible for creating your career.
Your career belongs to you.
You should know what you want your future to look like. You should know what you need to become capable of doing. You should know what you already have and where the gaps are. And you should be taking deliberate steps to close those gaps.
You don’t have to know every step of the journey.
You need a destination, directions, and the next waypoint.
That is what a career development plan provides.
It turns “I want to get ahead” into something much more useful: “This is where I want to go, this is where I am today, this is what I need to develop, and this is what I am going to do next.”
That is how you stop simply having a job and begin deliberately developing a career.
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Author’s Note: The content provided in this article is designed exclusively for educational and informational purposes, reflecting opinions shaped by decades of leadership training and organizational consulting experience. It should never be interpreted as formal professional advice. By reading or engaging with this material, you acknowledge that no professional-client relationship is established and that these insights do not substitute for tailored guidance from a qualified professional familiar with your specific circumstances. Consequently, readers are strongly advised to seek independent counsel from licensed legal, financial, medical, or other appropriate advisors before implementing any strategies or making decisions based on these perspectives. Ultimately, you assume full personal responsibility for any actions you choose to take or omit as a result of reading this material, releasing the author and publisher from any liability for outcomes arising from your reliance on the text.
