Why career needs planning?
By: Pooja Jayaram
Tags: Realizations, Planning, Agile, Career Paths, Career Development

Years and years ago, I embarked on a journey called “Building a career in the digital industry”... Little did I know during this time that I needed a plan. My passion for planning and organising drove me to find myself a mentor to device a plan that can be executed and re-adjusted where necessary, the good old agile way. I started looking for mentors who were my peers, senior managers and friends. I was lucky enough to get the most needed support and encouragement. “Thank you” to everyone who contributed to my growth.

In the spirit of sharing and giving back to the community, I hope that this article could serve as a reference to those who are in a similar boat or those who need some assistance in coming up with their own plan or those who don’t know that they might need a plan to take that next step or simply, just another story.

So, why do we even need a plan in the first place?

A plan gives clarity and sets the direction

It will help with defining a SMART* goal

It will help with simplifying decision-making and in turn, helps with prioritisation

It will also help with keeping track and keep the momentum going whenever we lose focus

There is always room to improve, pivot where necessary or even start over if it’s completely irrelevant.

SMART GOAL

How to go about career planning?

Step 1:

List down 5 different roles that you could be doing in 5 years time. Think big and bold.

Example

Running a start-up

Head of Product in a product-design-focused organisation

Head of Product for a not for profit organisation

Open up my own home decor firm

Run a cafe/barista near the beach

Now, what do these roles tell you? These are far from being SMART GOALs. It’s vague and it’s abstract. But the reason behind this activity is to widen the mind and visualise the possibilities. Setting up a vision helps the brain to celebrate and look past the immediate needs. This will allow us to keep the focus and sets us up for success.

Step 2:

List down what general tasks do you enjoy the most, the least and why.

Example list

This gives us a sense of what general tasks do we enjoy and understanding “why” will define what makes us happy in the long run. Putting these tasks into perspective will give us a deeper understanding of what sort of roles do we have to go after and the “Why” will give stronger reasoning and justification.

Highlighting the aspects of these tasks will open up the mind to a clearer direction. If the clarity and direction realised are very different from the current roles or position we are in today, then it doesn’t mean that we have to throw away what we already know and have been doing. All the experience gained in whichever industry we are in isn’t invaluable rather just the opposite. If we map the current roles and responsibilities to the dream role of the future, there will be a lot of commonality between the roles and we could also identify all the gaps.

Step 3:

Map out roles and responsibilities of the current and future aspirational roles.

Example of a roles mapping

Step 4:

Generate kanban board* in defining and tracking SMART goals in smaller tasks.

*A Kanban board is one of the tools that can be used to manage work at a personal or organizational level. Kanban boards visually depict work at various stages of a process using cards to represent work items and columns to represent each stage of the process.

Example of a kanban board for career planning

Step 5:

Pivot / Re-define the board with time.

Covid-19 has impacted many of us. Does this mean the previously made career plans, helpful conversations with mentors and peers, the progress we made so far are all irrelevant and not useful? did we fail? How did we end up here, even after such careful planning and such an amazing and supportive network? why aren’t those positive quotes and motivational talks enough to pacify the inner chatter? Why is it so hard to ignore the uncertainty?

Could empathy, self-care, an acceptance of the uncomfortable truth and focus on what needs to be done next, help at all? I realised it certainly can.

So, I thought “Let’s re-defining success”. Let's plan the next steps and pivot to update the existing plan and re-prioritise.

Example of a re-defined kanban board for career planning

PS: My career story is still “Work in Progress”….