My one-year career plan
I had a one-on-one career conversation with my skip-level manager a few weeks ago. I asked him for feedback on how to propel my growth at the company.
He told me that he would like me to start doing more solution design, which is gleaning insights from data to inform strategy. He would like me to begin influencing the executives by using data to guide where we should go as a company. He wanted me to think about how I could maximize my impact on the company.
Reflecting upon my skip-level manager's advice, I realized I was not making that much impact at the company with the projects I am currently working on. I am mostly doing project management work in my current two projects, but I am not informing any strategy to influence the company's direction.
I felt a bit disappointed because I knew I was totally capable of making more impact in my position if I could think more critically about how to maximize the value of my time.
Most of my conversation with my skip-level manager was about how to add more value to the company. However, at the end of our discussion, my skip-level manager asked me, "What do you want to get out of your job in the next year?"
I froze for a minute because I didn't know how to answer his question. Suddenly, I realized I hadn't thought about what I wanted out of my career for a long time. Over the past year, I was so focused on satisfying the company's needs, but I didn't spend any time figuring out my own career needs.
Therefore, I am writing this post to share what I am trying to get out of my job in the next year. By sharing my planning process, I hope we can all be able to craft a career to live a fulfilling life.
My planning process to get to my one-year career plan:
1. Determine a long-term goal
I believe one of the most critical things in career planning is to figure out what we eventually want to accomplish in our lives.
Without figuring out a long-term goal, I think it's very easy to get lost in our careers. Determining a long-term goal is like defining our purpose, which will act as a north star in our lives to guide us to where we need to go.
A long-term goal is also something aspirational, which is something I could spend a lifetime pursuing.
After pondering my purpose over the past few years, I decided my long-term goal at this moment of my life is to make this world a happier place.
I will not spend too much time in the post discussing how I arrived at my purpose because I will need an entire blog post to flush out my thoughts entirely. However, I am going to provide a simplified thought process about how I get to my purpose.
To determine my long-term goal, I reflected on the moments in my life when I felt extremely happy and fulfilled. There are two distinct moments of my life that I enjoy the most: when I am performing magic and singing in front of a crowd.
I then dug deeper to think about why I enjoyed those moments so much. I realized there's a common theme when I perform magic and sing: I was able to put a smile on people's faces through my performances. I got so much energy and felt refreshed when I saw the joy on people's faces.
Therefore, I want to make this world a happier place to experience true fulfillment in my life.
2. Determine a mid-term goal
Once we have defined what we want to accomplish in our lives, we need to figure out a mid-term goal to help us achieve our long-term goals.
A mid-term goal should be what we are trying to accomplish in the next three to five years. I see my mid-term goal as a vehicle to achieve my long-term goal.
To make this world a happier place, I would like to start my own company to achieve my long-term aspiration. Again, I won't discuss too much about why I want to start a company in this post because I will discuss this topic in a future post.
The short answers to why I would like to start my own company are the autonomy and the fulfillment of building something from the ground up.
I would love to have the autonomy to choose what problems I want to solve in life and what group of people I want to solve the problems with. I am completely aware that starting my own business will probably be one of the most challenging things in my life, but it can also be the most rewarding journey at the same time.
3. Determine short-term goals
Once we have a clear mid-term goal, we need to break the mid-term goal down into concrete short-term goals to accomplish within the next year or two.
To start my own business within the next five years, I know I need to find a co-founder, find a problem I am passionate about solving, and equip myself with the necessary skill sets to be an entrepreneur.
Since my current job is most likely to benefit my skillset development the most, I will hone in on my thoughts about what skills I want to develop in the short term in this post.
Although I don't exactly know what skills I need as an entrepreneur, I was able to do some online research to find out what skills other people think an entrepreneur needs to have.
After conducting a simple Google search, I found an overwhelming amount of information about what skills an entrepreneur needs. However, I realized there are only a few key themes of skills after I grouped similar ideas.
Once I understand all the hard and soft skills an entrepreneur may need, I need to assess the current gaps in my skill sets.
After mapping out what skills I currently have, I found out I lack engineering/product development, finance, networking, and management/leadership skills.
Since I only have a limited amount of time to develop my skills, I need to choose the skills that I must develop vs. the skills I could potentially hire other people for.
As an aspiring startup CEO, I think I absolutely need to have the skill to lead a team and hire the right people to work with me. I also think I need to be able to build a strong network to meet other entrepreneurs, investors, and even future co-founders/employees. Therefore, I really want to have an opportunity to develop my management/leadership and networking skills within the next year.
4. Develop an action plan for the next year
After identifying my key skill gaps, I still need to develop an action plan to determine the easiest way to bridge the gaps.
To develop my management/leadership skills, I ideally would like to be in a position to hire and manage someone. However, I think it is quite unlikely for me to become a people manager in my current team immediately.
Therefore, I need to think about what projects I could take on that would allow me to practice my leadership skills. I need to be on a project that involves leading a group of team members to accomplish an objective.
In addition, I also need to learn how to hire people well. I need to seek opportunities to be in more interview panels to assess candidates better.
To get better at networking, I could start by scheduling a coffee/zoom chat with a member from a different team each week. Although I have been at my current company for over a year and a half, I realize I still don't know any of my coworkers well. By getting to know my coworker in a more casual setting, I will be able to practice my networking skill and build a meaningful connection with my coworkers.
Conclusion
We are often so focused on our day-to-day tasks, so we sometimes may neglect to take a step back to plan out what we want to get out of our careers.
To have a fulfilling career, we need to start with figuring out the long-term goal of what we want to accomplish with our career. After identifying the north star of our career, we can then think about how we could get there (mid-term goals) and the exact next steps we need to take (short-term goals).
Once we figure out the steps we need to take, we need to find out what are the easiest actions we can take to help us execute those steps. Although having a thoughtful career plan does not necessarily guarantee success, I believe we are at least one step closer to having a fulfilling career.
I welcome y’all to ask yourself this question: "What do you want to get out of your job in the next year?"
Feel free to share your reflections, thoughts, or feedback with me @themagichen on Instagram or reach me at themagichen@gmail.com