"I had been moving along the research ladder, hoping to eventually manage a laboratory staff and budgets. But then I found myself sidetracked," she said, a puzzled expression on her face. "A year with a QC group, a stint in regulatory affairs, and now I'm back in the laboratory again. It feels like I've been going in a big circle. Although I don't want to discount some of the great experiences along the way, I'm a little concerned about losing the overall sense of direction that I know you have to have to be successful."
It was peculiar to hear her say that, because I had already known of this woman by industry reputation. (She is quite good at what she does, and people seem to know it). And yet her inner nature was driving her to second-guess her progress. If you are feeling the same way, remember that successful people are always hypercritical about their personal degree of success.
Why You May Want To Refine Your Career Goals
Perhaps what frustrated my acquaintance the most was that she had at one time been following a career mission, but she felt that the last couple of years had not contributed much to getting her where she wanted to go.
Most of us start our careers with a picture of some future day when we will be making great sums of money and generally enjoying the fruit of our early labors. Usually, this is more of a visualization than something that has been laid down in writing. I remember struggling through final exams and picturing the day -- not too far down the road -- when I would be in the corner suite of some major corporation. Although my vision and goals changed a few years after graduation, I think that I could have fared much better at the time if I had committed this vision to paper. Keeping in touch with those goals at regular intervals over the years would have acted as a rudder.
In this article, we'll focus on the mechanics of what I call a "Career Vision Statement." This is a short but formidable piece of business writing. Writing succinctly is difficult. Even more so, writing succinctly in a way that motivates us can truly be an art. It is a great tool, however and you would be making a big mistake if you categorized the idea as inconsequential.
A career vision statement will provide guidance to your career that you may need to fall back on from time to time. Certainly, a one-page-or-less document cannot serve as a road map through every twist and turn of your career, but it can point out a desired destination and help you remember the reasons why you set that course in the first place. It is certainly worth spending a few hours on initially, and then reviewing it annually. The Career Vision Statement that I will describe here will help you put your next five years in sharp focus.
The Process of Writing A Career Vision Statement
Writing a vision statement is a cross between writing down your long-term goals, and writing a "mission statement." Big corporations have written mission statements for years; sometimes they print the company's mission in short form on the back of business cards. This is the ultimate in concise writing. Although you won't be trying to fit your vision statement on the back of your card, brevity will still be important.
Although there is a lot written about the corporate mission statement (this was in-vogue in business books of a decade ago - "Our mission is to be the leading supplier of quality widgets in the tri-state area"). But, there is not much that has been done regarding the mission statement of a more personal nature. Dr. Stephen R. Covey, of the Covey Leadership Center1 , has spoken a great deal about the subject in his training programs based on the book First Things First2 written along with Roger and Rebecca Merrill. It is a classic time management course, and Covey believes that a major piece of proper time management involves setting up a long-term written mission. I will use some of Dr. Covey's excellent material in this article as it relates to preparing career goals.
Questions To Ask while Visualizing Your Career Ambitions
As you sit down with a note pad or a laptop, put yourself into a contemplative mood and be prepared to do some creative visualization. The following nine questions will help guide you in the process, so that perhaps the next time you are in an interview and the Director of Human Resources asks, "Where do you want to be in five years?" you'll be able to give her a better answer than your competitors!
- If I had unlimited time and resources, and could channel them into developing any type of career I desired, what would it be? It's always fun to find out if the career track we have developed bears any similarity to what the ideal circumstances would produce.
- What do I most deeply enjoy doing? When thinking about this question, ask yourself if this aligns with what you believe to be your major strengths.
- When I look at my work life to-date, which activities seem to be of greatest worth? Where have you provided the most value to your employers? Is there any synergy between this area and those activities which you most enjoy doing? In general, what can you do best that would be of value to others?
- What are the three or four most important things to me in my work life? For example, do you believe that you will always be happiest in a hands-on science position rather than in management? Is problem solving one of the most important aspects of your work?
- What strengths have others who know me well noticed in me? Go back through your past conversations with mentors, bosses, family, and friends who have discussed your career with you and made recommendations based on strengths that they have identified. What were these strengths?
- Who do I most admire, and which qualities have been most responsible for his or her career success? Think about the people you have met over various stages of your career and identify those attributes that you believe might be worth emulating. Have any of these people made an impact on your life? Why?
- How would I change my current job or improve it to suit me? What do you see yourself doing with your current job in order to fully utilize all of your unique skills and abilities? Are there talents that you have which no one else really knows about? Is there a way that you can implement some of these into your career vision statement?
- How do you feel about the type of company and the environment that you are in? Would a big corporation with unlimited resources be best for you, or perhaps a smaller, more entrepreneurial organization? Entrepreneurs aren't found only in the corner office -- they are often inside Fortune 100 companies, working away on championing their projects as "intrapreneurs."
- How do you feel about your involvement with people? Do you enjoy managing, mentoring, and directing the activities of others? Or, does your best emerge when you are given a project to carry through to completion on your own? Can you see yourself managing people and projects in today's popular "matrix" management style, in which you have to influence without authority? Would you be good at this?
As you can see from the example, a career vision statement is a free-flowing document that you will use to crystallize your ideal career progress. It is a vision that has been committed to paper to guide you in making future choices.
Carry it around with you for a few days in draft form, before finally going in and finishing the job. Although you may choose to share it with those you are close to (a spouse, mentor, etc.), in order to get their input, remember that it is an intensely personal vision and one that doesn't need any critical appraisal from those on the outside. One of your long-term goals might well be to fully develop what psychologists call the "internal locus of control." This is a unique ability -- present in the successful from all walks of life -- to manage your career entirely by drive and ambition, rather than surrender to the winds of fate. Perhaps your career vision statement can be one tool that will help you develop this rare quality.
