Shortlist: 5 steps to becoming strategic about career development

We must become more deliberate about our career progression, writes consultant and author Dorie Clarke, executive education professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

In a world in which the average employee sends and receives 122 emails per day and attends an average of 62 meetings per month, our manager is unlikely to have the time or bandwidth to think through how best to deploy our talents moving forward.

Instead, we have to take control of our career planning to ensure we’re putting ourselves in position for long-term growth. 

Here are five ways to become more strategic about the process.

1. Force yourself to ringfence time.

When things get busy, time for strategic thinking is almost always the first to go.

‘Planning sessions’ seem amorphous and the return on investment is uncertain. But going for months or years without regular introspection can lead us down a professional path that we had no wish to be on. Instead, force yourself to schedule time for strategic reflection.

2. Buddy up.

Just as we’re more likely to go to the gym if we have plans to meet a workout buddy, we can use the same technique to enforce discipline around strategic thinking. Identify several trusted colleagues and start a mastermind group to meet regularly, discuss big picture goals, and hold each other accountable for meeting them.

Having others whom we trust challenge our thinking can open up new ideas and possibilities we hadn’t previously considered.

3. Pre-write your resumé.

Getting clarity around our professional goals — such as being promoted, starting our own business, or running the Asia/Pacific region — is only the first step. The place where many professionals fall down is identifying the pathway to get from here to there.

One technique we can use is ‘pre-writing our resume’. In this exercise, we put ourselves five years into the future and write our resumé as we envision it, including our new title and exact job responsibilities.

The trick is that we also have to fill in the intervening five years, which prompts us to reflect on the specific skills we’ll need to develop in the interim, the degrees or accreditations we may need to earn, and the promotional paths we’ll need to pursue in order to get there.

Understanding that helps force our thinking and ensures that we’re taking the right steps (for example, if a master’s degree is required for a position we want in three years, we’d better start applying now).

4. Invest in deep work.

It can be tempting to invest our time the same way everyone else does — putting in face time at the office, or racing to respond to emails the fastest. At lower levels, that might mark employees as ‘go-getters’. But as we ascend in the organisation, the ability to jump higher and faster becomes less important.

Instead, what marks us as successful over time is creating in-depth, valuable projects — whether that’s writing a book or a brilliant new piece of code, spearheading the launch of a promising product, or undertaking a meaningful initiative (for example, reorganising the company’s performance review system).

That involves a shift from staccato, reactive work into more self-directed, long-term projects (“deep work” as author and professor Cal Newport puts it). Many professionals don’t seek this work out, as there’s no immediate return on investment, but the long-term benefits and recognition are substantial.

5. Build an external reputation.

A study by Wharton professor Matthew Bidwell showed that external hires into a company get paid 18-20% more than internal workers who are promoted into similar jobs. (Gratingly, they also perform worse for the first two years.)

That’s patently unjust, but it points to an important truth: professionals are often taken for granted inside their own organisations. That doesn’t mean you should jump ship every few years. But it does point to the fact that, even if you’d like to stay at the same company, it’s important to cultivate a strong external reputation so that you have opportunities if you want them and to remind your boss and colleagues that your abilities are sought after and appreciated by others.

Blogging for industry journals, applying to speak at conferences and taking on a leadership role in your professional association are all great ways to stay visible in your field – both to outsiders and those inside your company who need to be reminded of your talents.

Taking time to think about our career development is obviously important, but it’s almost never urgent, so many professionals fail to take action, year after year. By focusing on these five steps, we can begin to carve out time to be more deliberate, and lay the groundwork for the job we want — five years from now, and beyond.