(HealthNewsDigest.com) – Are you asking yourself what your next job should be? Maybe you are just finishing school and are about to embark on your professional career. Perhaps you find yourself in the unfortunate position of an unplanned career transition. Or maybe you have a job, but you find it unfulfilling, or you are just looking to continue advancing your career.
If you are contemplating your next move, you’re not alone. In fact, nearly 50 million workers quit their jobs last year and the pace has barely slowed this year, with more than 4 million leaving their jobs in February. For a variety of reasons, more people than ever have decided to seek greener work pastures.
Regardless of why you are contemplating your next professional move, let me share some advice that you might find a bit surprising: you are asking the wrong question! Over the years, I have been asked for my advice on this topic by a multitude of competent, dedicated professionals, and I have shared that insight with each of them.
When I was a young, ambitious upstart, just beginning my career in the pharmaceutical industry, I had a wonderful mentor, the late Alan Clark (at the time the President of LillyUSA). He was fond of saying, “You would never go on a long road trip without a destination or a map, but that’s exactly how most people manage their careers.” What Alan meant – and believe me, I had to probe him for a while to really understand that statement – was that, when it comes to their careers, people are far too focused on their next immediate step, rather than taking a strategic and long-term approach that focuses on their desired ultimate destination, and then mapping a course from where they are to that destination.
That was some of the best advice I ever received from anyone about my career, period. And since learning the wisdom of Alan’s advice, I’ve used his approach to coach and mentor countless others, and I want to share it with you as well. So here goes.
If “what should my next job be” is the wrong question, what is the right question? Simple. Where do you want to be professionally in 10 or 15 years?
Yes, I know that’s a difficult question to answer, but it truly is the single most important thing you can establish to accelerate your professional growth. Remember Clark’s road trip analogy. Do you want to meander all over the place and arrive at a destination that may or may not be where you want to be in 15 years? Or do you want to figure out where you want to end up, and map out a clear, robust plan for how you are going to get there?
I’ll let you in on another secret: when Clark asked me that question, I had no idea what my answer was. But it launched me on a lengthy exploration to figure out what I wanted to do with my professional life that ultimately empowered me to establish a clear career destination.
How? Well it helps to start by determining what your “purpose” in life is. One of the best frameworks I have found to guide this exploration is the so-called “purpose diagram” (this has also been frequently described as the Japanese concept ikigai, but Anaïs Bock and Marc Winn, two writers who were seminal in the promulgation of the purpose diagram, dispute the direct link to ikigai).
The objective of the purpose diagram is to get you to think beyond the obvious “what am I good at” question, because frankly you can be good at something and not like it, or the world doesn’t really need it, or you can’t make a living doing it.
So ask yourself these four simple (but often difficult to answer) questions:
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What am I good at?
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What do I love to do?
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What does the world need (euphemistically, but you get the point)?
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What can I get paid to do?
The objective is to find where these four domains overlap (see figure): if you can find something that you are good at, you love doing, the world needs, and you can make a living doing, then you’ve found your purpose (in other words what you want to dedicate your working life to doing)!
Now, the truth is, when I received that important advice from Alan Clark more than 20 years ago, I had never heard of ikigai or the purpose diagram. But in the process of following his advice and thinking about my ultimate career destination, I came pretty close to creating it for myself. I had an idea of what I was good at, which was clearly communicating complex ideas, and aligning and motivating people. I knew what really gave me a lot of satisfaction, which was helping other people to live fuller, more productive lives. It was clear that the world needed better medicines to address growing healthcare needs. And I was quite certain that I could earn a living by developing and marketing pharmaceuticals.
Based on this knowledge, about myself and the world, I determined that at that point, my career destination was to be a country manager for Eli Lilly or another pharmaceutical company. And I set myself a goal of getting there in 10 to 15 years.
Now that I knew where I was going, it was time to map out the route from where I was to my destination. This meant drawing a career map, which would identify the necessary stops along my journey. I had to address three key questions:
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What are the skills and experiences expected of someone holding the role that is my long-term career goal?
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How do my current skills and experiences map against the expected skills and experiences of my long-term career goal?
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What are two to three roles that I could hold in the coming 10 to 15 years to acquire those skills and experiences?
With my plan in hand, I eagerly accepted a role in global marketing at Eli Lilly, gaining valuable product development experience. Next, I went on to work as a sales representative selling Lilly’s products to physicians, and later moved into a sales management role, leading and coaching other sales representatives. The war in Afghanistan led to a brief hiatus as I returned to the military, but that gave me a chance to further refine my leadership and communications skills. On returning to Lilly, I spent a brief period helping coordinate across Lilly’s entire sales force.
Having built my sales, marketing, sales operations and leadership skills, after 8 years of hard work, I was finally selected to lead a country for Lilly, becoming Managing Director of Eli Lilly Czech Republic and Slovakia. It wasn’t a chance promotion: by following my career plan, I had carefully demonstrated or acquired all of the skills Lilly expected of a country manager.
Of course, having reached my career goal, it was time to start the process over again, and after some lengthy soul searching, I settled on a new career goal: to be the CEO of a biotechnology start-up. That led to a whole new career plan with a new list of skills and experiences to acquire, embarking me on the next stage of my career. That goal took a bit longer, but in 2016, I achieved that goal as well. And I have no doubt that it would not have happened were it not for my career plan.
As you think about your next move, I would encourage you to take this same strategic approach to your career, starting with your purpose map, then identifying your long-term goal, and then laying out a careful plan for how you can attain your goal. And I highly recommend you lay all of this out – your long-term goal and the career map – on a sheet of paper. Write it up like a business plan (see the example of my early career plan).
But you aren’t ready quite yet to embark on your career journey. Instead, take your written career plan and share it with others. Discuss it with your mentor or mentors (and if you don’t have a mentor, start working on finding one now). Discuss it with your supervisor, and maybe her supervisor. Review it with HR. Get a broad and diverse set of perspectives on your plan.
This final step is critical for three reasons: first, you may not have correctly understood the skills and experiences that are expected for your long-term career goal and these discussions can help identify these misapprehensions; second, you may not have an accurate assessment of your strengths and gaps and discussing them with others ensures your assessment is accurate; and third, by discussing it with people like your supervisor, HR, and your mentor, you are aligning them with your plan so that they know what you want to do, and can incorporate this into their management of you and your career.
Once you are done with this step, you are ready to roll. You now know what your next job should be that will help you to realize your long-term career goals!
Two obvious questions:
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What if you change your mind over time? That is perfectly fine. Maybe you decide your purpose wasn’t correct, or maybe you want to change your long-term goal. It’s your career! Just remember that big changes may slow down your progress towards reaching your ultimate goal. Early on, I used to review my career plan at least annually to make sure it was still the right plan for me.
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What do you do when you arrive at your long-term goal? First, congratulations are in order. And if you still have runway in your career, start the process all over again for the next 10 to 15 years. Believe it or not, I’m at that point right now myself.
But, you say, this all seems too simple and formulaic. Maybe, but I can tell you it really works! I have used this approach for the past three decades, and it has propelled me to exactly the place I wanted to end up, as the CEO of a biotech start-up company. And I have many friends and colleagues – many also mentored by Alan Clark – who used this same approach to propel their careers and to realize their professional ambitions. Many of them today are CEOs or C-suite executives in large corporations, and some are now retired.
I can’t promise you that using this approach will make you a CEO; your ultimate success is going to be dictated by your performance and your choices. But I can assure you that this approach will empower you to make the most of the skills, talents and dreams that you possess.
FIGURE: PURPOSE DIAGRAM
Adapted from Anaïs Bock, “What’s the Origin of the Purpose Diagram?” https://www.letsworkmagic.com/blog/whats-the-origin-of-the-purpose-diagram
EXAMPLE: CAREER MAP
Career Plan for Frank Watanabe (circa 1996)
Ultimate career goal: Country manager
Skills and Experiences Required:
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Sales and sales management experience
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Pharmaceutical marketing experience
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Financial acumen
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Strong leadership skills
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Ability to operate and lead cross-culturally
Current strengths and gaps:
Strengths:
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Excellent skills in cross-cultural communication and leadership
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Strong communicator
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Solid financial acumen as demonstrated through strategic planning role
Gaps:
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No sales or sales management experience
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No pharmaceutical marketing experience
Next several targeted assignments:
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Marketing assignment (ideally global marketing)
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Sales representative assignment
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Sales leadership assignment