6 Reasons To Create A Personal Career Strategy

The purpose of my post today is to enlighten you to the reasons for creating your own personal strategy. The reason I feel developing a personal strategy is so important is that through the course of your engineering career you will be faced with hurdles and opportunities. Each time you confront one without an overall strategy, you run a greater risk of making a short-term decision with long term consequences that might not have been fully explored.

With a strategy in place you reduce the risk of short-term emotion guiding you into a decision that might steer you astray from your aspirations.

Strategy isn’t just for the company or organization you work for. It’s for you as well. With a strategy in place you are better able to establish long-range goals, make informed resource allocation decisions, and identify the networks and relationships you must have in place to run “Me, Inc.”

Let’s unpack the 6 reasons to create a personal career strategy:

1. You're Playing a Long Game. Your career will span 30, 40, maybe 50 years. What will your legacy be at the end of your career? If this is something you have considered, one good way to ensure the legacy you leave is the one you actually want to leave, is to have a strategy. Once established, your strategy becomes your North Star, helping you navigate through the universe of opportunities that you will encounter on your journey. How will you know which of these are the right ones to pursue?

2. Clarifies Your Purpose. You can likely explain to anyone what you do and how you do it. But can you explain clearly and concisely why you do it? What is your purpose? This is the quintessential question that most professionals ask themselves at some point in their career. I know for me, the quest to define my purpose happened well into my career. I found it by developing a strategy, then refining it as I progressed.

In his book, Start With Why, author Simon Sinek introduces readers to the Golden Circle. Most people, and companies, can articulate the how and what they do; but they either can't, or have forgotten, why they do it. This is the opposite of people and companies that are high performers. They know why they do what they do, and the what and how follow.

The benefit to each of us from being crystal clear in why we do what we do, is that your why is not constrained to specific what's and how's. That is, you open yourself to other alternatives in your career and can, when required, pivot to a new path that you otherwise may never have considered. For someone playing a long game, this is crucial because at some point you may have to pivot to another job or another industry entirely. But all of this can still be directly tied to your why.

I was a military engineer for over twenty years. I led people, programs and guided them to achieve organizational missions. My why for years has been to help people and organizations achieve their mission anytime, anywhere bar nothing. This why has not changed even though I have pivoted to leadership coaching and strategy consultancy. How and what I do has changed, my why has not.

"People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." - Simon Sinek

3. Illuminates Greater Range of Opportunities. Strategy development and alignment is a process that starts with defining values, a mission and vision statements. It then moves into determining strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT), and determining primary customers. The entire process, if accomplished correctly, helps to uncover opportunities and potential avenues of value that might be pursued. In a long-game career plan, having options is a good thing.

4. Forces You To Address Resource Considerations. One shortfall many people share in their goals is a lack of consideration for resources. This is one reason that SMART goals are so important to establish. Goals minus resource considerations are in the best case possible and in the worst case pipedreams. When you undertake a strategy development process you begin to address resource considerations at a higher level. This will help you in your assessment of when to undertake certain goals and projects for which you will have to align the resources to make them a reality. The only thing more demoralizing than undertaking a goal or project with insufficient resources, is undertaking it with no fore knowledge that you lack the resources. Note: we’re not talking just money. Most often people fail to achieve their goals not from a lack of financial backing, but from misunderstanding of the time it will take. This is both the overall time to accomplish the goal as well as the daily practice or commitment that will be required.

Goals minus resource considerations are in the best case possible and in the worst case pipe dreams.

5. Provides Cascading Goals and Objectives With A Foundation. It works like this:

Strategy establishes your mission, vision, the values you operate by, and identifies other key components such as primary customer, strengths, and opportunities.
Goals, objectives, and projects then cascade from the strategy and each plays it's role in making the strategy become reality.

That is, it's no longer about the goal - it's about the strategy. The goal is short to mid-term; the strategy is long-term. You're playing a long-game whether you want to acknowledge it or not. A strategy helps you play the game like a pro.

6. Focuses Your Decisions and Commitment. Until you decide to put a strategy together and operate your life from it like a professional, all the goals and projects you undertake are disjointed activities. Just as no business will achieve its highest levels of success without an overarching way of tying its actions together, you won’t achieve your highest version of what’s possible unless you’ve tied it all together.

The best way to to do this is with a strategy. Why?

The strategy forces you to be a leader of your life, decide, and go pro. A strategy requires you to determine your mission, vision and what values represent you. You then fix your sights on this vector despite the challenges that will confront you. If your strategy is truly based off of your why in life, then it will guide you through adversity. If not, then you have to re-tool and re-engage.
The strategy forces you to make a commitment. Commitments carry power and when we make them, we cut off other options as no longer relevant or important. For some this can be difficult because of FOMO - fear of missing out - or some other deep seated belief about the horrors of choosing a course of action and sticking with it. All I can offer is to FOCUS -- Follow One Course Until Success. Commitment is another leadership trait that is essential if you wish to be operating as the highest version of yourself and leave a legacy. It’s not glamorous in process, but it is in retrospect.

If you want to know more about what a personal strategy can do for you, simply leave a comment here or send me an email and let’s discuss.

Christian Knutson, P.E., PMP is a leadership coach and strategy consultant who works with engineers and A/E/C organizations to incorporate leadership into everything they do in order to generate excellence. His works are found here, as well as on The Engineering Career Coach blog, The Engineering Career Coach and Civil Engineering podcasts, and General Leadership, providing expert insight informed by over 21 years of experience on the topics of leadership, management, strategy, and productivity.