Professional Careers by Design (eBook)

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What is a Designed Career?

The Professional Careers by DesignTM Model

Let’s begin with a short explanation of what this process is, and how my understanding of it developed. Here’s my definition of Professional Careers by DesignTM:

Professional Careers by DesignTM is a process of knowing yourself, your current environment, and the opportunities around you in a way that lets you make informed and thoughtful decisions about your career in any given moment, no matter the circumstances or choices before you.

That definition of this process evolved out of my work with clients and colleagues over the years. People have been using this approach on their careers successfully for over a dozen years.

So why did I write a book about career planning using this method? Career advice is all around us. Comments such as, “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life,” or “I have to create my own luck,” or “I have to put in my time before I can move up” are a dime a dozen. However, the world has changed a lot in the past few years, and a lot of our old ideas about work don’t work very well anymore. It may finally be time to retire the old adages and shift to something that works better for more of us—no matter what is happening in the world around us.

This book is written for the person who has skills and dreams, who struggles to align the professional aspects of life with what matters most to them personally, and who wants a clear and reliable approach to making career decisions when possibilities arise. He may be looking at a tremendous career opportunity but concerned his caregiving obligations may mean missing out on “the chance of a lifetime.” Or, she may have just been downsized by her company and seeking a stable source of income before tackling longer-term career goals, like spending more time on work that has meaning and purpose. In another case, he may have just been promoted to a new leadership role but feels concerned about the implications for his life as a single parent—he wants to succeed at both. Whatever the situation, having a compass and the skills to navigate uncertainty can help keep you on a professional path that works best for your career—and the rest of your life.

The Professional Careers by DesignTM (PCD) process will help, even if you are not currently looking for a new job but are seeking a way to improve your career options within your organization, to decide whether to accept a major project, or to enhance your visibility or skill set in your current role. This process is designed for any stage of professional life.

An Important Note:

For the purposes of this book, I choose to take a broad view of what is considered a profession. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a profession as “a calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation,” and “a principal calling, vocation or employment.”2 Others have said that professions have key characteristics, including accountability, responsibility for work of high importance, development of specialized knowledge, institutional preparation, and a responsibility to follow appropriate ethical constraints.3 I agree with those definitions, but intend for this book to be inclusive of people who work in many endeavors, including the arts and creative fields, technology, and innovative new fields that may not have a formal training program, as well as those in careers more traditionally considered to be professions.

In short, this book is written for YOU, wherever you may be in your life and career, however you define your career, and whatever career decisions you are facing. For some of you, the idea of career design may sound complicated, but it really isn’t. The process requires that you do a series of self-reflections at the outset. Then, you simply repeat key elements of that self-reflection on a regular basis, including any time there is a major shift in your life.

This book will describe the process in detail, but first let’s put things in context with a review of some common career planning concepts.

Not Your Mother’s Ten-Year Career Plan

When I think back to the way I was taught to think about my career, the common approach included mapping out my one-year, three-year, five-year, and ten-year career plans. It turns out that forty years ago, that process mostly worked. Fast-forward to today, though, and we need a new model. As the pace of information sharing, opportunities, and innovation have sped up, the pace of job changes and career decisions has accelerated dramatically. I’ve discovered from my work as an executive coach that for many of us, it’s hard to see more than three to six months around the corner. That’s why I developed the approach outlined in this book, one that has served me and many clients well.

A long-term career plan can serve as an aspirational guide, but it turns out that it needs flexibility. The day I first fully understood that need was the morning of 9/11/2001. Many of us over a certain age know exactly where we were that day, when hijacked planes hit their targets throughout the northeastern United States, and I’m no exception. I was living and working in the Midwest of the United States and found myself driving a colleague to the medical school office where I worked. This colleague was scheduled to give a presentation to our freshman students that morning. We had just arrived on campus after a breakfast meeting when my assistant met us in the parking lot and told us the news. My colleague lived in Washington, DC, near the Pentagon. As he learned what happened, he became understandably laser-focused on how to get home to his wife and his newborn baby. Everything we had planned for that morning was upended. We managed to secure what was probably the last rental car available in our area for him, and he set out on a long drive home.

Meanwhile, I turned my attention to our freshman medical students, who had just started their training three weeks prior. I was dean of students for the freshman campus, and I knew those students were overwhelmed. The students I remember most clearly were the ones who needed to leave campus and return to their distant homes to support family, friends, and loved ones. Many students came in that day to talk. The conversations of that day and the days that followed crystallized and even changed career decisions. Some students even left medical school. For good. All because of the events of that one momentous day.

As years have passed since then, I have recognized that there are many seminal events that cause people to re-evaluate their life plans. The COVID-19 pandemic is our latest example. As a coach, I have had a front-row seat for the Great Resignation4 as many people revisit the decisions that have framed their work and personal lives and begin questioning the assumptions they have made about work in the context of their lives. People are rethinking the working conditions they want, need, and are willing to tolerate. Whatever three-, five-, or ten-year plans they had in 2018 or 2019 seem a distant memory.

These are some of the reasons the career design approach I describe will not ask you to create such a long-term plan. Any plan you develop could be outdated before the ink is dry. Instead, I will ask you to answer what has become my signature coaching question—a question that will serve as a touchstone throughout your life. I’ll preface the question with this bit of context. A dear mentor of mine, Dr. Lois Nora, has taught me this:

Personal and professional, it’s all one life. We have a finite amount of life energy, and it’s up to us how we spend it.5

My friend Lois came to this understanding after a serious personal tragedy occurred at the height of a successful career. In sharing this lesson with me, she fundamentally shaped my approach to my own career decisions, and my approach to helping my clients make their own choices. Understanding this concept that it’s up to us how we spend our time and energy cuts through the idea of finding work-life balance and asks us to focus on the things that matter most.

Here is my signature coaching question, developed over many years of experimenting with the concept that Lois taught me, and which I shared above:

What matters most to you right now? Work and home, it’s all one life. How do you want to spend your time and energy in that life?

As we move forward together in this process of Professional Careers by DesignTM, keep that question, and your answers to it, foremost in your mind.

Core Concepts, Key Takeaways, and Very Next Actions – Notes About How to Use This Book

At the end of each chapter in this book, I summarize the Core Concepts for the chapter and ask you to write down your Key Takeaways and Very Next Actions. Allow me to explain these ideas because they are key to making this book and its processes most useful to you.

“Core Concepts” are the big ideas from a chapter, distilled into four or five bullet...