Chapter 3: Vision - Why Creating a Career Vision is Important
Nathan Cornwell ??
Organisational Psychologist | Creating Workplace Success for Expats and International Organisations ?? ?? Increase employee performance through talent management, leadership coaching & org. development ??
In the tapestry of our professional pursuits, the concept of career vision can be a guiding beacon amidst the sea of possibilities. In this chapter, we explore how these possibilities fit in with your own professional desires and equally, how the importance of the world's needs are important to consider. Aligning people's career visions with that of the world - can bring a sustainable future for all!
From the Book "Designing a Purposeful Career" - Why is Creating Career Vision Important?
??????? ?? The environment we live in today is fast-moving and unpredictable. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the number of choices we can make. Equally, it can be anxiety-inducing to try and live up to others’ expectations of us. These challenges are key reasons that this book exists. There is an increased onus on the modern workforce to take control of their careers before the world’s context does it for them.
??????????? The world has a fascinating natural ability to consistently re-vitalise itself. Societies and the environment are forever requesting new needs from its inhabitants. This is quite evidential in how the top hundred companies in the stock exchange have regularly risen and fallen, replaced and displaced each other; all according to the needs of the world. Famous examples include Blockbuster, who dominated the video rental market during the 90’s. A sudden change in technology and they were quickly replaced by digital streaming services such as Netflix. Equally, chimney sweeps were once a career path for young people in early 1900’s Britain. Yet, a swing towards improving the health of the workforce coupled with technological advancements meant that he became a forgotten profession. There is a constant flux of values required in the markets dictated by the world. We need to take a proactive stance on the labour market as opposed to a reactive one. We need to assess our value offering to the world and ensure it meets the demand. Equally, this is not a one-time exercise but an ongoing one. Adapting and amending how we present our “work” value to the world is vitally important to securing a “purposeful career.”
How Important is Our Vision of the World?
As previously affirmed, is not our context that drives our purpose, it is the way we see our context. This is an evolving picture. With every new day and each new experience, we build on the view we had the day before. We may even make profound discoveries on our life journey which transform our worldview.
In the amazing book, “Worldview Dynamics and the Well-Being of Nations” Clive’s friend and author, Richard Barrett (founder of the Barrett Values Centre) describes just how important our worldview is and presents data on 145 nations that show how our happiness is affected by the predominant worldview held amongst our fellow citizens and promoted by government.
We had been exploring people’s visions for a “brighter future” with audiences large and small across three continents ever since the United Nations published the draft for the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals.? Each time they share “visions” that are startlingly similar, if not the same. People always describe a world that is consistent with the SDGs as agreed by world leaders at the United Nations in New York in 2015 and which have a target date of 2030.
Similarly, we have worked with people at work in large organisations to view the purpose of their work through different lenses such as employees, customers, suppliers and society.? Once again, the societal lens always aligns to one or more SDGs.
There are obvious implications from these insights that apply to career design.? If we can work out what we really care about and test this against the SDGs or against the aforementioned “six aspirations for a brighter future” (which also map to the SDGs), we can be confident that we have something to offer that is relevant in our world.? And if we understand how our personal talents add value in this quest we are truly poised to make a difference.
Aligning our Vision to the Sustainable Development Goals and a “Brighter Future”
It is from these insights we can dare to dream.? We can envisage how the world will be better, in general terms and consequent to our efforts, and we can begin to envisage what we will be doing and need to do at the most poignant and meaningful time horizons. These insights form our multi-horizon vision.?
At the same time, we should remember that, when forming a vision like this, we should remain open to unexpected variations on our theme.? The future rarely manifests exactly as we envisage, especially given the constantly changing context today. This paired with humans being naturally poor predictors emphasises the need to be open-minded in our visions. In fact, Tetlock identified characteristics of successful predictors that might help inform how we can build better visions for our careers. He found that those who based their predictions on balanced ideas from multiple sources were closer to the outcomes than those who relied on a single idea. Therefore, exploring the context can help to create a more informed vision for your career. Fortunately, the other success factors grow with time. We add in domain expertise, build networks to bounce our visions off, practice predicting the future more and can also learn from earlier our knowledge of the past. This accumulates to assist our ability to create more accurate visions. In summary, our perfect vision of how the future will unfold is highly unlikely to be achieved. Therefore, we should simply aim to utilize our vision in order to “set us in motion” and be flexible enough to “go with the flow”. As John Lennon reminded us “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”
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Practical techniques for vision creation
1.???? The power of a Legacy:? What would you wish to be proud of when you come to the end of your career?? How would you like to describe your life journey to future generations?? Make some notes in your learning journal.
2.???? How far ahead do you dare look?? This is a question we often ask leaders when they are working on vision for their organisations.? We asked this of a CEO one November.? He confessed he could barely see beyond Christmas due to the challenges his market was experiencing.? We worked with him and his team to create a “Vision for Spring” – literally to help them envisage “getting through Christmas” and being in good shape for the road ahead.
3.???? Make it up as you go along:? Clive confesses to carrying his vision around with him in the form of notes on his smartphone.? He has notes for most years, including this year and the ones that are now history.? Each note has subtitles corresponding to his personal values (we’ll talk more about values in a later chapter) and every time he is inspired to do something, he asks, “When will that happen?" and adds it into the relevant year under the value it supports.? He takes great delight in checking these items off when they manifest and doesn’t worry about editing them as John Lennon’s warning pays out!
?Thanks for reading! Let us know what you think about this chapter.
About the Authors
This book is co-authored by Nathan Cornwell and Clive Wilson.? Nathan is an employability specialist and organisational psychologist and recently founded Nathan Cornwell Consulting who support expats with their careers and the companies that employ them. Clive is a speaker, published author and coach and has specialised in Purposeful Leadership for over twenty years. They connected during the global pandemic and committed to work together on this publication, releasing it chapter by chapter on Linked In and ultimately as a complete work to be available towards the end of 2024.? We hope you will enjoy, comment and share these thoughts in the interests career enhancement for purposeful leaders in any and every context, from those beginning their career journeys to those determining new careers, even into retirement.
This is the first part of Chapter 3 of the book "Designing the Purposeful Career." You can also find the earlier chapters here:
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