The Crucial Role of a Career Vision in Navigating Professional Success

In today's dynamic and competitive job market, merely having a job is not enough; it's about crafting a fulfilling and successful career. Yet, amidst the hustle and bustle of our daily professional lives, many of us overlook a fundamental aspect: having a clear career vision. In this article, we delve into why cultivating a strong sense of direction is not just advantageous but imperative for achieving lasting workplace and career success, especially given the hazy horizon and turbulent climate that we live in. Taking a proactive stance is the most important step for securing a successful future career!

From the Book "Designing a Purposeful Career" Chapter 3: Vision (Part 1)

Steve Jobs was known as a man with ‘vision.’ He captivated the world on several occasions with his inspiring ideas about how the future would be. In 2007, he took to the stage to present Apple’s latest product. He announced, “Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.” A combination of three revolutionary features in one device that not only functioned uniquely but was designed like no other phone before it. The product was called the “iPhone” and has since sold over 2.3 billion units around the globe (DemandSage, 2024). Jobs and Apple had their purpose “to leave the world better than [they] found it” They were able to turn their purpose into a vision.

Most people in the world are united in a vision of a “brighter future” which can be described in just six aspirations: connection, peace, vitality, abundance, opportunity and wisdom.? Every time we notice, encourage and celebrate someone who is changing the world, we are changing the world (Leading Beyond Sustainability, Wilson).

In career design, our key opportunity and road to success is to align our particular vision to that of our shared “brighter future”.?

Recapping the opening chapters, we have argued that humans are innately driven to establish ‘purpose’ in their lives. Careers are fundamentally more central to our identity in the 21st century. Consequently, aligning our careers and purpose has become key to leading fulfilled lives and driving organisations forward. Yet, ‘purpose’ can be quite abstract, and we need to try to make it tangible in some way. This is where “vision” steps in.

The beginning of this chapter discusses why envisioning purposeful careers has become a modern challenge. However, there is plenty of optimism and steps we can begin to take in order to overcome these challenges creating a clearer view of how we can embed purpose within our careers.

A Fast-Moving World

As the old saying goes, “Predicting the future is easy, getting it right is the hard part”. In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. As with all new inventions, it took time to establish its popularity. Many had doubted the early experts who were lauding it as the “future.” And, look where we are today. Our lives are completely dependent on using computers and the internet. This demonstrates how difficult it is to envision and predict the future.

Returning to our story on the success of the iPhone, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sneered “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share”. There are innumerable examples of how predictions have been vastly wrong from their outcomes. From the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic to the advice that kids are no longer interested in witches and wizards’ given to J.K.Rowling. Tetlock is a researcher that has famously studied the capability of humans to predict the future. He asked a group of experts to wade in on various events such as where the Soviet Union would still exist by 1993. Yet, his findings were that ‘experts’ were as successful as ‘dart-throwing chips’ (Frick, 2015). Sometimes our vision of the future is about as correct as flipping a coin.

The difficulties we face in understanding our future are a byproduct of the climate we live in. Economists use an acronym to describe it: VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous.) Moreover, the world today is progressing much more rapidly than in previous civilizations. Technology and globalization have increased the ripplings of change. The latest transformational invention to shake up the world is AI. There are predictions that AI could replace 300 million full-time jobs (Forbes, 2023.) Whilst this sounds disastrous, at the same time, AI is likely to create large-scale benefits for our society too. For those aiming to thrive in their careers, keeping up with these constantly transforming trends is a daunting task that we must face.

One powerful predictor of our future which is referenced in “Leading Beyond Sustainability” comes from the US think-tank, RethinkX.? Their eBook “Rethinking Humanity” is available free of charge at RethinkX.com as are links to associated videos and executive summaries.?

To whet your appetite, consider this paragraph taken from the RethinkX homepage:

?“During the 2020s, key technologies will converge to completely disrupt the five foundational sectors that underpin the global economy, and with them every major industry in the world today. In information, energy, food, transportation, and materials, costs will fall by a 10x or more, while production processes an order of magnitude more efficient will use 90% fewer natural resources with 10x-100x less waste.”

?Simply checking out the above resources is likely to shift your worldview, and consequently your personal vision and sense of purpose.? It did for us!

The Paradox of Modern Choices?

“Well son, I am still working out what I want to do in my career too,” my almost-retired Dad joked. As a fresh graduate, I had complained to him that I was unsure what I wanted to do with my life. There is one clear difference between my situation and his at the same age; the large amount of choice we have today.

Dr. Barry Schwartz titled his 2004 book “The Paradox of Choice.” His research argued that due to the abundance of choices that we have today, we can often become frustrated or disappointed by the choices we make. For example, imagine buying a new vacuum cleaner. The number of options available today has increased vastly and each machine differs in price, design, function, efficiency, size etc. Eventually, when we make a choice, we are often thinking about all of the other choices that we could have made. Moreover, Yuval Harari summarises in his world-famous book “Sapies,” that the modern human has transformed in so many advantageous ways. However, the rich lives that we live in now, make us unsure of what makes us happy. Perhaps, this is why making career choices is so difficult.

Turning back in time, choices were much more limited. Societies often had roles set out for you even before you were born. Depending on your gender or ethnicity you were destined for a certain way of living. Even the family you were born into dictated whether you became a “Baker” or “Butcher.” You only need to see the surnames of people today to guess the line of work their ancestors were involved in.

Fast forward to today, where the options are vast. The pandemic of 2020 sparked the widespread trend of remote working. This has then led to the ability to work anywhere in the world, hybrid working and a 4 day working week. Yet, has this made it easier to envision how we would like to live or more difficult?

?Living Up to Others

?An abundance of career choices is not a universal privilege though. For many of us, there are still limitations and a lot of these are caused by the expectations of others. Societies, cultures, and families all of their perceptions of the careers people should be in.

Societies have always existed with internal hierarchies that are both overt and subconscious levels. Humans are therefore motivated by an inner instinct to achieve higher “status” (Hogan, 2013). Given that jobs and resources are the easiest ways to demonstrate the respect of others, it is naturally easy to have career choices dictated by others.

?For a lot of young people, social pressures force them to create high expectations for themselves. Early in their careers, they are expected to get a high-paying salary and a reputable company brand to work for with as many tangible perks as possible. Social media has amplified this competitive nature as people are continually updating their ‘best life’ on the platforms of where they are spending this salary. Research has demonstrated how this creates social media envy triggering anxiety and depression (Karim, 2020). We believe that this pressure can distract people from aligning with their ‘purpose’ and often lead them into dissatisfying careers.

[Part 2 of this chapter is due to be released in two weeks!]

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 first and second parts of chapter two here:

Chapter Two Purpose - Why Do People Do What They Do? (Part 1)]

Chapter Two Purpose: Why People Do What They Do (Part 2)

#careerdevelopment #occupationalpsychology #workplacesuccess

References

Demand Sage. (2024) 32 Iphone User Statistics. https://www.demandsage.com/iphone-user-statistics/#:~:text=Over%202.3%20billion%20iPhone%20units,smartphone%20industry%20as%20of%202024.

Forbes. (2023.) AI Changing the Future of Work. https://www.forbes.com/sites/marenbannon/2023/06/22/how-ai-is-changing-the-future-of-work/?sh=52abb98972e0

Karim, F. (2020.) Social Media Use and Its Connection to Mental Health. NLM. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7364393/

?Frick, W. (2015). Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2015/02/what-research-tells-us-about-making-accurate-predictions?

Hogan, R. & Blickle, G. (2013). Socioanalytic theory. In N. D. Christiansen & R. P. Tett (Eds.), Handbook of Personality at Work (pp. 53-70).? New York: Routledge.