Design Thinking Your Career 2/2

Face it: you read too much content on the net and act on practically very little, if at all. This article hopes to be an antithesis to that, and so without spending too much time, let's actively design think your career, shall we?

As I mentioned from my previous article, it is a pentagonal process:

1. Get Curious

2. Establish Weak Ties

3. Talk to People

4. Get Identity Capital

5. Try Stuff

1. Establish Weak Ties.

We will start here. Where you are now, what you know about yourself now and who you actually are in the present.

Being in that frame of mind then, you can respond to this question:

What would you want to do over the next 3-5 years ie by 2023/2025 if:

1. Everything in your life currently stays the same, ie nothing drastic in the path of your life happens, no act of God, just normal smooth sailing. This is your realistic view of your career life and your aspirations over the next 3-5 years.
2. Everything changes. Think a Covid-19-esque happening in your life again, what would you do? This is your rainy day career plan, should the hurricanes come, you already have a contingency you could fall back on.
3. Money and society's perceptions were not an issue ie if you had all the money and it didn't matter to you what society thought about you, what would you do? This is your utopic plan - if all goes well from 1 or 2, you can very well achieve this too!

This is a watered down version of what Bill and Dave call the Odyssey Plan. There's indeed more to it, but my intention here is to poke your current lived reality the major question to answer being; what do you want to do next?

2. Establish Weak Ties.

The Weak Tie Theory proposes that acquaintances are likely to be more influential than close friends especially in social networks. Absent Ties are connections that you think exist but don't.

With that out of the way, Weak Ties are your bridges to opportunities, knowledge and growth - and for professional growth, LinkedIn is the perfect platform for developing weak ties! What then?

Actions:

1. Find out who you know on this platform (LinkedIn). 
2. Write them a short message asking them if they know anyone in the path you want to get into from the questions you answered in the Get Curious part.
3. If they do, politely ask them if they could give you a warm introduction to that individual.

At this point, the introverts are already giving up, however that fear is what has kept you in the same spot all this while, many humans are kind, approach them gently and if it does not work consider it an epic fail and straddle along to the next person. 

A sample message would be like:

Hey Lumumba,

I hope you are doing well especially during this pandemic.

I was wondering, would you be knowing or connected to anyone in the aviation field? I am really interested to know how to pursue career opportunities in that field.

3. Talk to People

So we've been bridged to a connection, if they are kind enough they will even do a warm introduction for you so that it is not so awkward breaking the ice with the new connection. So the plan here is to catch a glimpse of what your future would look like. You fancy being an aviator, and now you have one at your table, why don't you take that opportunity to get to know how they find it living your dream? 

One major assignment here is: please do your research. Both on the person and the industry. 

The conversations you are aiming to have are supposed to be very well targeted to the industry for you to get as much as they have to offer on the same without them feeling like you are clueless about what you even want. Make the conversation valuable for them as much as it is for you as well.

4. Get Identity Capital

For most people this is where the real work begins. Most of us millennials have been tagged with having the almighty Identity Crisis. That may be true, but it doesn't have to remain.

By now you know what you want to do, you have met people who are already doing it and you know what is expected of you in the industry from conversing with them. Next step: go build up on those skills! That is your identity capital!

Find online courses and actually learn about the industry well enough. I am not saying you just go for certifications, rather actually understand the trends and needs in that industry. What are the forecast skills and how well are you knowledgeable on them? What can you actually do from the skills you learn? My inspirational friend Emmanuel Acheampong uses his learned skills as an ML engineer to build fun projects that solve actual real world problems. What have you done with your certifications and acquired knowledge on the industry? 

This ultimately builds up to the last and final step:

5. Try Stuff!

Prototype the experience of being an aviator, a cloud solutions architect, a network engineer, PR practitioner etc. Do at least a micro project and document what exactly you accomplished or even failed at. The idea is to keep track of your learned lessons and be able to present that as your medals when you eventually get to sit across an interviewers table. But even more fulfilling, is so you can use those as evidences of creativity and problem solving when you will be sitting across that investor's desk pitching your industry solution!

So from design thinking your career, we actually ended up building a framework for how you can contribute to the world as well and hopefully create even more career opportunities for your peers!

Now please stop here and go direct that intrigue to actual work, friend.