A Framework and Mindsets to Strategically Manage Your Career

Managing your career is an essential skill to derive personal and professional well-being. As a leader and coach, my purpose is to demystify and guide people through the personal transformation process and help them achieve their goals. By breaking down this complex topic into timeless first principles and mindsets, we can use them to guide our direction and actions with greater intention.

1. Career Strategy Framework

I developed the Career Strategy Framework in 2008 while working at Microsoft, as I could not find a methodology that took a holistic approach to managing a career. The intent was to simplify the elusive concept of career strategy into tangible components that could help my team members and colleagues articulate and execute their careers with a strategic lens. The seven core principles I describe below have remained the same, although I have recently organized them into two main ideas: knowing what you want and getting what you want.

?? Strategy - Knowing What You Want

Many people cannot clearly articulate what they want, making career strategy feel reactionary and tactical. This can create the familiar feeling that you are not on a path to realizing your full potential. The three principles below can help you build the awareness needed for greater choice and agency to pursue what is important to you.

?? 1 - Know yourself

The first principle in the framework is to acknowledge the reality of who you are today and then rediscover and envision your best self. It takes patience, self-awareness, time, and space to separate yourself from the routines and demands of the day. Most people acknowledge this is valuable, but few dedicate themselves to discovering who they are and want to become.

There are three parts to deepening your self-awareness that will guide all aspects of your career strategy process.

• Vision - clarifying a compelling vision based on your values, beliefs, purpose, and goals.
• Discipline - the mindset and strength to embrace a new identity and honor it through your principles, behaviors, and emotions.
• Autonomy - venturing into new territory by enforcing boundaries, letting go of things holding you back, playing the right persona when and where needed, and leveraging your skills.

What is your vision, and how will you change to become the identity capable of delivering on the vision?

?? 2 - Target your product

As a long-time product manager, I use product metaphors often in my coaching. This principle clarifies your product offering(s) with a value proposition to a specific target market where your unique expertise is valued. It's common for people to showcase a range of skills, but often, I need clarification on what they are selling. How can you expect an organization to buy your expertise if you do not have a compelling value proposition that describes the problems you solve through the fusion of unique skills? It's your job to create this story and narrative.

What is your product?

How is it different and valuable?

How does it align with your purpose?

?? 3 - Plan the journey

Building a great product requires iterating and investing in capabilities that accrue over time. Your career is no different. Architecting a career roadmap with potential paths and experiences you must develop helps to build a mental and visual map of your direction. A roadmap is a plan that is adaptable to the changing business environment.

What are your path and potential jobs that serve as guideposts toward your vision?

? Execution - Getting What You Want

With clarity of what you want from your career and life, you can go get it with a vengeance. I encourage using visual roadmaps to help people think about the friction when moving from where they are today to the next step in their journey. Generally, there are at least four areas of friction that require focus and execution to overcome the resistance:

• closing a skill gap (your expertise)
• raising the visibility and credibility of your product (your brand)
• engaging people to serve as mentors and open doors (your network)
• making better decisions daily that move you toward the destination (your decision-making)

?? 4 - Learn continuously

A learner's mindset is essential to performing in your current role and growing new skills needed for potential next jobs on a career roadmap. I recommend documenting a professional development plan following the 70/20/10 model - 70% learning on the job, 20% learning from others, and 10% learning by self. I also recommend sharing the learning plan with key stakeholders who can support its execution.

What and how are you learning to build new skills and experiences?

?? 5 - Sell the value

Raising the visibility and credibility of your expertise builds up mindshare and increases the surface area of luck. This can be achieved through various tactics, including sharing thought leadership articles, involvement in industry forums, social proof, and well-written LinkedIn profiles. The key is to focus messaging on the value delivered through your expertise while not appearing boastful. Most people acknowledge they need to do a better job marketing themselves and often find it unnatural. Building a powerful brand is essential to getting things done and using it to be considered for new opportunities that align with your vision.

How strong is your brand to get what you want?

?? 6 - Connect intentionally

As a graduate business school coach, I reinforce the reality that everyone needs help getting their next job, and a strong network is essential to getting interviews and landing job offers. Building credible relationships inside organizations is also critical for influence, navigating conflict, and getting work done efficiently and effectively. Connecting intentionally means developing relationships with people who can help you achieve your personal and professional goals. Networking is a skill that can be learned through practice. Strong relationships are built on trust, and each party gets value. Giving to others who need help without expecting anything in return builds your credibility and karma, which will be paid multiple times over.

What relationships are you investing in to help you get what you want?

How are you helping other people get what they want?

?? 7 - Decide Consciously

Each day, we make hundreds of decisions that either move us a small step down our envisioned path or not. The key is developing routines, rituals, and mindsets that increase the likelihood that you will make decisions that align with the vision you designed at the beginning of this framework.

Thinking about decisions over the last week, how have they guided your path to what is important to you?

How are you making quality decisions that align with your vision?

2. Career Strategy Mindsets

While a framework provides the scaffolding for career strategy, mindsets shape our thinking about formulating and executing the strategy.

?? You must practice at least three mindsets to know what you want so you can get what you want.

Strategist: You are a competitive strategist deciding where and how to compete.

• Long-term vision, purpose
• Aware of shifts, trends
• Focus on what you can control
• Power dynamics
• Options & Leverage

Product Manager: You are the product manager of a portfolio of "expertise products" for sale in the talent marketplace.

• Product-market fit
• Credible, unique value proposition
• Monetize expertise through multiple offerings and channels
• Market your product to stand out

Startup: You are a startup in a competitive market that must innovate to create value and remain relevant.

• Adapt to market needs
• Innovation and experimentation
• Take proactive risks
• Mentors & Advisors
• Resourceful and hungry

3. Adapting Through Continuous Innovation

Career strategy is not a static, one-time process. It requires a continuous innovation cycle to remain relevant and earn the rewards most important to you. Change is a force that must be acknowledged and embraced in your career strategy. We are changing (the inside world), and at the same time, the market (the outside world) is continually changing.

I recommend building self-awareness for people seeking transformation, such as a significant change in a career path (Strategy 1 above). This can help make your vision tangible and emotionally compelling. This often requires an identity shift capable of delivering on the vision. A new identity is realized through principles, behaviors, and emotions that embody who we choose to become. To make the identity come to life, we must have the autonomy to venture into new territory.

This deeper awareness can be a game changer, but only if we have the courage to take the model of our best selves and experiment in the outside world. By exploring opportunities, experimenting with a new identity, learning from it, and iterating, we innovate our best selves (the inside world) with market feedback. This continuous engagement creates a virtuous cycle between the inside and the outside world, helping us stay calibrated with reality and derive insights into how we must change. What is within our control is how we change, which increases the likelihood of realizing the outcomes of our vision.

Adopting the framework, mindsets, and innovation process can help shape an intentional career strategy. You are the strategist, product manager, and startup of a product you must love and apply strategically to create value for organizations and yourself.

Knowing what you want sharpens the focus to get what you want.

• How clear are you about what you want, professionally and personally?
• What are the impacts of this lack of clarity and conviction?
• What are you willing to do each day to get what you want?

To read and learn more about the Career Strategy Framework, please look at the comment section for a link to my Substack for articles and book references.

I look forward to hearing your feedback and the ideas you have to build upon and improve these concepts.

- James