Implement Career as Part of Life Strategy

Unless we manage priorities mindfully, our time and energy will be consumed in firefighting the most urgent priorities.

At a fireside chat, Lei Zhang and I spoke with the summer/fall #intern cohort about #careerdevelopment #growthhacking and #life before their holiday break. Lei had started with an earlier career goal in the academia before switching and successfully navigating his career through #google , #thomsonreuters , #refinitiv before joining startup world as Head of Engineering.

He shared perspective about sustaining #curiosity, #lifelonglearning, taking unconventional #careerpaths , taking risks with arising opportunities and implementing #lifestrategy to achieve greater fulfillment, including a successful career, lasting relationships and live in #integrity and #authenticself .

With no easy answers to these complex questions, we focused on applying business #criticalthinking , #businessstrategies , practices, and tools. I noted key takeaways below:

1.?????Know your motivation factors: When choosing career paths, focus on motivators like meaningful work, personal growth, greater responsibility and recognition for your contribution, the other pieces such as money will fall in place.

2.?????Businesses succeed not because they get things right the first time, but because they successfully evolve their strategy to address emerging threats and opportunities. Likewise, people learn through time and experience of what they want. How best to get to the ideal job as unexpected opportunities arise, will be a continuous process balancing work/life priorities and constraints.

3.?????Be courageous and take risks. Past data or skills may no longer hold for the future. Ask critical questions about core values and assumptions that must be tested and proven true. Take an iterative approach to changes and transitions through different phases. Balance thru emerging and proven strategies before going to far down the path.

4.?????Strategy is not what organizations say but where they spend resources. By default, we allocate resources, our time, energy, talent or money, that yield short-term rewards such as bonuses and promotions. As such, we may neglect other important aspects such as health and relationships. Align your resources against your priorities, including family, purpose, charity, and personal growth.

5.?????#Invest in the #futureskills : Planting trees when we need shades is too late. Like savvy investors, critical capabilities needed for future successes should be retained in house. Job scope, learning and #growth opportunities yield better results in the long run and should not be traded off for short-term gains.

6.?????Focus on what the customers want, not what you want to sell. Stakeholders in our life (self, family, friends, colleagues, communities) expect us to perform our roles. Listen to self and others and understand all the expectations help build long lasting relationships. ?

To conclude, resources, processes and priorities are the 3 key areas of attention. Resources are what you use to do things, i.e., people, equipment, brand, relationships. Processes are how you do things, for example, product design, recruiting, training, etc. Priorities are why you do things and the values behind daily decisions. We encourage our intern colleagues to further examine additional management theories that can help them find the right #balance among careers, families and personal priorities. We also encourage them to reflect on their resource allocation between career and personal life.

Key questions pulled from one of my favorite reads: "How Will You Measure Your Life" by @ClaytonChristensen and @KarenDillon?#TEDx talk on life strategy.