P.O.P: Birth plans and career plans - are they worth writing?

There are many amazing books and articles that speak to the challenges women and mothers face in the workplace and the systemic changes required to bring equity to it. In this series you won’t find any references to these works. The P.O.P series is a practical guide for pregnant women and new mothers who want to lean into their career development while growing their family, by recognising and applying the lessons learnt through parenting. This article is the first in the series, and so we will start at the beginning - with how to plan.?

There are many lessons you can learn from motherhood that you can apply to your career. Planning is no exception.

Disclaimer, I am a planner. Planning brings me joy. You might share this love or find writing a plan as exciting as taking the bins out. Either way, I will share below the lessons I learnt from birth planning that I successfully applied to my career plan. This approach enabled me to rapidly accelerate my career journey, while being amongst the chaos and joy of raising twin boys.

For much of your life it will not matter if you have a plan or not. However, there are places where everyone should invest their time in writing down what matters to them - because your voice might get taken away from you unless you do. For me, two of these instances are birth plans and career plans. The birth plan I had for my twins, Sam and Ted, was the first plan I ever properly researched and fought for. The lessons from how I approached this changed my career planning and career forever as a result.

The first lesson is the simplest; no one else is going to fight for what you want and need if you don’t.

Birth plans and career plans have a lot in common. They are both deeply personal and by design try to bring structure to something that isn’t always in your control. Some elements will always be out of our control but if you have ever sat up late at night thinking “why didn’t I say something?” or “I wish I’d felt more in control” then it is time to learn how to write a plan on your terms.

It was only after writing my birth plan that I realised that the only other plan I’d ever written for me, my career plan, was actually written for my manager rather than myself. Many things changed when I got pregnant but a fundamental one was that I became comfortable advocating for my unborn children, and because at the time we were all in the same body, that meant advocating for myself for the first time as well.?

For my birth plan, for the first time, I wrote down what my partner and I wanted to happen and I made sure everyone else signed up to this too. This is how I did it:

I was fortunate, the birth of my twins was a positive experience. I didn’t end up with Plan A but I’d planned for Plan B as well. Our medical team had a printed copy of Plan A and Plan B (I told you I loved to plan) and everyone knew our goals and our non-negotiables for both. Births are unpredictable, but so are careers. When my children were born it was the first time I’d really researched and advocated for what I wanted to happen and made changes to my environment to increase the chance of this happening, fully supported by the people around me.

This got me thinking? If I actually invested the same care, time and approach to my career planning would it have the same impact? Of course, the answer was yes.

Before 2019, when my children were born, the process for updating my career plan looked a little like this:

?Eight months after the birth of my twins I had navigated return to work in a new Covid-work environment. For several months I was miserable because I wanted to be at work but also be with my babies. Luckily, my company supported flexible working and I found the right model that allowed me to dedicate a balanced amount of time to both of these things. After six months I found myself agreeing to take on an interim role as Cirium’s Chief Operations Officer (it couldn’t be harder than having twins - right?). When this interim role ended, I was faced with the biggest career decisions of my life. What did I want to be when I grew up?

I needed a plan. Fortunately, I now knew what it took to write a good plan and how to make it happen.

These are the lessons I took from my birth plan to turn them into a career changing plan

1)???Do your research

You might think you know what you want to do with your career but the world we are in is changing rapidly. Roles that didn’t exist when we went to school are now amongst the fastest growing and highest earning in the market. I’d never heard of the job that I got as a result of my career plan. Without research I wouldn’t have known it existed or been able to build a plan around getting it.

2)???It pays to buy-in expertise?

Two amazing women helped me in the last three years and I paid them both for their incredible expertise. The first was my Doula, Mel - an amazing mother of five who taught me about birth, my rights and gave me the confidence to advocate for my birth plan. The second, Kathleen, my business coach, who inspired, educated and challenged me and ultimately translated my career goals into a plan that led me down an entirely new career path.?

3)???Build a network of people who have already done it - from peers, mentors and sponsors

If there is something on your career plan you haven’t done before - go and find people who have - contact strangers on LinkedIn in your dream role, tell people what you want to do and ask them to help you build a network. Ask someone who has done it already to be your mentor, make sure the mentor you have is not for the role you in, but the next role you want.

4)???If your plan can’t be delivered in the environment you are in - you need to change your environment

If your manager, or doctor, isn’t on board with your plans, they aren’t going to advocate for you and it is time to find someone who does believe in what you want to do. This might feel overwhelming but maternity leave gives you plenty of time to think through your options and there is no point at all spending time away from your children for a company or manager that isn’t going to invest in helping you achieve your career goals.

5)???Learn to love Plan B

If you invest as much time and energy thinking and planning for alternatives it makes the diversions in life a little easier to take. If you only have one outcome you are currently working towards (whether that be birth, career or something else) your challenge is to find a Plan B you would be happy with.

6)???Tell everyone what you want to happen

Speaking up for what you want feels unnatural. We are conditioned from school to believe if you perform well, you will be promoted. So why are unsuitable people in senior roles? Because they asked to be. The more people you speak to about your career plan the more advice, advocates and champions you will have. All it takes is one person to hear of one opportunity that supports your career path - the more people you tell, the more people who are out listening for these opportunities for you.

So, is it worth writing a career plan or birth plan?

For me, the answer is absolutely yes. My plans gave me a voice in circumstances that could have been out of my control. For me, my plan led to a new Chief of Staff role. This was, and still is, my dream role, and one where I could apply the last fifteen years of corporate experience and my then two, now three years, of life-changing insight you gain when you become a parent.

This P.O.P series will continue to explore the game changing lessons becoming a parent can offer if you wish to accelerate your career. Next up are: ‘How fertile is your environment, are you in the right place to get promoted?’ and ‘Managing your time by the power nap principle – how to make less time count more’.

It took having children for me to realise that I had never really advocated for myself. Fear of being seen to be pushy or ambitious had held me back from writing an honest career plan, let only taking the steps to achieve it. I’ve drawn a line now - I will speak up for what I want and need.

I hope you found this useful and more interesting than taking the bins out - I’d love to hear your thoughts!