Your Career on Autopilot?

We spend the best time of our life at work. Work is where we grow and develop. It determines our quality of life. It becomes our identity. Our work is not just a job. It’s part of a bigger system called a career. A career is an integral part of life and deserves strategic planning.

Yesterday, I conducted a 2-hour career coaching session for a select group of finance professionals where I shared my career strategy framework.

Your career strategy is a road map to fulfill your life vision. It needs to fit in your life journey and align with your life ambitions. The outcome of your career is more than making a living. It should lead you to achieve the purpose of your life.

A successful career does provide financial freedom that helps us to support and provide a quality of life to our loved ones but more important outcomes are our personal and professional growth. That outcome leads us to enjoy a social status and respect in the community.

Can you run your career on auto-pilot?

Yes, you can if you take care of the necessary inputs and essential activities that should be part of your day-to-day professional life.

To start with, to be successful in your career, you must have an entrepreneurial mindset. As a working professional, you are an entrepreneur in the business of selling your talent. The right entrepreneurial mindset gets rid of the habit of claiming entitlements. You develop a mindset where every day you have to justify your existence by demonstrating the value you create.

As an entrepreneur in the talent business, you must understand the difference between knowledge and skill. Knowledge is cheap; it’s a commodity. If you have time, you can find almost anything on Google. Skills are rare. It takes time and effort to develop skills.

Unfortunately, most professionals are in the business of piling up knowledge on their minds. They go to training in the name of skills development but simply pile up more knowledge on their already over-burdened minds.

For a successful professional career, developing and maintaining a professional network is inevitable. It has to be outside your work more suitably around your fellow professionals working in other organizations.

Your professional network works as your support group. It not only helps you to keep you on track in your career journey, but it also provides you with an external view of your professional endeavors to keep a check and balance.

To run your career on autopilot, it is essential to perform certain activities diligently as part of your daily routine. These include learning, communicating, strategic thinking, and networking. While you are happily employed, it’s hard to find the priority for such activities. But this is more like strengthening your balance sheet to prepare for bad times. Build these activities in your daily routines so you don’t feel the pressure of doing something extraordinary.

Spend at least 10% of your time learning new things if you want to stay where you are. If you want to grow spend 15 to 20%. Be cautious of developing skills and not just piling up knowledge.

The best activity you can do to demonstrate your personal brand and develop strategic thinking is interactive communication. Not just presentations but interactive conversations that provide you opportunities to polish up your critical thinking, negotiation skills, and problem-solving.

The biggest fear in the minds of employed professionals today is fear of job security. Based on the uncertain economic environment and corporate vulnerability, it is a legitimate fear. However, if we adapt to the mindset of an entrepreneur and proactively drive our career, this fear becomes just business risk, a normal part of any business.**

P.S. This is the last week of enrollment for the 13th batch of the Strategic CFO Program. Classes start on May 28. Check the Program Page here.