Understand Your Career Values and Vision.
We talked about understanding your accomplishments, skills and expertise. This is only part of understanding your objective. This will also help you when you start looking for companies that match your objective. The other parts are your values and your vision.
VALUES
We all have values. These values change over time based upon your life experiences. The values I had at 18 are definitely different than my values today. At 18 all I wanted to do was play water polo. Now I am concerned about my family. You need to examine your life and what are the top three values for you in your career. If you were to ask 10 different people what the value lifestyle meant to them you would get 10 different answers. You need to explain, in detail, what the values for you mean. Here are my top three values with my explanation:
Value 1: Lifestyle
This means to have balance in my life and do the things I want to do in career, religion, family and interests. This means that I can attend daddy donut day at school with my children. This means that I can take a day off and have lunch with my children at school. This means that I am not working 7 days a week. This means that I have to work smart enough and be in a position of authority that I can do this.
Value 2: Leadership/Management
Most people think of this as coordinating action and being responsible for results. I think of this as creating relationships and guiding the team towards a vision. I enjoy leading others and seeing them have eye opening experiences and we move towards a vision.
Value 3: Challenge
If I look at my values from 5 months ago to today, this one has changed. I first thought it was wealth. I grew up in a good home where money was not in abundance. I really have no regrets about my childhood, but my family was not well off. I would love to have enough money to help everyone out that needs it. That requires wealth. Over the past 5 months this has changed. I want a challenge that will help me to grow and develop new skills and attributes. If I become the leader I want to be, can enjoy the lifestyle I want because I build good organizations that provide me the time and I can grow from a challenge, the wealth will be present. I have seen this in my career and seemed to forget it. This is why it is always good to reevaluate your values from time to time.
VISION
I believe that all of us can receive inspiration for our lives. I do have a hard time believing that you can receive that beyond 3 to 5 years. The landscape of the world is changing so rapidly that it is hard to think beyond that time frame. I do have life goals that I want to accomplish before I die, but this is more what you want your career to be in 5 years. To determine the vision we need to understand a little about a concept called FIT. FIT is an acronym for Function Industry and Track. Let me explain these.
Function: This is what we do. For example: Dancing, Marketing, and Sales.
Industry: This is where we do it. For example: Entertainment, Saas, and Financial Services.
Track: This is individual, expert or manager.
Your vision needs to be 5 years out from today. A lot of hiring managers will ask you where you see yourself in 5 years. If I am a dancer and want to get into marketing as a manager, I will need to have a plan on how to do that. If you don’t want to get hurt too bad, you will want to focus on changing one of the three at a time. The fastest way to get to your goal is through a network that connection that trusts you. They can get you into the position with less experience because they know who you are.
I thought long and hard about my 5 year vision and my life goals. The one thing about my vision statement is that no one determines my reality other than myself. I set the goals knowing that the only person holding me back from achieving my vision is myself. You can get as detailed as you want, but make sure you understand what that looks like because you are going to be asked it over and over again.
Vision Statement:
Five years from now, I will be leading an organization as a Chief Operating Officer or Senior Operations Executive – with primary or shared responsibility for the daily operations.
Now that I know the point I want to be at in the next 5 years I can understand my objective for right now. My objective should be a combination of my accomplishments, skills, expertise, values and vision. It will take some steps to get to your vision. Make sure you have a plan and you will get to that vision.
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