Making Plans That Make Sense

So much of what happens in careers these days seems to be the result of outside forces beyond our control. We are buffeted by layoffs or by constraints on hiring or even by the elimination of entire departments. If career paths even exist anymore, they are more like switchback trails than the steady way forward that characterized the past.

In the midst of all of that turbulence, making career plans often feels like a hopeless exercise. Who can predict the future well enough to know what goals make sense, let alone how best to accomplish them? Many of us, for example, have set our sights on earning an advanced degree that will prepare us to assume certain positions in academia or the private sector, but by the time we are graduated, those opportunities have all but disappeared. It's an experience only Bernie Madoff could dream up.

And yet, a career plan may well be the only form of security we have today. However, it's not the plan itself, but the process involved in establishing and using it that protects us. Developing a Career Fitness Plan, in particular, is not solely about setting and accomplishing goals; it is also the way we infuse our direction setting with the two new realities of the modern world of work.

• First, change is the new normal in the workplace. A Career Fitness Plan acknowledges that reality by having us develop not one, but two goals: one that focuses on something we can accomplish in our current job, and a second that points us toward the next job we would like (or should expect) to have. Whether it's in our current department or a different one, our current institution or a different one, our current employment status (e.g., adjunct, tenured) or a different one, that change will almost certainly occur. Why? Because escalating budget constraints, shifting student (and parent) expectations and preferences, and new regulatory pressures--just to name a few--are forcing it.
• Second, change is now continuous in the workplace. A Career Fitness Plan also establishes a developmental or bridge goal that prepares us to make the changes we have envisioned in our first two goals. Because self-development typically takes time to complete, however, we can adjust its scope and content, as necessary, to ensure our progress continues. In effect, we accomplish our objective not by aiming for a single bulls-eye, but instead, by aiming for an ever-tightening progression of bulls-eyes that advance us to where we want to be. A central feature of the plan, therefore, is regular self-assessment. Every quarter, we must review our status to determine if we are sticking to our plan and, equally as important, if that plan is achieving the change we want and need.

Making plans in a topsy-turvy environment is nonsensical, if those plans are predicated on an expectation of orderly progress. If we assume that change will occur, however, and then we proactively plan for it, we can significantly reduce both its discomfort and its potential peril.

Thanks for reading,
Peter