Career Development Goals And How To Eat An Elephant
It’s an oldie but a goody. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, of course! You need to look at your career development goals in the same way.
It’s almost certain that your long term career goal is further away than you can realistically imagine when you start. OK, it’s something that you want, I’m not trying to distract you from that. It might be something that you dream about, it might be an obsession, but right at the kick off it’s not your main target. It’s where you are going long term, but not today.
Today you may have less grand ambitions, but they are equally important. Today you need to take a bite out of the elephant. Tomorrow another bite. You can’t manage the whole trunk in one go!
A slightly silly analogy, I know, but accurate nonetheless. What you need is career development goals, plural, not just one. Too much can go wrong on your way to the ultimate goal. Things inevitably side-track you. That’s life. Without a series of steps you don’t have a manageable path, you have a single career goal which is likely one huge step and, sadly, almost certainly unachievable.
When President Kennedy said he wanted an American to go to the moon, he didn’t have a clue about how that man was going to get there. He had a grand ambition, an end goal, but he had to break it down into achievable, bite-size pieces. He spoke to people who knew more than he did about science, about rockets, about communications, etc. Each of those people broke their goals down into smaller pieces, manageable bites.
The rest, as we know, is history.
Great ambition is a good thing, don’t let anyone tell you you can’t get where you want to go. Set your sights as high as you like and go for it.
But make sure you work out a reasonable set of career development goals to get you there. It’s no good saying I want to be the CEO of Microsoft if you don’t have a clue how to get there. Do your research. Look at their website, is there any careers information there? What about relevant press and magazines? What about forums and social networks.
Whatever your long term career goals, you’ll need to do a lot of work before you get there. Exactly what will depend on what you have chosen to do of course, but take it one bite at a time and before you know it, no more elephant!
We’re just scratching the surface. Get all the right tools and tactics for success plus more free help and advice here: Career Development Goals.
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