Blog Posts
By: Dr. Scott
A friend of mine recently told me that he is, for the first time in his career, between jobs. He explained that he had been in the workforce consistently for over 40 years, but had left his most recent position after having lost respect for his immediate supervisor. Without another job lined up, he had followed his conscience, trusted in himself and his resume, and resigned.
My friend’s story reminded me of the importance of forward-thinking career planning. Like his situation, we can’t foresee all of the roundabouts and detours our careers might take us on, but we can plan for the road ahead.
The number one thing to keep in mind when career planning is the need to be proactive, but this is probably why you’re here in the first place. The second important thing worth mentioning is that all of the strategies recommended below are most effective as constant feedback loops where you assess your progress, revise the plan as needed, and repeat.
In this article, we look at 5 strategies for forward thinking career planning:
- Begin with the end in mind
- Set Long Term SMART Goals
- Professional Development & Upskilling
- Never Stop Networking, Never Pass up a Pitch
- Maintain a Nimble Mindset
Begin with the end in mind
Your career will span decades. Throughout that time, your priorities will evolve and change. This can negatively impact your career (and your life!) if you allow your career goals to constantly shift. So, it is important to begin with the end in mind when setting out on a career path or adjusting your career trajectory.
To begin with the end in mind, you’ll first need to take an honest self-assessment and determine your end goals for your professional life. For most people, the easiest way to start thinking about this is to envision what retirement looks like for you. Do you see yourself completely retiring or are you the type of person who will continue to work or volunteer later in life? When you retire, what will you be most proud of—all the money you made or your awards and recognitions? Remember to be honest when thinking through these types of questions. If the answer is “money”—that’s OK because this helps us better plan careers paths that will actually fulfill us long term.
Next, try to envision what you want to accomplish in your career. Here, we’re talking about less tangible things than your more specific, long-term goals for your career. For my friend, his personal integrity was not something he was willing to compromise. For you, you may have leadership aspirations or aspire to become an entrepreneur. In other words, how do you want your peers to remember you and is this even important to you in the first place?
When we begin with the end in mind, we establish a framework for tracing our career in reverse. If my goal is to become a well published and tenured faculty member at a top research university then this informs my professional development choices throughout my career. By contrast, if we do not establish a clear path toward our end goals, we will find ourselves constantly behind the curve in terms of career mobility and advancement.
Set Long Term SMART Goals
Goal setting and SMART Goals are probably nothing new to you, but it’s important that we take a moment and discuss how long-term SMART Goals are key to successful forward thinking career planning. If SMART goals are indeed new to you, the acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Bound and, as these criteria suggest, the strategy encourages us to establish goals that are clearly defined, that include metrics that help us determine achievement, and that are feasible to complete.
So, let’s say your overall objective is to improve your leadership skills and you set a goal to read more books on leadership. Is this a SMART goal? Not yet. We need more specifics to make the goal SMART. So, we need to revise the goal to something like: Read 12 books on Leadership in 2025. This revised goal is specific, we can measure our progress and adjust accordingly, its realistic and attainable, and there is a clear time limit by which I hope to achieve the goal.
Before we move on from this general overview of SMART goals, it should be said that one of the underlying strengths of the SMART goal technique is that by making vague objectives into SMART goals, we inevitably have to write them down or record them in some way. Some recent studies have indicated that individuals are over 40% more likely to achieve their goals if they write them down. For long term SMART goal achievement, this is even more of a key to success. And, as recommended above, SMART goals are best monitored through a constant feedback loop and this entails checkpoints and revisions along the way. This, of course, is especially important in long-term, forward-thinking career planning.
Thinking about long term with SMART goals can certainly seem daunting at first, but if you’ve put some thought into Step One already and begun with the end in mind, long term goals and the short-term milestones and achievements along the path can often times begin to fall into place. My friend certainly didn’t plan to be looking for a new job in the second half of his career. But, he planned ahead with both a masters and a doctoral degree in business under his belt, year upon year of professional development and elite training, and an established reputation in his particular field. Are your goals to become an expert in your field? Do you want to raise to the level of Chief Operating or Chief Executive level? Do you want to achieve a particular salary level? Do you want to have worked from home or in a fast paced, hands-on industry? Maybe a long-range goal is to earn a doctoral degree or start your own business.
If your long-term goal is to become a CEO or other high-level position, you’ll need advanced education—perhaps an MBA from a well-known and respected business school. You’ll need to build a reputation of dependability, accountability, and integrity. You’ll need to work each year to complete professional development. You’ll need to keep your mind agile and find a healthy work-life balance that optimizes productivity, but keeps burn-out in check.
Whatever your goals, write them down and set short term achievements to help stay on track. As Robert Collier once said, "success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out."
Professional Development & Upskilling
The cornerstone of every career plan is professional development. As you continue to think through the process of forward-thinking career planning, you’ll realize that a great many of the SMART goals you establish involve professional development or upskilling in some way. These can range from going back to school and earning a Masters degree or it might mean completing an online certificate or it may just mean studying Dutch on an app in your free time.
Most working professionals are required by their employer or by industry standards to complete a set number of professional development or continuing education units (CEUs) annually. Because of this, there are a great many established and well-respected content providers. Madison School of Professional Development (MSPD) is just one example. And, perhaps if you are reading this blog, you have already completed or are considering a professional development certificate through the MSPD.
When choosing a professional development credential, you should consider several things:
Requirements from your employer. Is your employer requiring you to earn CEUs? If so, you need to earn the required CEUs first before considering other programs. Is your employer requiring a specific type of training or certification? Satisfying your current career needs is a mandatory component of planning for your future career goals.
Your available resources. Completing professional certificates requires time, money, and energy. Assess all of these when considering a credential. Be sure to read the descriptions, time requirements, and of course the price of any certificate programs you are considering. You may have the money, but not the time, or vice versa
Your long term goals. Return to those SMART goals of yours and determine if the program you are considering furthers any of your long term goals and how, if at all, it fits into your achievement of those goals. Look for “holes” or “weaknesses” on your current resume and look for opportunities that fill these gaps.
Click to view a full list of MSPD Professional Development Certificates
Never Stop Networking, Never Pass up a Pitch
Upskilling and professional development activities work best when strategically aligned with networking opportunities. Earning an advanced degree or a new certification—even completely online—will provide you with opportunities to network, learn about other professions, and build relationships that can be very, very valuable in the future.
When future thinking your career plan, it is important to actively seek out these opportunities to expand your network, challenge yourself, and grow and improve. This can take the form of volunteer work or it may mean joining your local Chamber of Commerce and making the most of your membership by engaging the functions, committees, and your fellow members and business owners.
Another option is to join professional organizations. Here again, there are a lot of options to choose from, so you should research different organizations relevant to your industry. For example, at MSPD, we’re building a membership platform where members will be able to network, promote their personal and professional brand, and have access to our growing catalog of professional resources, certificate offerings, and webinars. If networking and brand building are your goals, then MSPD membership might be perfect for you, but you should also look into industry specific organizations that might benefit you professionally as well.
We can’t always predict what our needs will be in the future, but you can be certain that at some point in your life, you’ll need rely on your network. It may be for something “big” like funding an entrepreneurial endeavor of yours or it may be something equally as significant, but seemingly “small like providing a sincere, professional reference for an application if you’re looking to change careers.
Finally, a diverse and active network ensures that opportunities come your way. You may be offered a job. You may be asked to invest in a lucrative business plan. You may be asked to take on some consulting work that starts as a side gig, but transforms into a new and exciting career trajectory. Be sure to listen to these ideas and never pass up a pitch. It’s OK to say “no” to the pitch. In fact, we can’t tackle every new project and so saying “no” is an important skill that we’ll be covering in an upcoming installment. So, it’s OK to say “no,” but be sure to listen to the pitch first. If you’ve aligned your career goals with the future you want to see, one of those pitches might be that watershed moment that unlocks other opportunities and career growth.
Maintain a Nimble Mindset
Late in his career, relatively speaking, my friend is reinventing himself. In my chats with him, he’s expressed excitement, sprinkled here and there with a humble nervousness, but a firm trust in himself and his faith in God. When I last spoke with him, he was preparing for an interview later that day. He was calm, ready. Though he didn’t yet have a job, the next chapter in his career had already begun and he had embraced it.
A nimble mindset allows us to quickly alter our perspective and get our thinking process back in realignment. When we’re upset, or stressed, or mulling over past decisions, it’s difficult to think clearly and we can’t perform at our best. Maybe you’ve heard the saying that professional athletes need to have “short memories” and so that they quickly refocus after an error. Entire sports careers can crumble if a top athlete dwells on these past errors and their confidence wanes. The same is true outside of sport. A rigid mindset can disrupt our career and keep us locked in a situation that isn’t helping us achieve our long term, career goals. All of our careful, forward thinking career planning can come to a halt.
A nimble mindset, of course, is also a leadership best practice and so it is not surprising that my friend was able to exemplify the nimble mindset so clearly. As I reflect further, I see the need to address the nimble mindset in it’s own piece, so be sure to look for this topic in a future installment. For now, we should say that a nimble mindset is the ability to recognize the need for change, initiate change, and embrace the change. This, of course, like career planning is a life-long endeavor. The good news though is that a nimble mindset can also be thought of as a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” In other words, practicing a nimble mindset gets easier and more natural over time.
Summary
In this article we examined five strategies for forward thinking career planning:
- Begin with the end in mind
- Set Long Term SMART Goals
- Professional Development & Upskilling
- Never Stop Networking, Never Pass up a Pitch
- Maintain a Nimble Mindset
These five interrelated recommendations are just the beginning as the choices you make in each category cascade through the others and over the span of your career. Remember that career planning should be a constant feedback loop where you regularly revisit your goals and achievements and assess your next steps. Remember, too, that a career is not just the job you have now or the job you hope to get. A career is the sum of your experiences—your education, your job titles, your reputation. Changes and re-directions are inevitable, but if we constantly plan out our career path with forward thinking strategies, we prepare ourselves for life’s curve balls and hopefully develop “short memories” along the way.
Dr. Scott Eidson is the Executive Vice President of the Madison School of Professional Development and holds doctoral degrees in both history and business. Dr. Scott has been studying, teaching, writing, applying, and thinking about leadership and leading others for some time now.