The second half of 2021 is the ideal time to dream, plan, revise and set new goals. This second half of the year is like none other before. Many are reclaiming a sense of normalcy after a health crisis that shut down the world. It is tempting to dive into that with trips, friends, family, and celebrations, and let other tasks slide for a while. And, many places in the world are still on lock-down. My extended family in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is still waiting on vaccinations and is being as vigilant as ever.
Wherever you are in the world, I’d like to cheer you on to tackle an important task – career-planning for the second half of 2021 and beyond. A tiny bit of blue sky strategizing about our careers. Get comfortable and ponder this: What is your ideal next job – at your current company or maybe at another organization? What are the parameters of that role? What do you really want to be doing?
Now go beyond the job and think about where that job could be located. Is it where you are now? Is there another place you’d rather be?
Dream. See it. Make the whole thing real in your mind’s eye. Then, write it down.
This practice is called ideation. It drives from the Design Thinking model developed at the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. The five steps of Design Thinking are: Empathizing (with your end-user – in this case you), Defining (the problem), Ideating, Prototyping, and Testing.
Try this out: Check in with yourself on your needs. The problem at hand is defining your career plan. To “ideate,” grab some free time and head space and think about all your possible career options (best, worst, and so forth). You can look up ideation techniques if you want to follow a formal methodology.
Ayo Agbaje, a security analysis senior specialist and a member of the ISACA community, shared a cool ideation tool that she has created for herself. Ayo has a board – like a Pinterest or bulletin board – that reflects her career vision, work goals, personal goals and dreams for her life. Her life, visualized in one place. It captures her past, present and where she is going. It lays how the how, as well as the what, and she includes the things she is doing well and those that she is working on. Ayo says she is building her vision board “from statements I heard at work, from a colleague, subordinate, managers, or clients; to things or pictures I see on the internet, to things I hear from kids. I tend to take notes because knowledge comes from unexpected places. One just needs to know what is right and what applies to you.”
The power in Ayo’s tool comes from writing down the ideas and data that come to her, putting them in one place, and arraying the information in a visually compelling way. As humans, we tend to synthesize information and develop more creative ideas when we can see the information and then arrange and re-arrange it in different ways. This process enables us to think outside the box.
This is an important exercise that will dramatically improve your career planning. And now is the right time to do this because we are coming off a span of history, nearly 1.5 years, when everything changed. That, in and of itself, merits stepping back and giving your career, your life, and your geographic preferences a hard think.
Time and again, I have had professionals tell me, “I would make a move for the perfect job.” When pressed for what that perfect job would look like, they often can’t articulate their vision. They say they would know it when they see it or hear about it. But the truth is they won’t.
To know what that “perfect job” is, you have to take the time to let your mind wander through the fields of possibilities, look at your career from every angle, and gain a perspective on what skills and experience, what boss, what culture, you need to fill your skill and experience gaps, and satisfy your soul.
Once you have the vision, you can go on to test it with your mentors and your trusted career advisors to get their input. Testing your ideas, your best solutions, is the final step in the Design Thinking process.
Having had a chance to see how things are going in 2021, this is an opportune time to update with your cadre of mentors and advisors. After 18 months of primarily remote work for many of us, we really need to reconnect with each other – there is so much to share on all sides. If you are able to, jump off of Zoom and invite your mentors to meet – in person. Bring them your ideas, and things to share with them that will spark their interest. (A mentor -mentee relationships must always be a two-way street.)
If you think a geographic move is a possibility or even a driver for a new role, spend some time to research your top choices. Get familiar with the cost of housing, taxes, schools, cultural amenities, the weather, the cost of flights to visit family, the ease or difficulty of airport connections – i.e., everything and anything that is important to you or impacts your life in any material way. If possible, visit the place or places that are calling to you.
Relocating isn’t cheap and most companies haven’t been offering a lot by way of relocation, certainly not last year; we’ll see if that trend continues. Can you afford to move yourself? Can you afford to move on a sign-on bonus that won’t be payable until the first or second paycheck at your new job?
You simply have to know these hard facts about what is financially feasible before you start applying for jobs or talking with recruiters. But hey, once you have this information lined up, you’ll be ready to make calm, clear decisions about future opportunities without wasting time on things that aren’t a fit with your plans and strategy.
Here comes the big second half of 2021. We got here and it’s going to be good. Let your mind flow and see where you land. Let your research and your ideas continue to develop over the next month. In September, take time to formalize your thoughts into your new 2021-2022 strategic plan. Plan in hand, you’ll be ready to focus on your goals and start executing with precision. Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, famously said, “A goal is a dream with a deadline.” Now’s the time!