Strategic planners on the fastest career track know that getting to the truth of a client’s challenge is key. It’s is equally vital to understand the truth of the consumers served by your clients.

Getting to a genuine understanding of your client’s business gives you a chance of being relevant and better still, of moving the client forward.

In one of life’s great paradoxes, the strategic planner plays the role of the cobbler that wears no shoes/do not do for themselves what they instinctively do for others. That is, apply the same strategic nous and tools to obtaining authenticity when it comes to understanding a genuine career opportunity from a dud.

I hear of almost daily tales of candidates that got duped. But, the storytellers typically don’t see that they are complicit.

New career enhancing roles lie before them and rather than clarify the fundamentals that will define their success in a new role, much is taken at face value. Naiive? Or, a commendable illustration of their trust? It doesn’t matter. The carnage is the same.

Some basics. Whenever you are considered for a career opportunity, it is your knowledge and experience that is sought after. It is perceived to be able to solve one of a range of challenges facing your prospective future employer.

Ultimately what your future employer is seeing is your ability to either help save or make money and preferably both! And this is where it can get dangerous, for you!

The more your perceived ability to make money combined with urgency by the agency to make a hire, the more exponential the chances that they will avoid communicating, miscommunicate or incorrectly communicate information that might otherwise deter you from taking the job.

I don’t mean to say that hiring managers intentionally mislead. I am saying that many people under enough pressure, hiring manager or agency with a pressing client need, may be economical with the truth. This may help relieve client pressure whilst unfortunately not be optimal for you.

The Group Director hired to become a Head of Strategy takes the job because the agency is independent, moves countries and finds out one month in that the agency is being bought by a holding company.

The Director that moves across country to discover one month in that the client, that they moved their lives for, is leaving the agency.

Clearly the agency has to do what it has to do and perhaps the hiring manager or the department head is not party to much larger forces at play. The take out is therefore, you as the individual seeking a career enhancing move have to be alert!

You have to employ that smart truth revealing expertise to your career and most certainly at the inflexion points of progression from one job to another.

To be fair to those hiring, the more ‘you’ want an opportunity at a certain brand or agency, the more you will compromise, the more details you will overlook, the less you will be ‘on your game’ to understand exactly what you might be getting in to.

Indeed, far from applying healthy skepticism that engenders a pragmatic understanding that what one is being told is correct, you seek to reinforce your perceptions of what you want to hear. And, you fail to see the pitfalls.

When you are ‘on,’ you do not ask limiting questions but bigger questions in your quest to understand the truth. You in this mode are in control and driving your quest versus passively being drawn into a career ambush.

Getting to a Robust Understanding of a Job Opportunity – Some thoughts

1. Know what do you want to do next
2. Know what outputs you want to generate
3. Know what defines your success in a new role
4. Know what resources are available and timelines in which to achieve specific goals
5. Know whether your goals align with those of the leadership of the prospective employer.
6. Seek out not ‘sexy’ agency but dynamic client relationships, wherever they are and with them the opportunity for good work
7. Seek out those clients that value your expertise and better still the employers that value your expertise equal or (even better for you) over and above other disciplines.
8. Clarify where money is made – This is definitive proof as to what the agency says is does reconciles with what it does.. Good to know!
9. Ask better questions that reveal the truth to you and not choreographed answers.

 

If you’re an uncomfortable ‘back seat’ driver, you’re someone that either doubts the ability of the person at the controls and/or, you just feel you’re not safely going to get to your destination in a certain timeframe.

Typically, you are frustrated at not being in control of the velocity or direction you are going, so you do what back seat drivers do best, direct the driver from the ‘non-driving seat,’ never a satisfactory experience. The alternative is to drive the car.

Many ‘back seat’ drivers’ show up similarly in the context of work and career progression. That is things evolve or happen organically, with them playing a bit part in the motion of their own career progression rather than directly controlling their own destiny.  They neither map out or devise a platform for their own happiness if not, career success. (Career success and personal happiness are not always concurrent!)

Why does this happen so often? And, what can you do to make sure you drive?

Why we fail to map out a path for our own success/Open Ourselves Up to Risky Career Maneuvers?

Loyalty v blind loyalty – Your loyalty to the agency you work for should be expected! You have a role to play and you should deliver against it, 100%. That said sometimes even when you do this, you can lose your job. That is, for business reasons the agency will ‘let you go.’ It is not blind to economic circumstance and will retain your services based on its needs. Similarly, neither should you be blind to your need to grow and progress. So, if you are not developing or achieving things that are important to you, it would be crazy not to either seek to get those things where you are and failing that, to look for them elsewhere.

Job focus – In your effort to do a great job, to be a great team player and to deliver the results you are set, you tend to be focused on the short term. And, while short term focus and learning are at times critical, so does a need to see the road ahead, if you are to safely and optimally travel. The need to find time for thinking, to know what you are working for and what skills and experiences you will need to get there are key. If you know what skills, experiences and connections you need, then you can begin to factor them in to your work or request that they are.

Want to be flexible/maximize options – Being open to where your career path can go is to be encouraged. Being open to the opportunities an employer might deliver should also be applauded. That said, doing so without a clear sense of what you are working toward, without knowing what a great next career challenge looks like is just stupid. It’s like sitting in the back seat of a car, except in this case there is not even an attempt at ‘virtual driving.’

We rely on others/feel we are special and therefore will be looked after – If you have a fantastic boss then you are lucky. The reality today, very often bosses may well care but typically they don’t have the time to do the advocating you’d hope for. You are the only one fully vested in your success. So, you can’t rely on being liked or effective! You must assume that you have to navigate and drive your career forward. 

What can we do to optimize your career trajectory?

Know what you are working for/Personal Mission – If you have a personal sense of mission, you will then have a much better sense of what knowledge, experience and connections you need to achieve that mission.

Know what experience you need to have next – Knowing what you are working for, you will have a much better sense what is the next challenge you need to experience on the road toward your ultimate goal. Which skills and experiences do you need to enhance? What challenges do you need to embrace? What environment might best equip your learning?

Make your current work situation work for you – If you know what would be an optimal use of your time in the pursuit of your goals, you will then be able to effectively pursue that experience in your current working environment.

You will also be able to negotiate effectively when you have a review as you will know what matters most to you and relatively what you can be relaxed about. And, you will also be able to understand how good your chances our of achieving your goals in your current agency versus proposed alternatives.

Knowing which resources and opportunities to pursue whilst delivering on the role you have been hired for, is the optimal springboard for your progression. It is the ultimate way to avoid risky career jumps. Being conscious about your goals and needs will you give your employer every chance of making you happy and more important, every chance of you achieving your definition of success.