Career plan: does it still exist?

Even though a lot is said about flexible careers focused on projects with an end date, we still hear many employees wishing for the so-called career plan. Is it just habit or a genuine desire? While some companies still insist on more structured frameworks, others adopt more flexible models with a shorter life cycle, and still, others don’t adopt any career plan structure to offer to their employees. So, how is a career plan currently?

Career plans offered and managed by companies

For a company, this boils down to trying to predict and anticipate movements, and preparing employees for future positions, since rotating positions is a constant in any organisation. Eventually, someone is fired, retired, or promoted. No, a company doesn’t think about your career; the business needs are the main need, and therefore, you are impacted. In light of this, I would like to share some perceptions I have about career planning in companies.

1 – Companies which are consistent with what they determine in career and succession plans:

• In this scenario, competence and result will determine more than relationship and effort.
• You will be able to clearly observe the requirements of positions, and especially that many (not all) people who occupy them meet these criteria.
• Feedback is guided by values ​​and company documents are constantly reviewed according to the current reality of the business. In other words, these documents are valuable for decision-making, not just a pure process.
• Decision-making and expectation alignment are more accurate and less frustrating. There aren’t many big surprises, neither good nor bad.
• Most of the time, the desired position needs to be empty for you to occupy it, and this can take years.
• You will hear keywords in conversations with your boss and whenever you have an unsolved question you will hear “Let’s consult the manual.doc”.
• There is greater clarity on what to do and what to expect when you want to occupy a certain position. You probably only want what you can achieve, here people want real and possible positions.
• You will hardly see a rocket career.
• Of course, there will still be subjective facts that can determine positions and movements, but they avoid saying.

2 – Companies which are not congruent with what they determine in career and succession plans.

• In some cases, relationships and effort may determine more than competence and results.
• These companies, even having a succession and career plan prepared, rarely use documents that are adherent to the culture and reality of the business.
• Their career plan criteria and keywords are rarely used in one-on-one meetings.
• The urgency factor and ease of movement also influence the decisions of the positions.
• It is necessary to discover the implicit key criteria of the organisational culture.
• No, it’s not all bad. Here you can skip steps if you know how to plan a strategic and structured career plan, following what would really make you jump into the position which you want. Only a few people within this type of organisation do this consciously and intentionally.
• The lack of a structure that works leaves people adrift, believing only in the factor of luck and time. This can make any well-intentioned person great potential for professional advancement.

3 – Companies without career and succession structure.

• What will determine your future probably will be the relationships and results.
• Feedback is likely implicit, often you will not be told clearly what you need to take off in your career. Why? The criteria change all the time, it is not possible to give you guarantees.
• Speaking of guarantees, many movements and promotions are done informally. Salary expectations are frequently not very well aligned.
• Because they’re smaller companies, the impact of individual actions is bigger, so it’s easy to see who stands out. You will hear first and last names associated with projects.
• There may be a lot of personnel changes, so you will have a lot of opportunities to be able to move around. But in this scenario, the memory is shorter. The most recent name in the boss’s memory will be the name remembered in a promotion’s decision table.
• A chair doesn’t necessarily have to be empty for you to occupy it.
• The promotions need approval from fewer people. Yes, the CEO can promote someone because they had lunch with them and found a good name for a new area.
• It is necessary to discover the key criteria (probably implicit) of who has the power to promote you.
• Criteria slip: sometimes someone is promoted for serving the customer empathically and having contributed to the company’s image, sometimes cost reduction is better seen, even if the price of this is not meeting some customer need.
• Here you can also burn steps, but it can be a little more frustrating.

In all the scenarios, we have two conflict-of-interest that we often overlook: companies have business interests that don’t always match the employee’s interests, and employees have personal interests that don’t always match their current job and company. This represents a risk if we leave our entire career in the hands of the current company we work for.

Career self-management

We know that many employees question companies about career plans. But when we ask these same people about their career expectations and ambition, few will answer concretely. Many still respond by associating their career with the current company, when, in fact, thinking about a career plan involves a long-term game that goes beyond the current position. There are also expectations similar to “I should already be in position x because I worked for it”, but rarely related to:

Knowing this will help you:

• Creating a plan that respects your personal wishes and not the company’s interests.
• Giving up what doesn’t matter: you don’t accept something just because everyone likes it, and you start making room for what you really want.
• Clarity for bargaining power: how about fewer hours of work instead of a salary increase? Or training funded by the company? Just because nobody owns it, or because it’s never been asked, doesn’t mean you can’t negotiate some contractual benefit.
• And most importantly: having this clarity will show your strategic vision and authenticity to your leadership, which are aphrodisiacs for business. And for our self-confidence, of course.

Companies create processes for everyone, but we are unique individuals, who, even occupying the same position, have different ambitious and desires.

How to manage your own career plan

1. Self-knowledge. Here, the questions you make are more important than the answers. Remember that you will always change.
2. Review and be consistent. It’s like in any other area of life (finances, relationships, health etc) we need to look periodically and intentionally. To have consistency and clarity of your internal changes (of desire, format, and career needs) is significant to think of a system that supports these revisions.
3. Look for some methodology to plan and organize your career: so you can manage it in a simple, intuitive and constant way. I strongly recommend GTD (Getting Things Done, by David Allen) for personal organization.
4. Set a date and time and focus early on getting in the habit of looking at it regularly than being perfect.
5. Having someone as a reference and inspiration. Not just in their field, but someone who thinks of a career as a significant area of life.
6. Think more about your mental health, intentionally.
7. Exploring possibilities: before getting to the answers, explore the questions. An alternative is to search on Google Images: career path for + your area.
8. It’s basic, but I need to reinforce: Always study. You may discover new horizons of interest and want to start over or abandon something. Discover, explore and enjoy the possibilities.
9. Manage your own CRM, yes, have a personal CRM to manage your network, intentionally.
10. Investing in your employability. At the end of the day, it is the most important skill that brings you results and peace of mind to take risks (change areas, change companies, etc).
    • How do I do an excellent interview in my field?
    • How to position myself as a reference person in my area?
    • What are the marginal gains that drive my employability in my field?
    • What could I have done better in my last selection process?
    • How to improve my resume, LinkedIn etc.
11. Investing in your introspection. Figuring out what we want first can be easy, but it usually isn’t. It’s a slow process of figuring out and asking questions that may have never been asked, and frequently, a lonely journey of self-knowledge.

Not relying on one company to determine our professional future is the #1 positioning for having a more meaningful and fulfilling career. It is an endless process of self-knowledge, experimentation and adjustments, but one that brings us closer to our singular truth day after day. Knowing that we are on the way and that this path is connected with what we believe makes life more exciting and interesting. Being comfortable in our own skin brings tranquillity and individuality. It gives strength.
After all, we are unique, just like our careers.