James Gray

"Who's Got Your Back" Book Review @ Microsoft

Recently I had the privilege to lead a "Who's Got Your Back" book review at Microsoft for a talented group of high potential employees within Microsoft IT.  The ultimate goal was to share the key points from Keith Ferrazzi's latest book which I highly recommend while also making the workshop actionable by sharing how many of these concepts can be applied to career planning and execution. Impact only happens when you apply these principles and place them into action everyday.   

The career planning framework that I have discussed on this blog does align well with a number of concepts discussed in Who's Got Your Back.  I thought I would share a few of these concepts and how they are applied.    

• Knowing Yourself - In previous blog posts I have shared how important knowing who you really are is and gave examples how to document this. There was one quote in "Who's Got Your Back" that summarized the essence of this: "I know that the more I understand myself, the more successful I become". I strongly recommend you create your own "Personal Success Wheel" as I have done below to shape how you spend your time and drive success.

• Roadmap - define your career goals and what success looks like including who you need to help achieve your goals. Read more about this in a previous post.
• Develop- Understanding your weaknesses and what skills you need to grow is fundamental to your career plan. I would recommend you review the "Building Your Dream Team" section in the "Who's Got Your Back" book for good ideas to shape your plan. Read more about the recommendations I have for the components of development plan in a previous post.
• Your Support Team - in the middle of this framework is your support team that includes your "lifelines", mentors and accountability buddies that will help shape your plans and hold you accountable. It's essential that you identify these key stakeholders and make them a part of your personal success process.  "Who's Got Your Back" provides guidance on attributes and strategies for selecting your personal dream team. 
• Personal Scorecard- driving change requires you to be specific about the critical success factors that drive the ability to achieve your life mission, goals, strategies, how you will measure success and who will hold you accountable. I use the accountability framework below to construct my personal scorecard that I manage using Excel to evaluate my progress.  Probably the biggest theme in Keith Ferrazzi's book is using your personal team to hold you accountable for driving change and sustaining success.  The process of constructing your personal scorecard will force you to be specific on outcomes and how you will go about achieving them.  The final part is selecting an "accountability buddy" that will evaluate your progress.  I recently applied this concept to my manager role at Microsoft where I asked one of my direct reports to be my coach and hold me accountable for improving my "Workgroup Health Index" which is essentially measures many aspects of a manager's overall effectiveness.  You will need to select accountability buddies for each of the goals in the scorecard. 

 

Thanks for all who joined the book review and I look forward to continuing our career strategy discussions in the near future.  I am including the Career Strategy Framework slides for all to leverage and hopefully help shape career success.

Join Microsoft IT Solution Delivery As a Trusted Strategic Advisor to Our Business

The Microsoft IT Solutions Delivery organization is looking for people to help us reach our potential.

The role of a Senior Solution Manager is to become the CIO of our clients. By helping them shape their long-term strategy and build technology solutions to enable the business, we can achieve trusted advisor status and earn our seat at the table. We partner with groups such as Human Resources, Operations, Sales & Marketing, Legal, Services and OEM which gives us a great opportunity as an organization to see the landscape of Microsoft. In partnership with Engineering, our organization has built some exciting tools & processes which have streamlined how we do business ranging from sales opportunity identification and contact management, recruiting and staffing, and processing of sales agreements and service contracts to name just a few.

We are looking for individuals with the ‘customer first’ mindset that have a proven track record in problem solving, strategy development, project management, innovative thinking, cross group collaboration, conflict negotiation and an ability to drive for results through influence and relationship building.
The solution manager will act as a functional process owner. This role includes project planning, business requirement definition and management and ensuring that the IT deliverables meet the customer’s expectations. This position requires an attention to detail on system requirements while still being able to understand the long-term vision of both our business partners and our IT architecture. The Senior Solution Manager also needs to be able to map the current projects into a broader, long-term integration strategy.

The applications under this process umbrella are far reaching in scope and visible to the Microsoft executive team. Subsequently, this is an opportunity for broad exposure to many teams and executives throughout Microsoft.

Apply online for this role or feel free to contact me at jam[email protected] if you are interested in discussing career opportunities with Microsoft's Solution Delivery organization.

See all open jobs on Microsoft's Career site. 

Join the Team that Delivers IT Inside of Microsoft

If you are looking for a great opportunity to own investment plans, product management, delivery and adoption of enterprise scale IT platforms and solutions that run Microsoft then the Solution Delivery organization inside of Microsoft IT may be a great fit for you. 

Please send an email to [email protected] if you are interested to discuss and explore career opportunities in Microsoft IT.

You may also connect with me on Linkedin.  

The Mojo Moment - Feel It, Understand It, and Capitalize on It!

The "Mojo Moment" - that euphoria when your energy level, enthusiasm, confidence and impact skyrockets.  Have you felt it lately? Would you even know what this rush means?  Over the last few weeks I felt this strong emotional rush and after reflecting on these moments it became clear to me how my career plan provided the essential ingredients for creating the Mojo in the first place.

My first rush hit when a colleague remarked that he found my Career Planning Lifecycle posts insightful and planned to share them with some of his colleagues.  I then began talking about how I created the framework and how important it was to me as a manager for members of my team to have great career plans. I could feel my energy level rise and I would have continued the conversation for hours if it were not for an planned meeting. We agreed to have a follow up conversation.

Another rush hit when I was “selling” an IT investment to a group of stakeholders responsible for allocating funds.  Again, I felt the energy from competing and trying to persuade a group of people why the investment was important to the company. I was in the zone and I could feel it. After the meeting one my colleagues remarked that "I had the Mojo". I did not think too much about that comment at the time.  Prior to the second meeting the same colleague said “James make sure you bring your Mojo again".  During the second session I felt the same euphoria and it felt great.  I was more conscious of "measuring" my Mojo this time and what brought me this thrill.

Coincidentally a few days earlier I had purchased a few books from Amazon including Marshall Goldsmith's new book Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It.  So I decided to open up the box and see what Goldsmith had to say about this Mojo thing. 

Marshall Goldsmith describes Mojo as:

"a moment when we do something that's purposeful, powerful and positive, and the rest of the world recognizes it".

"Mojo is that positive spirit toward what we are doing right now that starts from the inside and radiates to the outside". 

As I reflected on his operational definition and the insights from the book I saw the connection that helped create the Mojo moment in the first place. It was the fact that I am in the right job that provides the required happiness and meaning in my life and value to others.  Marshall Goldsmith states that your identity is the first of four vital ingredients to having great Mojo. I could not agree with him more. Knowing who you are and what you stand for is the first step in my career planning process and is the basis for aligning your career plan for maximum happiness. Let me show you some examples of how to define your identity as the first building block to establishing Mojo.

 In the article “Career Planning Process – Step 1 Know Yourself”, I outlined a number of attributes that you can use to describe yourself and define what brings happiness and meaning to your life.  Great career plans are designed with this in mind.  Defining a life mission, critical success factors and the identifies you embody is the first step to building your personal profile and Mojo. My life mission is described in the center of circle with each of the critical success factors that must be fulfilled to deliver on the mission.  Each of my identities are described outside the circle that bring clarity to who I am.  I feel the most Mojo in my life when my critical success factors are in balance and this enables me to bring the maximum energy to my daily work.  I experienced relatively lower Mojo earlier in my career when I held a role with extensive travel that impacted my health and relationships with my family.  At that time I did not have a detailed career plan in place and now that I look back it was obvious why my Mojo was lower then and why now it's sky high.

 
I then define my professional identity using a set of attributes that I gathered from various assessments and personal reflection.  The attributes on the left describe who I am and the attributes on the right describe the "defined" identity that I am positioning and selling in the market. Marshall Goldman describes this as the "Created Identity" in his book.  This positioning is critical because it sets the foundation for the job you select and the behavior you are looking to model.

 

I package this all up in what I call a Personal Profile. It's "you on a page".  This artifact is powerful tool to help you select a career role that maximizes your personal attributes while also providing you with the needed happiness and meaning to feel fulfilled.  This ensures "fit" between what you need out of a job and what the job needs.

 
Your ability to feel that positive spirit each day and impact the world around you is partly a function by how well you have defined who you are, what is important in your life and acted upon this to drive change in your life.  Remember you are the only one who can describe what success is and feels like. Don't leave it up to your stakeholders to define who you are or your manager to assume he or she knows the type of role and day-to-day responsibilities that will maximize your Mojo.

I have the privilege to career coach colleagues as a part of my job and I am intrigued by cases where colleagues are not feeling the career Mojo.  In many cases people have a hard time to quickly describe their life mission, what is important and what in their life is currently out of balance and causing their career depression. In some cases they need to change and in other cases they have been in the same job for too long and need a change in their environment.  I would say in all cases they need a better career plan!

If you are not feeling the Mojo on a regular basis in your personal life or career then I recommend you take a timeout and read Marshall Goldsmith's book Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It. I would then recommend you create your own version of a life mission, critical success factors and identities.  You are then in a position to define your professional identity and the first of four key ingredients to creating Mojo and a great career plan by following the Target, Roadmap, Develop and Sell steps.

Feel it, understand it, and capitalize on it!

Career Planning Step 5 - Sell

Selling yourself every day is an essential part of career strategy execution.  Many career planning frameworks fall short by not outlining what is required to effectively promote your brand promise in the eyes of potential customers.  All successful products and services have a marketing plan and so should you. 

Your marketing plan should describe what you intend to message, who is the audience and the vehicle that will be used to deliver the message.  Here are a few selling methods I have found useful:

• Blogs - blogs are great vehicles for showing thought leadership and collaborating with a broad network to share information.  I use TypePad's blogging service for its ease of use, integration with other services such as Facebook and Twitter, and the value for its cost.  I also rely on Google Analytics to give insight to web traffic and user profiles that visit this site.
• Twitter - use microblogging to easily collaborate with your network and push messages to a broad ecosystem. 
• Linkedin - an online professional profile is a way to communicate your brand, grow a network and have colleagues validate your brand promise through recommendations they post to your profile. I have used this site as a reference for hiring managers to clearly show experience, accomplishments, and credibility.  You can integrate Twitter into your Linkedin profile to show status updates to your network as another way to deliver your key messages.  I also like the "export to PDF" feature that packages up your profile and recommendations into a Acrobat file that can be easily shared with colleagues and hiring managers.  You should always be adding recommendations as a normal course of business and not just when you need a new job.  Ask colleagues to highlight successes and qualities that reinforce your brand profile.
• Resume - a resume is a basic given, but ensure it's up-to-date and available for prospective hiring managers.  I have my resume hosted on this blog site and referenced in my Linkedin profile.
• External Conferences - professional conferences are an excellent method to grow credibility and sell your value.
• Internal Presentations - when was the last time you gave an informal brown bag presentation?  Whether informal or formal, presenting to an audience is an effective way to communicate your knowledge and grow your brand worth.
• Webcasts - video webcasts are a scalable method to communicating thought leadership to a broad audience.
• Articles / Books / Newsletters - writing is a time-tested method of building your brand and net worth.  Consider writing an article for a trade magazine, company newsletter or even a book.
• Lunch / Social Outings - it is very easy to put off a lunch with a colleague or bail on a social outing but sometimes these are great opportunities to sell. 
• Your Environment - use your office environment to reinforce key qualities and personal brand themes.  This may come in the form of visuals, books or general appearance.
• Your appearance - the reality is that people may perceive you in certain ways given your appearance and how you show up each day.  Be conscience that you are not sending mixed messages between your appearance and the brand you are trying to sell. 

Many people shun from selling given its negative consequences such as nauseating colleagues who are always telling others how great they are. This is not what I am talking about here.  Effective selling is authentic and generates value for both you and your network.  The bottom line is that you will not get what you want unless your needs are explicit and positioned with your network.  One of my favorite selling books is You, Inc.: The Art of Selling Yourself and its short summaries to guide personal success. 

I hope you will find a nugget or two from this six-part career planning series and be sure to share any of your secrets to success.  Be remembered by the legacy you have outlined in your career plan and not by the forces of your environment. Life is too short so be sure your career is a passion you experience each and every day.

 

Career Planning Step 4 - Develop

This post is the fifth of a six-part series dedicated to career planning.  Step 4 of the career planning lifecycle is focused on learning - the lifeblood of your brand value. 

A balanced career development plan outlines the opportunities to learn on the job, learn from others, and learn through training.  Most people typically associate a development plan with "training" although the majority of learning happens on the job.  I encourage people to be explicit on what they want to learn on the job so as a manager I can be sure to align work opportunities with the career plans across my team.

Learning must be a relentless pursuit to be better than yesterday if you want to stand out above the competition. The following areas should guide the definition of your development plan:

• Competencies - the previous parts of the career planning process defined the competencies that are required to achieve success in the target market you have identified. The development activities should support the enrichment of these competencies.
• Assessments - formal assessments provide a way for managers and colleagues to rate you against various criteria. The assessment results may provide insight into blind spots that require development.  I use assessments to validate my progress and focus my learning plan.
• Feedback - often the best way to understand where you need development or improvement is to ask for it.  Asking for feedback may be uncomfortable at first but it will become easy and effective if you integrate it into everything you do and not as a special one-time event prior to performance reviews.  I would also recommend you take advantage of anonymous 360 feedback mechanisms for additional insight - perception can be reality!
• Mentors - identify people who have a competency or experience you want and ask them to be a mentor.  This is an effective way to give you perspective you don't have and coaching recommendations to develop the muscle you are looking for.  Finding a mentor willing to support your development can be one of the most important influences on your career. 
• Mentees - mentoring others can be not only a great opportunity for you to develop coaching skills but learn from others who work in a different part of the organization or company.  The best mentorships are when there is value to both parties.
• Personal Network - a broad and diverse network is one of the most important elements to being successful. Make it a point to become a "connector" by developing relationships and making effective use of your colleagues and talents. Develop your network each day whether it's adding new members or just casually pinging them to stay in touch. Strong collaborative networks are required to be effective in any large worldwide organization.
• Certifications - certifications represent an independent acknowledgment of your competence.  Pursue formal certifications to build an arsenal of industry-recognized knowledge.
• Job Shadowing - a breadth of experience is critical to become an effective leader at whatever you do. Ask colleagues and mentors if you can shadow them to experience a typical day and gain a perspective that would help you in your current role.
• Presenting - there is no better way to learn than if you need to teach it. 
• Writing - I find that I learn more when I write it down.  Look for daily opportunities to write including blogs or even an article in a trade magazine and company newsletter.
• Personal Board of Directors- identify 3-5 people who are committed to your success and development - roles can include people who are highly connected, recognized as a company or industry expert, or those who can give you honest direct feedback.  I would recommend Keith Ferrazzi's book Who's Got Your Back: The Breakthrough Program to Build Deep, Trusting Relationships That Create Success--and Won't Let You Fail for a deep dive on this topic.

Helpful execution hints:

• Document and track your development plan - I track my activities as Outlook tasks so they are in front of me each day.
• Schedule learning activities in your calendar well in advance - ensure learning time is integrated into your workload and not canceled at the last minute.  I color code development activities in my Outlook calendar to ensure each week includes learning opportunities.  
• Stretch yourself - the best learning happens when you take on new opportunities or hard challenges that others do not want to - stretch, stretch, stretch.

Invest in your greatest asset by having a well balanced development plan that is actionable.  The world keeps changing so you need to as well - but at a faster pace.

Career Planning Step 3 - Roadmap

This post is the fourth of a six-part series dedicated to career planning. In the first post I outlined the five steps of the career planning process. Step 1 outlined the self reflection required to define who your are and your personal brand promise. Step 2 then described the strategic framework to properly assess potential markets for your services and target a defined market.  This post outlines the best practices to document your career aspirations and roadmap.

Documenting your career aspirations and the roadmap of roles throughout your career must align with your personal brand profile and the target market.  Picture a series of connected jobs throughout time that lead you to a planned destination.  While the route to this destination may not be direct, the journey must be thoughtful and planned otherwise you will reach a destination but it may not be the one you intended. There is always a bit of luck, timing and influences that shape career progression but you must know the destination and how and when to get on the right bus.  The career roadmap includes both a high-level aspiration summary of your direction and the potential roles that enable you to develop and deepen the core competencies you identified in Step 2. 

Career Aspiration Summary

Summarize your aspirations at a high-level that describe your direction and what you are looking to accomplish throughout your career.  I have found it easier to first outline your detailed roadmap and then summarize the key points that make it easy for your manager or key members of your personal board of directors (more on that topic to come) to understand your career strategy and gain their support.  My personal career plan describes aspirations for the current and next year, and then what I envision for 3-5 and 10 years out. 

Role Roadmap

This is the fun and creative part of Step 3.  Successful careers are "guided" by a thoughtful strategy and realized by the series roles you experience throughout time. I use a Visio visual to represent the roadmap that outlines the potential roles that I want to pursue to develop competencies and gain experiences that build upon each other to achieve success in the target market.  This progression should ultimately move you toward a destination. 

One of the benefits of this one-page diagram is that it enables you to easily discuss your career plan with the stakeholders that are required to support your plan.  Be creative and do not limit your yourself to roles that are within your comfort zone.

The roadmap is supported by many important aspects that must be documented for each of the roles in the roadmap (Word template):

• Timeline: define the start and end date for the role.
• Profession/Discipline: define the profession and discipline within the profession. Many companies often have a defined taxonomy such as "Marketing" as a profession and "Product Management" as a discipline within the profession.  The target market should be used to inform the role you have identified.
• Title/Level: define the role title if known and the level (this could be an individual contributor, manager, director, VP, etc.)
• Organization: define the target company and organization for this role.  This can be fairly general or specific (an example for my current target organization is: Microsoft > Information Technology > Solution Delivery > Connected Sales and Marketing).
• Development Option: identify the development option for this role such as lateral, growing within the current role, new to role, moving up vertically, growing in breadth by experiencing a role within a new profession or function.
• Description: Describe the high-level responsibilities of the role.
• Goals and Experiences to be Gained: this section is super important.  Be clear on your goals and the experiences to be gained in this role. Define what you want out of this role to be sure the role you interview for and ultimately select can enable these.  For example, one of the goals for my current role is "People Leadership - establish credibility as a manager and leader at Microsoft".  I then outlined all of the experiences and outcomes I want to achieve to support this goal.    
• Definition of Success: we all measure success in different ways - clearly describe what success looks like by the end of this role.
• Competency Focus Areas: a competency is the ability to perform a specific task or function successfully. Define what competencies your are intending to develop in this role.  These are the competencies that will be the source of your competitive advantage in the marketplace.  Many companies have a defined taxonomy (e.g., developing people, technical excellence).
• Relationships Required: we all need relationships to help support our aspirations and this is one critical area that you must think about by identifying the relationships required to get this role as well as be successful in the role.  The list should include specific people by name and role. One of the best relationship building resources is Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time.  
• Transition Requirements: each role likely requires specific experience, competencies or accomplishments to effectively transition into this role.  Identify these requirements as well as any blockers that my exist to prevent a transition into this role.

After completing this exercise you will have an aspiration summary, career roadmap and the details for each of the potential roles.  Next we will look at how to create a career development plan and explore techniques to support advancing the essential competencies for differentiating yourself in the job market.

Career Planning Step 2 - Target the Market

This post is the third of a six-part series dedicated to career planning.  In my first post I outlined the five steps of the career planning process.  I then followed up discussing step 1 and the self reflection required to define who your are and your personal brand promise.  This post will focus on step 2 and the strategic framework to properly assess the market and target a defined market.  Would you be able to answer someone if they asked you what market are you in and why?

This step is critical as it defines the strategic direction of your career and sets you down a path that you must be completely conscious of its implications.  There is nothing more distressful than to get to a destination a few years down the road and come to the conclusion that the market for your services is a commodity, declining or for external trends to negatively impact your success.  The marketplace for your service is constantly changing so evaluating the external market and it's forces will ensure your career plan accounts for these dynamics.

I have found it useful to apply many of the marketing and competitive strategy concepts that I learned in business school to career planning. At the end of the day your competitive advantage will depend on how well you know the way to compete, the knowledge and skills required, where to compete, and whom you compete against.  You must analyze the market opportunities for the brand promise you defined in step 1 and then differentiate the offering in a target market.  Although this sounds very straightforward there are many aspects to this "career strategy".  

Questions that you must answer to establish a career strategy that is guided by your personal brand profile:

Customer Analysis:

1. Who is the customer for your services? How would you segment the customer? Who are the biggest, most profitable or most attractive potential customers?
2. Customer motivation - What attributes of the offering do customers value most?  What are they "really" buying? What is the compelling reason to buy?
3. Unmet needs - Why are customers not satisfied and what are the unmet needs? Do you think you can deliver on these?

Market Analysis:

1. Market Size - How big is the market opportunity?
2. Market Growth - Is the market for your offering growing or shrinking?
3. Market Trends - What are the trends that are or will be shaping this market?
4. Profitability Projection - What is the estimated profitability for your services based on industry structure?  Using Michael Porter's 5 Forces Model: How intense is competition? What are the threat of substitutes? What is the threat of potential new entrants? What is the bargaining power of your target customers or suppliers?
5. Critical Success Factors - What are the skills and knowledge required to compete in this market?

I would recommend you leverage market research to ground your market analysis using a data driven approach.

Environmental Analysis:

1. What are the external trends or events that could impact your career strategy?  Factors can include technology, economics, government policies, emerging lifestyle trends, changing demographics, etc.
2. How would you identify or forecast future trends or events?

Core Competence:

1. What is your unique combination of skills that will create a competitive advantage in the target market you have chosen for your career?
2. How sustainable is this core competence? How will you protect it?
3. How will you differentiate your offering?

Adjacent Target Markets:

1. Using Geoffrey Moore’s “bowling alley” strategy to first gain leadership in a niche market with a particular pain point and then tackle a series of adjacent markets (“pins”), what are the opportunities to grow your services in adjacent related markets?
2. What order would you proceed in to target these markets?
3. How difficult will it be to become credible in these related markets?

The deliverable from this step is a clear target market for your service and the core competence that will be a basis for profiting in the market.  After documenting your career strategy you should ultimately be able to quickly tell a person what market you are in, why this market, and what makes your value sustainable over time.  I found this career strategy step to be the most difficult, but I would recommend you approach this exercise with free, creative thinking to explore career options that exploit your personal brand profile and may have otherwise been missed.  

Career Planning Step 1 - Know Yourself

This post is a follow-up to the Career Planning Lifecycle article that outlined the five high-level steps of managing a successful career plan.  Over the next five posts I will take you through best practices and content that is included in my career plan. The final deliverable is a Word document that summarizes your entire plan and includes references to other artifacts that support your plan (e.g. resume).  Once you have a complete plan you are then ready to execute a targeted direction for your career.

The first step in the career planning process is to know yourself.  While this is common sense, I find the many people have a hard time describing many key characteristics that should ultimately shape the career planning process such their interests and motivators. The first section of the career plan is a personal brand profile that describes who you are and what makes you tick.  Imagine giving your profile to someone who does not know you and within ten minutes they have a fairly good idea of who you are.  How powerful would that be?

• Life Mission - Defining what your high-level mission is in life is the first place to start. Many people forget to take a holistic approach to career planning and think about their career as something separate and distinct from other aspects of their daily life.  What do you want to accomplish in life?  What is important to you?  A successful career plan is one that supports your life goals and critical success factors for personal happiness.
• Personal Motto - What is the one-liner that embodies your view on life? My motto is "anything is possible if you put your mind to it".
• Values - Your personal values define who you are and what you believe in. The roles you pursue throughout your career must not conflict with your core values.  Leaders have clear values and they use these to inspire others to follow.
• Passions - What energizes you? Successful careers include roles that leverage your passions.  What combination of passions would make up your dream job? 
• Strengths - You will be most successful throughout your career when the roles leverage your unique combination of skills and capabilities.  The book StrengthsFinder 2.0 provides a great framework and assessment for identifying your strengths.
• Brand Attributes - How do you want to be known and described by others? Is it believable or do you have development that is required to deliver on your brand promise?
• Personal Brand Statement - What one line sentence would describe your value? Similar to a product you must position your offering at a target market with a defined value proposition. The book Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand provides a great overview on what elements should be included in the personal brand statement.
• Interests -Selecting a role that aligns with your core interests is critical to job happiness and success. While this is obvious many people cannot describe their high-level interests.  My company uses the CareerLeader assessment to support career planning processes.  The final deliverable is a report that summarizes key information such as interests, motivators, and culture fit. 
• Motivators - You won't be happy for long in a position where you can't earn specific rewards.  What motivates you?  Is it money, title, or recognition? 
• Organization Culture - What type of organization culture will you most succeed in?
• Physiological Type Preference - It's a well known fact that you will get the most career satisfaction with opportunities to express and use your physiological type preferences. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is an instrument to identify where you focus attention, the way you take in information, the way you make decisions, and how you deal with the outer world.  I am an "ENTJ", what are you?
• Professional Profile - It's important that your network understand your education, career accomplishments and the recommendations that validate your value.  I use Linkedin as my online professional profile. In the past I have used the export to PDF feature to summarize my profile and share it with prospective hiring managers or new members of my professional network.

A clear and concise personal brand profile will help you target roles throughout your career that maximize your success and personal happiness.  A personal profile can be used in many ways throughout your career. I have shared my personal profile with prospective hiring managers to quickly enable them to understand who I am and if my profile is a good fit with the job.  A match is one that is a win-win - great for you and the company.  Knowing who you are and what you want will enable you to confidently sell your value and take the next step to target the right market.

I know sometimes it's easier to create your own personal brand profile when you have an example.  Best of luck creating your profile and feel free to share any of your best practices.

Career Planning Lifecycle

A few of my friends and colleagues have inspired me to document career planning techniques I have used over the years.  I will plan to share examples over the next few weeks as I too update my 2010 career plan.  My hope is that the lifecycle and sample artifacts will enhance your career planning activities.

Step 1 – Know Yourself.  Knowing who you are including personal values, interests, motivators, and brand attributes is the first step to defining your career plan.  A successful career plan is one that is in concert with the other parts of your life so understanding who you are and what makes you tick is critical. The deliverable from this step is a Personal Brand Profile.

Step 2 - Target Market. Career planning is very similar to strategic analysis and product management where you need to understand the target market to position your product or service successfully.  The deliverable from this step is a market assessment and a clear target for your offering.

Step 3 – Roadmap Yourself. Similar to a product lifecycle, the market will change through time and the roadmap will define the steps we take to advance our capability and value we deliver.  The deliverable from this step is a roadmap of roles that includes the experiences to be gained, competencies developed and the relationships required to be successful in the role.

Step 4 – Develop Yourself. Refining and adding capabilities will support the advancement toward achieving your short-term and long-term career aspirations.  Understanding feedback and expectations from stakeholders is also an important input into your development plan.  The deliverable from this step is a list of personal development activities including on the job training, formal education, and learning from others.

Step 5 – Sell Yourself. We all need stakeholders who can help us achieve our dreams and career aspirations.  Positioning and selling your product each day is an essential part of career planning.  The deliverable from this step is marketing plan to communicate and sell your services.

While these five steps are very basic I rarely see people practice these with the required rigor to guide a targeted career plan.  I know from experience that a guided career plan that is aligned with your life's most important treasures can give you the energy to make the most of every day.