How To Think About Career Moves

Friday, 9.34pm

Sheffield, U.K

The harder routes you climb, the more interesting the climbing gets and the more crazy moves you are forced to figure out. – Adam Ondra

Knowing what you now know, what would you do differently?

I’ve been looking back over the last ten years or so, at the kinds of things I came across and studied and what things are still relevant and which are less so.

I feel like I’ve been through a few cycles and, like any trader knows, until you’ve been through an up and a down you don’t really know what it’s like and how you will respond.

And it’s not just about your response when things are down – it’s also what you do when you’re at the top.

The biggest mistake people make with money is buying high and selling low.

What mistakes do they do with their careers?

This decision tree from the book Career Games is a good one.

At any point in your career you can make moves.

These moves can be instrumental or they can be blunders.

Take, for example, someone early in their career.

Putting your hand up for a project shows ambition – and doing that means you will probably be considered when the next, larger project comes around.

That could, in some cases, be a career defining move, one that sets you on a path of promotions and success.

Or it could be a career-refining one – positioning you for growth in your department.

Sitting back could be a blunder.

At best, it might be minor, a career distracting move that sees other people, perhaps ones less able than you, move on and progress further.

Or worse, sitting back and complaining, or even sabotaging what’s happening could be career limiting at best and career ending at worst.

Of course, the moves you make are only the manifestation of your career strategy.

Which in turn stems from your analysis of what you want from your career, what is important to you, what you want out of a job and exactly what your competitive advantage is in any potential negotiation.

The move is the tip of the spear, the thing people see.

The thing pushing it along is what matters.

The line that started this post is one from Brian Tracy, a motivational speaker that I haven’t really thought about in years.

And I think I should end with another from Zig Ziglar who reminds us that you can get everything you want if you help other people get what they want.

And that is probably the simplest strategy of all.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh