How to Take Control of Your Career!

Last week we talked about the importance of taking control of your career.

That’s very important. But, more important than that, is to know how to make it happen.

And perhaps you imagine it would be very hard.

Well, indeed it’s not easy. It demands focus and this could be harder.

Let me help you on this, defining three basic things:

1. Goal

2. Plan

3. Metric

To make this easier, let’s compare with our daily exercise needs not to be considered sedentary.

The recommendation is to walk at least 5 thousand steps per day, correct?

Five thousand steps is your Goal.

The daily frequency is your Plan.

And how you measure your progress against your Goal and Plan? You can have a marvelous health band to measure that or even a simple pedometer. Both work just fine.

Each of these gadgets give you one of the most important part of the plan: the execution control.

Now, going back to your career.

Let’s call your Goal a North Star.

Your definition of success! Something you seek to pursue!

Then, you need a Plan: your career plan.

And to be a solid plan you need a path, your skills, capabilities and competences that must be developed to support your journey. A true combination of soft and hard skills.

And finally, you need a Metric. The way you measure your progress.

But guess what? Most of professionals can tell where they are in their career.

If they are happy or not. If they thought would be further along.

You can easily figure it out where you are.

The problem is not to know where you want to be.

And more: what do you need to develop to get there?

That’s the point.

In order to get this answer, I would like to invite you to start an insightful reflection process.

Begin with this question: Where do I want to be?

This will help you to trigger questions in your mind.

Remember: to achieve a target, firstly you need to have one.

A big and bold Goal.

And after that, a Plan!

Because you don’t want your career and life, just happen.

You want to know where you gonna be, right?

Think about it!

Rodrigo S. Martineli is the Founder & CEO of Career Ladder Institute. He is an accomplished global business executive with well-rounded experience built in an 18-year corporate career working in Fortune 100 companies and growing billion dollar enterprises.