Cartoons and Career Planning

Sometimes you just have to grin.

The instant joys of a picture

I’m looking at the cartoon on page 60 of the June 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review.

If you have a copy to hand in your holdings or happen across one somewhere then have a look at it.  As with the best cartoons it’s instant, and funny, but it also makes quite a lot of points.

An employee is being asked that perennial much-loved question from everything from interview panels to development discussions to career planning days. You know, the one that goes "Where do you see yourself in five years?"

In his thought bubble is the employee’s mental answer to that question.

Where he sees himself is precisely where he is now and as he is now.  Even the coffee cup on his desk hasn’t moved a centimetre. Oddly that’s the bit that concerns me (anal or what!).

So it’s kind of a negative portrayal you might think.

What we don’t see is precisely WHY he’s thinking that though. I’m wondering about the why.

Positive Choices can be either ‘to do’ or ‘not to do’

Lots of people choose to be doing the same things in five years time and for all kinds of reason.  It’s not instantly a bad thing. It could be they simply really enjoy it and feel it’s what they should be doing. It could be because it’s convenient. Perhaps it makes sense under a number of headings that could be anything and everything from finances to fitting in well with commitments like family caring responsibilities. Jobs don’t exist in an abyss, there are other factors that we all have to consider in integrating job and life.

So if it’s been thought through and chosen and works it’s utterly fine.

But there is also the maxim that life is what happens while we’re making other plans. 

Sometimes five years pass in a flash and nothing has changed not because it’s been positively chosen, but because it was okay and attention was elsewhere on other aspects of life.  Or perhaps something was meant to be done about it and wasn’t.  Or perhaps folk don’t always see a clear path forward or way of achieving the change they want and delay things waiting for the miraculous bolt from the blue of total self-knowledge, or decide to just wait ‘until’ some specified other event has happened first. Or perhaps they just resign themselves and forget to try.

There is choice in everything. To do is a choice. Not to do is equally a choice. Some are easy and some are hard. But being aware of and exercising choice is important. 

Moments of Clarity

Where folk often stall is in choosing specifically ‘what’ it is they want and putting structures in place that will get them there. Not knowing ‘what’ leaves them feeling unable to make changes.

I suspect moments of real clarity are actually rare. Clarity is not necessarily more likely or frequent just because you’re on holiday half a continent away than it would be in the mid-morning rush.

So perhaps the answer is to think ‘hurrah, there is no ‘one right’ answer’, and just experiment a bit, somewhere between the Exact Status Quo and the Great Explorer. Worst case scenario you’ve given yourself more information to go on re what does and doesn’t work / appeal to you. Even if it would just move the hypothetical coffee cup...

Having fun with the perennial question

So if you fancy a grin while considering the above, shut your eyes and consider asking "Where do you see yourself in five years?" – not of a subordinate, or yourself even if you don’t want to, but of someone higher up your organisation.  Can you picture that?  It would certainly change the conversation. Could be a funny cartoon…