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By Randall Kaplan
Most people can tell you what they want from their careers: a promotion, more responsibility, a bigger paycheck, or work that feels more meaningful.
When we ask what they’re doing this week to make it happen, the answer often gets less specific.
Ambition is a starting point. To make progress, we need to translate it into a clear outcome, actions we control, and a way to check whether those actions are working.
Here is a practical process for setting career goals we can follow through on.
“I want to be more successful” gives us very little direction. What would success actually look like?
Would we manage a team or move into a different industry? Would we take responsibility for a larger account or build the skills to start a business?
A useful starting point is a single sentence specific enough that someone else can understand what we’re trying to accomplish.
For example:
“Over the next six months, I want to demonstrate that I am ready to lead a client project from planning through delivery.”
That statement gives us something concrete to work toward. It also identifies a capability we can demonstrate, even if the timing of a promotion remains outside our control.
Before building a plan, we need to investigate the gap between where we are and where we want to be.
If we want a promotion, we need to understand how promotion decisions are made. What responsibilities would change? What results would demonstrate readiness? Who needs to see our work?
For a career change, actual job descriptions and conversations with people doing the work can reveal which requirements we already meet and which need preparation.
This is where Extreme Preparation® becomes useful. We’re gathering information that changes our next move, testing assumptions, and preparing for the conversations that can move the goal forward.
A conversation with our manager might reveal that our technical skills are strong, but we haven’t yet shown that we can coordinate work across departments. That gives us a more useful target than simply working longer hours.
We can prepare for a promotion. We cannot guarantee that our employer will have an opening.
We can improve our interview skills. We cannot control who else applies.
Our plan should include actions we can complete without someone else first saying yes.
For the aspiring project leader, those actions might include:
Each action should have a clear connection to the larger goal. A busy calendar is not evidence of progress if the activities do not address what we need to learn or demonstrate.
A goal needs a place in our actual week.
We need to decide when we’ll do the work, how much time it requires, and what we’ll complete during that time.
“Improve my interview skills” might become:
“On Tuesday evening, I will prepare answers to three likely questions using examples from my recent work. On Thursday, I will practice those answers aloud and revise anything unclear.”
The commitment needs to be realistic. A plan that assumes unlimited energy and no interruptions will be difficult to sustain.
A schedule we can maintain during an ordinary, demanding week gives us a starting point. We can increase the commitment as our capacity develops.
Completing an activity tells us that we followed the plan. It does not necessarily tell us that the plan is working.
We need to understand both.
If our goal involves leadership, we can record the responsibilities we took on, the feedback we received, and the problems we helped resolve.
If we’re preparing for interviews, we can look for clearer answers, more relevant examples, and better questions about the role.
A simple weekly record can capture what we did, what we learned, and what needs to change.
Over time, that record can help us identify gaps and explain our progress with specific examples.
At a regular review, we can ask ourselves:
If we repeatedly miss an action, the reason deserves attention. It may be too large, poorly scheduled, or dependent on something we haven’t addressed.
If we’re consistently taking action without progress, a coach or trusted colleague can help us examine the approach before another month passes.
The next step does not need to be dramatic. One career goal, a clear understanding of its requirements, and a scheduled first action give us somewhere to begin. From there, we can keep building evidence that we’re becoming ready for the opportunity we want.
Randall Kaplan is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and executive coach. He’s a co-founder of Akamai Technologies and the founder and CEO of JUMP Investors, which has invested in more than 100 early-to-late-stage companies, including Google, Seagate, and Lyft. For 25 years, he’s coached hundreds of entrepreneurs, business owners, and executives. He created Extreme Preparation® to help people pursue their boldest ambitions, overcome the obstacles standing in their way, and change the course of their careers, businesses, and lives.
He also interviews some of the world’s most successful people, including Mark Cuban, Tony Robbins, Mike Tyson, David Solomon, and David Rubenstein, on his podcast In Search of Excellence, which has reached as high as #3 in Entrepreneurship and #10 in Business on Apple Podcasts.
Learn more about executive coaching with Randall.