Last week Almavina Strategic Partners launched our first product – the Virtual Mentor. It is a set of free resources that are anchored in the “Career Roadmap.” But what is the Career Roadmap? I’m glad you asked!
A few weeks ago I had lunch with a longtime friend and colleague. We discussed the opportunity for supporting early- mid-career professional women, noting the gap in this kind of support that exists at the organizational level.
My friend posed a question, “So what do you think needs to be true for early- to mid-career professionals? What kind of support would we have needed back then?” A picture began to form in my mind.
The Career Roadmap is my first take at answering that question. It’s a visual map of critical inflection points with a mild sense of directionality. Not necessarily a one-must-come-before-the-other requirement, but a stake in the ground representing a likely progression. The Roadmap is broken down into 4 parts.
Foundations: These are the oft ignored pieces to consider when starting out (or starting over). Sometimes you are in survival mode, and just focus on getting the job done. The three pieces here are the underpinnings to a strong foundation: establishing your professional identity, understanding what it means to excel as an individual contributor and build a path to promotion, and developing a practice of giving and receiving feedback.
Roadblocks: These are the pieces that get in the way of our ability to bring our best selves to work, and they can happen at any time in our professional journey: interpersonal conflicts, lack of direction or clear and measurable goals, or feeling overwhelmed due to lack of prioritization. Finding your way around these roadblocks is critical for forward momentum.
Change Management: Navigating change is a theme that shows up across one’s career. Even if you stay in one role at one organization for a while, there will be things that change. Maybe you have a new manager, or the organization is restructured. Maybe the founder moves on and a new leader comes in. Any environmental change can have an impact on you individually. One of the biggest changes that some will make is the move from individual contributor to people manager. I imagine this part of the roadmap will grow over time.
Making Moves: This category is about moving out, moving up, or moving over. It’s where to head when you are ready for a change. Over the course of my career, I found myself itching for a change every three to four years. Sometimes that meant moving on, and sometimes that meant taking on something new in my current organization. It’s important to listen when you hear that inner voice – otherwise you can find yourself feeling stuck.
My hope is that the Career Roadmap is a useful visual on its own. For me, this graphic (along with another, the Promotional Path, which I’ll share later this week) is going to serve as an anchor for my work and thinking around career development. First step, the Virtual Mentor. If you haven’t engaged with it yet, give it a try! The next piece out of the gate will be a Foundations Workshop Series this summer. Sound interesting? Sign up for the newsletter to be the first to get all the details!
0 Comments