Over the last decade or so of my corporate life in IT, I assumed the (unofficial) role of a career manager for my team - some of the brightest minds in business analysis and design thinking. My team and many from outside my organization considered me their coach, mentor, or guide.

I’m no longer in the corporate world. I took a conscious decision to focus exclusively on helping bright folks discover and navigate their professional journey. Looking at where my former team members are today, I have to say that my decision is paying me rich dividends in the form of immense pride and satisfaction.

During my several career-related interactions, I spotted and imbibed a few learnings about career planning; best practices if you will. I have tried to articulate them here in a two-part series.

So here goes…

Sometime back, I put out two LinkedIn polls. These polls were carefully created to, a) be simple, b) thought-provoking and c) traces to every learning that I wish to share.

97% of the respondents indicated that they struggle with career planning (Poll 1). This is quite normal. But let’s address another small but significant stat first. 3% of people think career planning is not at all important (Poll 1). This could most likely be because they probably outsource their career to their employer (Poll 2).

Why would anyone do that? Could it be because they have incorrectly equated career growth to promotions, titles, and salary hikes? Possibly!

But I’m sure you agree that the equivalence is misplaced. Career is not any of those things.

Then what exactly is a career? Is it your occupation? Your job? Series of jobs? Something you do to earn a living? Something you train for?

If you are thinking that these are too narrow a definition for career, and don’t fully capture its essence, I agree with you.

So, how do we define career? Here is my perspective.

Career is a cohesive set of activities that you undertake because it makes you happy, generates value for society and you have the skills needed to perform them.

Happiness, Value and Skills are the keywords here.

Everything else is a byproduct. You earn a living because society will reward you for the value you generate. It also makes you happy and hence you eagerly take it up as an occupation. And you feel positively compelled to train for getting better at it.

I will leave you with this thought for now. I am deeply interested in learning your perspectives.

In the next part of this article, I’m going to talk about few more key learnings about making your career:

1. Honing your existing strengths and active pursuit of new ones
2. Watching which way, the wind is blowing (i.e., future. Does the society still value what I do?)
3. Having someone to watch over you and guide you all along.