The Essential Elements in Every Plan
First, you have to lay the foundation. There are three components that make up the foundation of your career reinvention launch strategy. They are:
1. Life Vision: This is your mission statement if we’re going to think about it in the context of a business. It’s the summary of the kind of life that you want your new life to deliver. You use this vision statement to test each prospective career option to see if it’s going to help you create the life that you’ve envisioned having.
2. Core Value: This is your “guiding principle,” the main value you want your new career to deliver. You use this as your happiness reality check to make sure that the opportunities you’re considering will actually deliver that value. This is a crucial step because you’re going to set yourself up for a lot of misery if you take an opportunity that doesn’t deliver your core value.
3. Reinvention Goal: The third fundamental basis of this plan is your reinvention goal. This is your ‘plan objective’, a short statement of the type of career that you’d like to explore. Unless you know exactly what you’d like to do, it’s best to keep this very general and not be really specific. Keep in mind that as you gather information, your goal can and most likely will change.
Let’s talk about the logistics of the plan. The rest of your strategy is going to mirror a traditional business plan in its categories. You’re going to use the broad goal that you set as a basis for outlining what you’re going to do in each one of these categories. Let’s just go through the categories.
The first one is research and development because reinventing your career is a process of exploration. You’re going to need to gather information about a new industry and target companies or contacts that can help you. Perhaps you’re going to need a new skill set, and then you’ll have to train yourself. If you’re trying to figure out what you want, you need to explore your interests.
The second category is the operations and logistics. These are just the essential nuts and bolts to conduct an effective search. This is where you just make a list of what you need to do. Perhaps you need to get a new email address and personal business cards, sign up for newsletters or online networking sites, get your resume in order, or have a calendar or contact management system.
The third category is human resources. You’re going to need the assistance of other people to reinvent your career. This is the time to consider who can aid you in reaching your goal.
The next category is finance. To have a solid strategy plan, you’ve got to deal with the finances. It’s so important that we had an entire module on money. This means making sure that you have the funds on hand to meet your financial obligations while you’re conducting your search.
The next category is marketing. Once you have an idea in mind, that will help you. If you’re in the R&D phase of just coming up with the idea, marketing is something you want to keep on the back burner, but know that this is something you will need to think of.
The next category is public relations. It’s a little bit different than the marketing piece. The marketing piece is about creating awareness. Public relations is where you begin to shape the image that you want to project to that target audience.
The last category that I like to talk about in this plan is the sales category. I know a lot of people get scared when they hear the word “sales,” but you’re going to be selling yourself. You’re going to be selling yourself not just to your target audience but to those people who have access to your target audience.
Coaching Action Steps
Click on this link to download the Strategy Action Guide for some tips and exercises to help you create your own Reinvention Strategy.
