Explaining The Career Operating System
A breakdown of the Mindset and Behaviors that drive managing your career
A few weeks ago I wrote a post where I introduced The Career Operating System, which is a framework and language for thinking about how we as employees can proactively set and achieve career goals while progressing in our careers. I got a lot of positive feedback on the post (thank you to those who responded and shared your thoughts!) and I think it struck a chord, so I wanted to take a chance to expand a bit further on the framework.
What is The Career Operating System?
The career operating system is a framework and set of behaviors that when practiced help you iteratively and intentionally work toward your own unique career aspirations. The Career Operating System (Career OS) is what ensures that the excellent work (which you achieve through using your hard and soft skills) aligns your desired goals with your desired outcomes, and that you have a language and set of muscles you can flex to help you take steps and action toward those specific goals.
The story behind the framework comes from some of my own experiences and observations as a professional but also a career and leadership coach, and outlines both a mindset and way of operating so that you can develop and grow in your career in the way that you desire.
If I could summarize what the framework is about, it's about developing a mindset and set of actions for managing one’s career in an intentional manner. It’s meant to provide a language and detailed set of behaviors to start developing and flexing for anyone, regardless of where they currently are in their career.
The reason why I wanted to create this framework is because after thousands of conversations with successful individuals I was struck by how many people felt like they were lacking a set of strategy and specific tactics for managing their careers in their desired manner. This was not for lack of effort, or desire, but rather, due to lack of coaching, education, or direction. From my experience, managing your career is something most people never get taught, and are left to figure out on your own. My purpose for putting this together is to help people wherever they are, develop their mindsets and behaviors, to achieve more, learn and grow, and find deeper engagement and impact in their work.
Managing Your Career is hard to learn on your own
During the past few months, I’ve had lots of conversations with these individuals about their careers. During our conversations, I spent time talking with them to learn more about them, learned how to manage and grow their careers, set and achieve goals, and thought about their career development.
From this, I came to a number of conclusions:
Very few people even the successful ones, felt confident in their own ability to develop and grow their careers
People learned by accident, through trial and error, or through a mentor or sponsor on how to develop their career
At the core of it came down to a mindset and way of operating that allowed them to identify and achieve career goals
Hearing from people that they felt like “they got lucky” was not good enough for me. I wanted to come up with a better framework and mindset for career development, so I went back and did more research to better understand what they were able to do to achieve career goals. The thread that went through all of it was developing a mindset and way of thinking and operating.
It’s #3 that helped me come up with this idea of the Career Operating System. In totality, what I saw was a mindset and way of thinking and working that allowed them to be successful.
The framework underscores a reality of the workplace and companies today - hard work and good work is necessary but often insufficient, especially in today’s complex and cross-functional organizations, not to mention, the reality of the biases that exist.
If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard the phrase “own your career” or “make sure you manage your career,” and you probably wondered, well what does that even mean? The Career Operating System is an answer to that question, and the components in the operating system are the specific muscles you can over time develop, to help you work towards your own version of success, however you choose to define it.
Breaking Down The Career Operating System
The Operating System has eight components to it which I’ve identified below.
1)Intentional Career Planning
Definition: Proactively and intentionally create a career vision or goal with intention and use diverse ways and means to achieve it
Why it matters: Progress is the result of intention and action. When we set out to achieve a goal and proactively take steps toward it, things happen. Maybe not right away, but over time.
Example of it: Building your own career development plan that includes a goal, or vision, along with some action oriented steps you can take to work toward that vision. Proactively scheduling career conversations with your manager. Identifying personal interests that are exciting and interesting, and talking to your manager about how you might be able to incorporate it into your day job.
2)Lifelong Learning
Definition: Using curiosity, a growth mindset, and self-motivation to learn and acquire knowledge
Why it matters: Nobody knows everything, and if we just operate in our existing lane, we’ll never
Example of it: Taking on (or in some cases, getting thrown into) a project that is outside of our scope or skillset, but embracing that experience using all of the resources we have to remain curious, build new skills, acquire new knowledge, and successfully execute the project
3)Performance Management
Definition: Understanding the performance evaluation process, and manage the components of the process to put your best self forward
Why It Matters: It’s important to understand how you are being evaluated on your work and performance in your job. Taking the time to not only learn how this process works, but the role that you can play helps make sure you get accurately represented for what you do. While this is critical if you are trying to get promoted or to get a raise, there are many other reasons for why it's important to learn how you are being evaluated. Above all, everyone deserves a right to understand what they are being measured against in their role. This also allows you to understand the steps that you can take, to
Example of it: Taking the time to understand how your company evaluates its employees through its performance evaluation process. Getting to know the steps in the process, the individuals who are involved, the timelines, deadlines, and then the role that you play in facilitating this process.
4)Storytelling
Definition: Conveying who you are, what you do, and the impact you make to a diverse group of audiences within or outside of your company
Why it matters: Companies are complex and people are busy. Being able to convey who you are, what you do, and how you make an impact in a way that diverse groups of people can understand is critical to internal self-confidence and external awareness within your company and in your network of peers.
Example of it: Being able to introduce yourself to new co-workers when working on a project so that they understand who you are, what you do, and what your role is going to be on the project. Being able to connect with peers in your industry who can clearly understand who you are, what you do and your personal brand.
5)Skills Acquisition
Definition: Identifying specific competencies and skills you want to acquire and build and then to use internal and external resources, projects and experiences to develop those skills
Why It matters: We work in a world that is full of change. We don’t know everything and we can never know anything. We are being thrown into complex projects and have complex responsibilities where we don’t always have exactly what we need to do the job. Understanding what we need to learn so that we can be effective at what we do and then acquiring the skills through our own resources to demonstrate that skill, is very valuable.
Example of it: Getting a new set of responsibilities added to your job, and working with your manager to identify the skills that you need to execute those responsibilities, and then acquiring those skills so you can do your job.
Deciding you are ready to make a career transition and identifying the right skills and competencies you need to make yourself an attractive candidate for that specific role.
6)Internal Marketing
Definition: Documenting, capturing and sharing your deliverables, outputs and insights to internal teams for personal brand building and knowledge sharing
Why it matters: Doing great work is a good start, but if nobody knows what you are doing, its hard to get recognized for the work you create. Making sure others are aware of the work you are doing, and sharing your knowledge helps you get credit for the work you do, helps you achieve career milestones, and contributes to the overall knowledge of your company
Example of it: Putting together a lessons learned document after you complete a cross functional project, and then sharing it internally with other employees who could benefit from learning from it.
7)Relationship Building
Definition: Building meaningful, impactful and beneficial relationships with your peers in order to achieve goals and personally develop
Why it matters: Business is a mixture of people and process. It’s hard to get something done in a company or organization without working with others. Our ability to effectively cultivate relationships and then use those relationships to work towards a goal is one of the most important things we can do to be successful in our jobs. We don’t work in a vacuum, we exist in a world that is bigger than ourselves. Most work these days is not done in a silo, it involves working with others. When we know how to effectively build relationships, we can be more successful when we have to use these relationships to get work done, to find new opportunities, or to elevate ourselves or others.
Furthermore, just as all types of people offer different values and skill sets, different types of relationships in the workplace are needed at different types. Part of this is also understanding the different types of relationships that exist, and then cultivating and strengthening those relationships.
Example of it: When you are new to an organization, getting a list of people that you are going to be working closely with, and taking the time to get to know them, to understand what they do, how you might be working with them, and starting to work on building trust and connection with them so that later on, when you have to work with them, there is a solid foundation in place.
Calling upon a colleague in your organization to work together on a project because of a past positive working relationship.
Connecting other people in your organization together because you know they will benefit from working with one another in some capacity or way.
8) Organizational Acumen
Definition: Understanding the company org chart and the incentives and processes that align to people
Why it matters: Understanding how the org chart in your company works and operates is critical to determining how to work well with others. Learning where the important people in relation to you sit, what their roles are, who they report into, and the types of work that they work on are incredibly useful pieces of information when working each day, and especially when working on cross-team and department projects.
Example of it:
Understanding the key metrics and measurements that other teams and stakeholders are using to measure their progress and outcomes.
Being able to know how to get to a key stakeholder because of your knowledge of their goals, relationships, and insights.
Being able to find the mavens and thought leaders within your organization to gain knowledge, support, or resources
Conclusion
Just like many of the people who I spoke to, I learned how to manage my career by accident and good grace. After going through a performance evaluation where I totally was blindsided by some shortcomings, I had a manager who went out of her way to teach, coach and encourage me to truly manage my career. My hope with the Career Operating System, is that in this fast-changing and ever-evolving world of work, more people will get access to proactively learning how to set and achieve career goals, and take advantage of their talents, skills, and interests in their work and lives. And instead of being like me, or the thousands of other people who had to learn this the hard way, others can proactively learn this, and get more out of their careers and life.
I would love to hear your feedback, suggestions, ideas, and comments about the Career Operating System. Furthermore, if you manage a team, or want me to come do a workshop for your colleagues or employees on how to develop your career operating system please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’ve done 2-3 of these already and I hope to do more in the coming weeks and months.