Competing Strategically in Your Career
Article Overview: Strategies used by businesses to compete can also be used by individuals to manage their careers.
 |
Free Download - Competing Strategically in Your Career By Harris Silverman
|
Competing Strategically in Your Career
Elements of strategy that are normally used by businesses
can also be used by individuals in the management of their careers. For example, knowing where you’re
heading by writing a clear definition of your ideal future state can help you
get there by guiding your decision-making, your professional development and
your career planning. You should
always know where you want to be and when you want to be there.
Another business strategy that can be applied to an
individual career is positioning.
Businesses benefit from being known in the public mind as being very
good at one or two clearly defined things that people want. You can do the same. Make sure you’re known in your
profession or company as the go-to person for a small number of very specific
skills or services that people need and value. This will help you hang on to your job in tough times, and
it will make people remember and value you.
It’s important for businesses to keep close track of the
business environment so that they can anticipate threats, prepare for coming changes
that will impact them, be sure they’re meeting current needs (rather than those
of the past), and generally steal a march on their competitors. You can do the same in your career. Make sure you are aware of changes in
your field or profession, and in your company and its strategy, that can impact
your career and that may require changes to the way you are managing it. Many people neglect this, and it
can give you a clear advantage.
Another case in point is developing and maintaining a
competitive advantage. Make sure
you have some skill, knowledge, or capacity that gives you an edge over people
with whom you compete for jobs and promotions. Make sure you know what they can do and where there may be
gaps that you can fill. Develop
new skills; get better at the ones you share with them; find a way to develop
an edge.
One of the best-known business strategies is SWOT
analysis. Do you know what your
Strengths are, and how you can develop and exploit them? Do you know what your Weaknesses are,
and do you have a plan to remedy them, or at least to mitigate them? Have you identified Opportunities that
you can exploit, and Threats you need to guard against?
If not, what are you waiting for?
Related Articles
Career Change in an Economic Downturn
10 Most Compelling Reasons To Hire A Coach, According To Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach
Bad Career Habits
Are you DisNavigated?
Should you take a Homographic Approach to your Career Planning?
Writing Newsletters - How to Be Creative When Newsletter Writing
How To Strategically Develop Your Ideal Client Profile, According To Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach
We Don’t Want to be Downers, but are your Career Prospects Evaporating?
So Thats What The Brake Pedal Is For! Great Executive Coaches Add Balance
FINDING THE RIGHT CAREER!
Leadership Success Strategy - Your Winning Leadership Formula to a Balanced Life
How to be an elite Sales-Athlete
Successful People Think Win-Win In Conflict Situations
Ten Beliefs that Must Be Overcome to Find A New Meaningful Career
The Secrets Of Finding Your Perfect Career
Selecting the right talent
Pick Yourself Up and Dust Yourself Off
Picking the Right People
Manage Yourself for the Career You Want
The Marketing Secret That Will Determine the Success Or Failure of Your Business
Article Tags:
career,
career planning,
compete,
competitive career
Related Forum Posts
Re: Require Info on CAD Fed/Prov Grants for Restaurant Start-up
- I know the Ontario government is starting a "Second Career" campaign, full of internship opportunities for new chefs and catering staff. It may be worth your while to research the possibilities with that. It may work itself out to be cheap labor in the form of a grant. Good luck regardless!
Book: Comeback Moms
- Comeback Moms: How to Leave Work, Raise Children, and Restart your Career even If you Haven't Had a Job in Years
Monica Samuels and J. C. Conklin
2006
Jacket:
Millions of educated, professional women are quitting their jobs to stay home and raise their children. That would never be you, right? You worked hard for your degree and even harder to get to this point in your career. Quitting now, even for a few years, would kill your career, right?
That's what Monica Samuels thought when she found out she was pregnant...
Over 60 percent of professional women who leave work to raise children want to get back into the workforce someday. If you even think you might want to go back to work, be it in one year or twenty, you need to lay the groundwork now for a successful reentry or your options will be limited.
1. Quitting: When is the best time to cut the cord
2. Feathering the nest: How to financially prepare before you quit
3. Departure strategies: leaving the office
4. Money and Power: Constructing a new life on the home front
5. Backlash: handling family, friends and angry strangers
6. One foot in, one foot out: How can they miss you if you don't really go away?
7. Part time: It ain't perfect, but it's doable
8. Going back: the when and how of returning to work full time
9. Career counseling: When you need a change
10. Entrepreneurs: True Stories
Resources
Index
Books for Women Entrepreneurs
- There's a thread for good books in the Resources folder, but it doesn't target books for businesswomen particularly, so I figured I'd start such a thread here.
It doesn't matter how successful you are in your business - it's always possible to learn something new.
In subsequent posts I give Table of Contents and brief descriptions for various titles - most of them devoted to the businesswoman - and sometimes a review. If anyone else has read a review, or has read the book and found it useful, please comment!
1. The Old Girl's Network
2. Mother's Work
3. The 7 Greatest Truths About Successful Women
4. Pitch Like A Girl
5. Workplace Warrior
6. Treasure Hunt: Inside the Mind of the Modern Consumer
7. Contingency Planning & Disaster Recovery
8. She Wins, You Win
9. Napoleon On Project Management
10. Why Good Girls Dont' Get Ahead, But Gutsy Girls Do
11. Comeback Moms: How to Leave Work, Raise Children, and Restart your Career even If you Haven't Had a Job in Years
12. The One Minute Millionaire
13. Talking From 9 to 5
14. Soloing: Realizing Your Life's Ambitions
15. 101 Best Home Based Businesses for Women: Everything You Need to Know About Getting Started on the Road To Success
16. Work With Passion: How to Do What You Love for a Living. Revised and Expanded
17. Fail-Proof Your Business: Beat the Odds and be Successful
18. Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End
19. Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide
20. Millionaire Women Next Door: The Many Journeys of Successful American Businesswomen
21. Start Small, Finish Big: Fifteen Key Lessons to Start - and Run - Your Own Successful Business
22. Rewired, Rehired or Retired: A Global Guide for the Experienced Worker
23. The Martha Rules: 10 essentials for achieving success as you start, build or manage a business
24. The Essentials of Entrepreneurship: What it takes to create Successful Enterprises
25. Net Ready: Strategies for Success in the E-conomy
26. The Promotable Woman
27. Leave The Office Earlier: The Productivity Pro shows you how to do more in less time and feel great about it
28. The Work At Home Balancing Act: The professional resource guide for managing yourself, your work, and your family at home
29. Secrets of Six-Figure Women
Recommended Article for You
close
Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.
Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva.
Over
$50,000 raised and counting -
Please keep sharing! Learn more.