As I sit here, I find myself at the proverbial cross-roads, wondering which direction to take.
My career path has taken many turns, and I am definitely one to carefully consider opportunities before jumping in like an excited 5 year old spotting a bouncy castle; whole heartedly throwing my energy and attention in to having fun whilst completing the task at hand.
My current opportunity is located away from our UK shores, on the much sunnier shores of the UAE but I find myself in the position where my intended time out here is looking like it will be cut short, due to changing business priorities. I’m not sure when I will return to my wonderful homeland but taking this time to reflect as I work out my next step it got me thinking about what others do in similar situations- particularly when the deadline for choosing is provided by someone or something else.
How does someone choose their next step when they aren’t at the beginning of their journey, when they’ve made a plan, decided what is happening when and then – it changes? In training, we always work on a pretty standard cycle – analyse, quantify, align, design, deliver, evaluate and back to analyse. Ensuring all we do aligns itself to business needs and goals; developing competence in areas to improve personal effectiveness and make people feel better about themselves.
I recognise change is necessary, and important for a number of reasons, and it’s not that I’m not excited about my future; I very much am but at times my curiosity leads me to a maze rather than a bouncy castle.
And this is very much the key – when we’re facing a cross-roads and we have to make a decision, what can we do? Well, why don’t we apply our business processes externally;
- Analyse the situation – what are the options? Where does each road potentially lead?
- Quantify – what’s realistic? Is it really a valid choice, or just a throwaway option?
- Align – what is my overall goal – where do I want to be in 5, 10, 50 years?
- Design – make a plan that suits me
- Deliver – follow the plan! Try it out, amend it, move things around – nothing is ever set in stone
- Evaluate – what happened? Where did I end up? Did I have fun and did I learn?
In fact, thinking about it some more – hold my shoes. I’m ready to jump in.
We’re building our base and trying out different blog topics here at CLDP – we’d be interested in hearing what you do when facing change, just post below.