January 13, 2020 | by David March.
When it comes to career search and planning your future career, it’s best to aim high and have a clear vision moving forward. There are two parts to this. Strategy and tactics.
What Is the Difference Between Strategy and Tactics?
The strategy refers to the plan to achieve a goal while the tactics is how you execute the plan.
To give an example, let’s say you are Indiana Jones and you want to retrieve the crystal skull from the lost city in the amazon rain-forest. You have a strategy or a plan that shows conceptually and geographically where it is. However, you also know that this skull is guarded by the living dead. The legend says that whoever returns the skull to the city temple will be given control over its power.
To get to that area where the skull resides in the Amazon rainforest you will use all kinds of tactics. You will have to take a plane, a boat, a car and walk through a lot of rainforest. Then, when you get there, how will you deal with the enemies guarding the skull? You engage in a number of tactics to achieve your desired result.
Strategy and Tactics in Career Search
Now perhaps your career goal is not as elaborate as this one, but you still need a strategic plan to achieve it, then devise the tactics to get there.
What I am talking about here is the ideal way to create that strategy or plan for your future career.
Strategy in Career Search
What this means, from a practical standpoint as it relates to your career search, is starting to create a strategic frame of mind. When mapping out your hero’s journey for your dream career, the first step is to create a strategic frame of mind. This is inferred in the following quote from Henry David Thoreau:
“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live that life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” (Walden, Henry David Thoreau)
In this quote from Thoreau, there is a contrast between what you imagine (castles in the air) and what your present reality is (the need to build the foundation under it).
Juxtaposing the optimistic with the realistic scenarios in our mind helps maintain a healthy outlook on our situation. Check in and inspect your career goals periodically to see how you are measuring up to the ideal standard you set for yourself. You may have to adjust them accordingly so as to not be too hard on yourself. Focusing on just the imagination part or the reality part would not be productive. Do both in succession. If you find it difficult to do on your own. It’s best when you have a coach that believes in you and is able to see your true potential and compassionately holds you to that ideal. This process will fuel the optimistic, yet realistic mindset that is necessary for strategic thinking and your utmost success.
Strategy Helps You Maintain Clarity of Mind
You still may need clarity on several fronts: Perhaps you want to discover a new career path, develop a business concept, grow an existing business or advance in your current career. There are many possible scenarios. Setting your big picture goals and connecting them with smaller steps will be helpful.
Tactics in Career Search
Tactics will be used as you create the micro steps to achieve victory. This could be fixing up your resume so you can get an interview; interview skills could be necessary to get to the final interview with the CEO.
Once you have this strategic mindset and your intentions set, know that this is ultimately the same approach that the revered military strategist Sun Tzu, Author of the book “Art of War” took when doing strategic offense. Win before ever fighting. The ultimate achievement to Sun-Tzu is to defeat the enemy without even coming to battle.
What this means in a career and business is win over yourself and develop yourself in such a way that you can’t lose.
Develop a Success Mindset
What you are doing is simply orientating your mind for success. You’d be visualizing your success to see how everything is going to happen, in a pre-destination kind of way. Creating this mental movie of how you picture your plan turning out in the future, what you will say, whom you will talk to. Notice the sounds, conversations, visuals and details of that mental movie.
Replay it often in your head.
This training of your mind activates the Reticular Activating System (RAS) of your brain. Allowing your mind to focus on what is important creates a filter for what is not important. It helps sift through the people, places and things around you and presents only the pieces that are important to your goal.
The more you play out the scenarios, the better you will be at facing them. You can succeed. It’s all in the approach.
As author of the book, Vision In Action, I can help you map out the journey towards your goal and get you the results you are looking for. You can finally feel accomplished can make progress towards your chosen career path.
To take the next step, schedule a call with me at https://calendly.com/coachdavemarch
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