What are We Trying to Do Here?

Do you ever ask yourself this question about your company?

Do you ever ask yourself this question about your life?

Not to get too philosophical

But, these are questions you can and should be asking yourself. If you aren’t asking yourself these hard questions today then in five, ten, and twenty years you may find yourself wondering and asking yourself this next very hard question.

How did we get here?

This is a reasonable question to ask, but it’s not the question you want to ask yourself about your career 5, 10 and 20 years on. It can and should be an introspective question. And, it can be a question you can envision yourself asking and answering today. And, using it as a sounding-board for yourself to set your course and direction today.

Career planning requires hard choices.

The great news is there are countless resources available to help you guide, consider, evaluate, and make decisions about your career. From mentors to the Sunday paper business section to the daily stream of blogs and books that can help you plan, consider, and put concrete ideas into action.

Some of my favorite books that got me thinking and keep me thinking include Rich Horwath’s Deep Dive; Jon Acuff’s Do Over;and Greg McKeown’s Essentialism. Each of these are very good reads that I have referred to many times as I seek to answer the questions … What are we doing here? and What are we trying to do here?

Standing out in your career requires planning, perseverance and oftentimes patience.

At the end of your career, whatever that means, you should not be and do not want to be asking yourself the question of: How did we get here?

If you have been diligent all along the way throughout your career and asking this hard question: What are we trying to do here?

Then, you’ll have a pretty pretty good idea and feeling of what you did to get here.

Now, go ask that hard question. And, expect a lot from yourself and from your colleagues and your company. But, ultimately this is your question to ask and answer. Good luck!

A request for you … Add a comment here based on your thoughts about how you approach your career.

Note: I used the collective “we” here instead of using the word “I” for the simple reason that it is rare to do everything yourself. It takes a collection of people to accomplish great things. There are exceptions and there is a lot of hard work required on the part of each individual, but I used the collective “we” here to get people thinking about the possibilities of working together to accomplish more.