Design thinking for your career
Design thinking is very popular. Some approaches can also be applied to career design. It is an alternative approach to career planning. Careers are difficult to plan; they are the result of a process, just like the design of a product. It develops by incorporating experiences along the way. If a career could be planned, we could determine today where we will be in 10 years’ time. However, the ability to plan presupposes a certain stability in the data used. In a career, however, almost nothing can be predicted. Job profiles are changing; professions are dying out and new ones are emerging. We therefore do not know which profiles will be in demand in ten years’ time. Not even our needs are constant: we cannot predict how we will see the world in a few years’ time. Personal experiences, advancing age or simply a change in thinking alter our priorities.
We need a compass, not a map
If we can’t plan our career, should we leave it to coincidence? I think that we still have a great deal of influence in shaping it. I advise to build a career on what remains constant over time – our talents and strengths. Also interests and inclinations can give our career direction. The concrete outcome will become apparent in the future based on constantly changing circumstances. That’s why we don’t need a map to navigate our career, but a compass. A map works because the topographical conditions change slowly enough for it to be valid over time. A career is more comparable to a boat trip with all its imponderables of weather and currents. When it comes to shaping our careers, we must therefore constantly adapt to the circumstances and find new solutions. If we are open to this and try out new things, a career will develop by itself.