August 10, 2021
Food for Thought - Director's Perspective
Taking Ownership of Your Career
According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs 2020 Report, approximately 50 percent of the skills we have right now won’t be relevant by 2025. Think about that for a second.
The pace at which we are adopting new technologies and skills is astonishing and that makes having a well thought out approach to career advancement more important than ever before. Putting a career development plan into action provides a sense of purpose and makes it easier to visualize how proactively managing your work, education, and activities can help you achieve your personal and professional goals.
When we think about career advancement, many of us visualize climbing the career “ladder” – taking upward steps through a formal progression with a distinct growth path. There is just one problem with the career ladder: it doesn’t allow us to change direction. The rungs are perfectly aligned with one another in hierarchical formation, often defining success as a linear climb to the top. It assumes each person’s goals and needs are the same. While the career ladder approach may provide you with the opportunity to deepen your subject matter expertise, you risk developing these focused skills with a limited perspective of the business as a whole.
Perhaps a more effective visual of career development is a career “lattice” with more flexible pathways for career and skill growth. Rather than working your way up the ranks in one area, you expand your horizons to learn new skills and gain a more holistic view of the business. There are multiple paths to choose – up, down, lateral, diagonal – offering a more varied approach to career development. You can pursue paths that are interesting to you and good fit for future career progression.
I recently watched “The Best Career Path Isn’t Always a Straight Line,” a TED Talk by career development consultants Sarah Ellis and Helen Tupper, and they advocate for the “squiggly” career path – an approach to career development that is as unique as we are. Just as our skills, capabilities and interests are unique, our learning and career growth should be too. They stress the importance of redefining what learning looks like by staying curious and giving ourselves the permission to explore in any direction.
I believe it’s up to each of us to set and achieve our goals – in whatever path works best for us. When we take ownership of our development and invest in ourselves, we can define our own success.
The University of Minnesota Integrated Food Systems Leadership (IFSL) Program is designed for professionals interested in accelerating their careers. The IFSL program is a unique, online, graduate certificate program that fosters leadership, collaboration, and innovation across the food system. IFSL is a Post-Baccalaureate Regents Certificate program aimed at bridging the gap between traditional food system education and a professional leadership program.