Your Foresight Brand
The initial path you take will start building your foresight brand – what you initially become known for by your colleagues and clients. Choosing and promoting a specialized and strategically useful personal brand, rather than leaving your abilities vague and unclear to others, is one key to quickly advancing your career. But while we all benefit from making a brand decision, we also benefit from regularly generating options and agile planning in our chosen specialities, as new opportunities will always be emerging.
PrOACT Decision- Making Framework
As you skim this chapter, make a list of your current preferences and skills. Ask trusted friends what things they think you prefer to do and are particularly good at doing. They may uncover options not consciously known to you at present. Making smart practice choices and periodically revisiting them is one hallmark of a great career. You should be able to defend your choices based on logic, feelings, and evidence. Smart Choices, by Hammond, Keeney, and Raiffa (2002), offers PrOACT, a good framework for making better professional and life decisions. Try it yourself when facing complex life decisions, and share it with clients as needed.
Which of the following options fit best with your current life experience? Which appeal to you as long-term aspirations? What steps might take you most dependably from where you are now to where you want to be? Choose carefully, and try to make the real benefits of each choice outweigh its equally real costs.
