Saturday, January 16, 2010

2015


I have been thinking about 5-year plans. Anyone who's every had a job in business or a bigger company knows about 5-year plans. Now, I think that 5-year plans at work are a joke. Let me clarify: it's good to have a 5-year plan for your career; it's stupid to share them at work.

Okay, here are the problems I have with the work 5-year plan:
1) You pretty much have to always lie. After all, what are your options:
(a) I want the same job (which will be interpretted as, "I have no ambition.")
(b) I want *your* job (which, of course, is threatening to some managers.)
(c) I want a completely different job (which comes down to, "then why are you here?")
(d) I want to be retired (see "c")
(e) Anything but this (once again, see "c")
(f) Seriously, I have no idea (which is interpretted as being without direction.)
So what you have to submit is a version of "I want a slightly better job than what I have now (which conveys a certain amount of ambition but not enough to be threatening to you, oh manager of mine)." Ideally, you should need a small amount of training that you can do without interferring with your current workload.

2) You may be held to it. Let's say you think you might want to get additional training, like a degree or something along those lines. Maybe you think you'd like to get your MBA. So, you put it on your 5-year plan. And maybe you take a course at night (or on-line or whatever) and you know what? It's just taking too much time from your *life*. You'd rather go out and watch bad movies with your friends. Or play Mafia Wars on Facebook. Or whatever. Just not work on a degree. But then it's two years later and you're being asked by your manager what the progress is. And you have to say, oh, nothing. Bad employee!

Or maybe you think you want to be a manager, but then after you learn a bit more, you decide that you don't. Or the other way around: you never thought you wanted to be a manager, but later you think you might. People sometimes change their minds. It's alright most of the time. But you sure as hell don't want HR or your manager to pull out some plan you had 4 years ago and hold you to it.

3) You have to share it. And you don't know who will eventually get it either. Are you working for the same person you were 5 years ago? With the same management structure? The same company goals? The same job title? I doubt it. You could have a 5-year plan that involves a lot of training because your current boss is into that, but then you get switch to someone who views it as a waste of time, and then they might hold it against you. "Don't you already know how to do your job?" You never know how someone else might interpret what you wrote for another audience.

I'm actually a fan of a person having a 5-year plan. But it should be yours and private and flexible. Do you think that my current 5-year plan matches my plan from 5 years ago? Do you think I'm where I thought I'd be, where I'd hoped I'd be (well, actually, I'm probably not too far off, but that's another story)?

If I sat down and wrote a 5-year plan for myself, a real one, it wouldn't be working my way up the workplace ladder. No way. It would involve wiring maybe a novel and travel to fun places and walks with wonderful people and great conversation and flexible time and self-exploration (oh, get your mind out of the gutter), but not hopes and dreams of becoming a principal writer and managing a small group of project-related junior level writers (which is what I'd put if I was submitting one to HR).

Submit your 5-year plan below:

2 comments:

Brunella said...

5 years from now I want to be watching The Today Show every morning. Then going to the park with my dogs. Then coming home and working on one of my many books in progress. Then answering fan mail from my wildly successful previous books. Then napping around 3PM then out to dinner with the hubby around 6PM followed by some Wii bowling and a nightcap of fine scotch then off to dreamland.

Vaguery said...

This "plan" crap is something we joke about, but also something I (and colleagues) have made dramatic sums of money taking advantage of. That whole Agile thing; weird-ass seat-of-the-pants stuff, you know.

But I do have longer-range plans; in the middle of a seven-year "plan"/project right now. But the expected outcomes are really more like "wishes" in practice, not even goals you could put your finger on. "Make the thing that satisfies problem X happen, whatever it turns out to be."

On the shorter range, I've spent about a year trying to work by the season. Three-month block, focused on one "plan", with week-long iterations of supposed progress towards that season's project. A book is a season. A company. A trip. Those are seasons. Broken up the very same way you broke up your November typing; little, handleable pieces.

Works surprisingly well. :)