Innovating your career: the time is now

When you stop looking at your career in the traditional way and start to consider moving to a career more suited to your future self, that’s when career innovation occurs.

For now, it may just be small steps but as time goes on, you may move onto larger, more long-term steps into redefining your career, the way you work and the way you want to work. This process is normally considered disruption.

But why?

It goes without saying, innovation is occurring around us constantly, and the future world of working is going to require us to be constantly innovating the way we actually perform our roles.

This is why innovating your career is so important. It’s time we take control and begin to manage the future of our own careers.

The steps to innovation:

The first step in innovating your career is more than likely going to be the longest step.

It is at this stage where you need to sit back and take a look at where you are in your career, the skills you have developed, where these skills are going to take you and if it is where you want to go in the future.

Here is a list of things you can do:

1. Challenge yourself everyday

If you want to innovate your career, it is important to challenge and develop yourself each day. Start by setting yourself a daily challenge that aims to help you develop new networks, new skills and a greater level of awareness around your abilities.

2. Think different

When innovating, it is not always about recreating. It is about spending time reinventing what was already there.

This is why it’s important to remember that your career doesn’t always have to go the way it always has. Start thinking about things like; is there anything I can do to make my career more fulfilling? Is there any way I can change that may allow me to learn different skills, experience different working environments or understand different perspectives?

3. Ignore the career ladder

As the world of work is changing, it is doing a great job at removing the career ladder.

Starting to think differently and considering if your career change is about climbing the career ladder or moving sideways can turn into a positive career move.

4. Think broadly

You want to start thinking about how you can bring your future career into all aspects of your life. Not necessarily finding your passion and turning it into a career, but figuring out which parts of your life are that enjoyable that you feel, if duplicated in your work environment, could make your future career more fulfilling and rewarding.

5. Think about experiences

It’s vital to think about experiences, not just skills and job titles.

Thinking widely about the experiences you want to be a part of as you grow your career and what type of experiences you can have to achieve success in the future will greatly improve your attitude to work. You may also enhance your employability and work satisfaction level too.​

Starting to take little steps to ensure that you are still managing your career, taking part in a career you enjoy and developing the skills that make you relevant for the future is the bottom line here. There is no better time to start than now.

Constantly innovating your career not only means you are supporting your future, but you are starting to enjoy what you are doing so much more.