By Todd Royer
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A Point of View
I once heard a historian say his entire career was aboutdeveloping a view. He studied international history and wasfamiliar with global politics and economics. His vision affordedhim not only a view, but also a point of view -- he hadopinions. Career development, like history, is also a matter ofdeveloping vision. With vision you gain a point of view and allthe opinions that come along with perception.
One way of looking at this is to realize that by the time youreach the end of your career, you'll have a vision of how it allhappened. You'll be able to look back and describe every part:You'll have your own heroic vision and you'll also have opinionsabout what you see. But career development is a matter oflooking forward and only partly a matter of seeing the bigpicture. Career development also requires micro vision: that is,seeing the course of a day and the pattern of a week.Professional growth requires you to develop and hold both amicro vision and a heroic vision together in your mind.
It's easier to see that big picture if you have hopes. Forexample, I hope to become ___ (you fill in the blank). But therealities of this very competitive world make it difficult toselect and pursue your hopes. You'll have to deal with manysmall choices and intervening crises. To succeed at the bigpicture you must have a grasp on more immediate terrain. Thequestion becomes: how does my micro-vision and the big picturefit together? And the answer is: you must learn to understandscope.
By dictionary definition, scope means: 'the area that the mindcan cover; range of view; extent of perception or intellectualgrasp; as, beyond the scope of a child's understanding.' But inmore practical terms, scope is a tool. Boat builders use a listof all the construction phases they must complete to build theirboat; they call this list the scope. Carpenters study this list,affording themselves a vision of how their project willprogress. Sometimes it's a single page list, which usually meansthey're building a small boat; yet for a large boat, the scopelist can be many pages long.
Similarly, career development requires you to have a mentalgrasp of your days and weeks. In your mind you can scope (orlist) the various parts of your day and the diverse parts ofyour weeks. So scope is one of the tools of vision and haseverything to do with how the big picture and micro vision fittogether. Scope gives you a view of your career development andallows you to hold a point of view about the problems youencounter along the way.
© by Todd Royer. All Rights Reserved.
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Todd Royer has been writing for the internet for 2 years. He hashelped hundreds of people with their professional growth. If youwould like a free subscription to Career Development Weekly,click below:http://visitor.constantcontact.com/optin.jsp?m=1101053082339
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A list of Career Development articles by Todd Royer areavailable for reprint at: http://www.toddroyerwriting.com
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