control your professional destiny. Plan for it, define it and then dream and fulfill your professional destiny. It is planning that works and not luck that defines and controls you profession.

1. © Mandeep Singh, http://in.linkedin.com/in/mandeeps123
Controlling your professional destiny
One of the biggest advantages offered in India today are the opportunities to build, manage and
mould your professional destiny. With the changes working towards an opportunity market, it is not
difficult to achieve the desired professional objectives.
How does one go about controlling it? Like any objective or a goal in life, this starts with a roadmap, a
well thought through and planned roadmap.
Step 1
Define a career objective, this is like answering the question “what would you like to achieve in your
career”. Answers to this question sound like, “contribute to the growth of my profession”, “have a lot of
knowledge”, “be an expert in my field” and so forth. This question basically tries to answer a single
point. Why are you doing what you are doing – why are you in this career?
Answer to this should, should and necessarily have to be honest and true, even if it falls under the so
called “materialistic domain”, after-all, not everyone of us has the ability to be saintly!!
Step 2
Define a long term goal, this is, what do you want to achieve, and what is it that you want to have.
This will have statements like, “by the time I am <age or experience> I would like to have what kind of
money, what kind of assets, what kind of relationships, what kind of family and everything”. Though
the example is from professional domain, this question is not limited to only your profession, but it has
to include all aspects of your life, whether professional or personal.
Having answered this question, you are almost ready to move on
Step 3
Having got answers to two most critical questions, it is time now to check and do some alignment.
This process of alignment is built into 2 sub steps, the first
It is important to understand whether the goal and the objective are matching with each other. Now to
get an understanding, we need to have a system of defining a step wise or a ladder approach
milestones. These are milestones which help you understand what you are achieving at each stage,
thus giving you an indication whether your movement is adding to the overall achievement of the goal.
Milestone here means some achievements in relation to time, this gives a benchmark to monitor
movement towards the ultimate goal. The milestone is also now to be supported by a plan on how to
support it. Similarly a milestone has to be in either (any) of the following areas to match your
expectation of a managed life
Social
Personal
Professional
Financial
Religious
(includes
philanthropy)
Milestone
Like any goal setting exercise, not all parameters need to have ambitious targets, similarly not
everything gets achieved, and it is this table which keeps getting modified, year on year to measure
up achieving the actual goal. Once some of the milestones have been set, without planning or
analysis, but more on a gut feeling or wish or desire, you’re ready to move the scientific way.
© Mandeep Singh, http://in.linkedin.com/in/mandeeps123

2. © Mandeep Singh, http://in.linkedin.com/in/mandeeps123
Till now everything is just a feeling, a wish and could even be a theory or a fairy tale, as long as you
want to achieve it, it has to be here. This is how all great things happen and all leaders move.
The second part
Since milestones are done, it is now time to do a yearly planning, in a scientific manner think through
as to how you will achieve them. Start by the small process of writing the yearly delivery. Some
resources that you will require and some things you will do in a smaller way and how. Qualify what a
smaller milestone is and write details under various smaller heads to see what you will do, how you
will do and what are some of the results you plan to do.
As a normal process it is always advisable to do this planning for three years, but remember all
planning here except for the life goal and career goal have to be necessarily dynamic. This means,
these are realigned, reworked and re-calibrated to see their usefulness to the achievement of the
career goal.
Once this is done you are ready to manage a career that is useful and delivers value to you as an
individual and to your goals.
A huge amount of dependence for the achievement of goals and milestones is on the environment
and the external factors. So how does one manage this, because this is what influences the
professional destiny of an individual. The solution lies in the 5 focus parameters that need to be
impacted in a particular way. To add value and make a step ladder milestone approach, you have to
make an impact that is interlinked on atleast 2 to 3 parameters so not only they complement each
other, but also help achieve in getting the environmental things taken care off.
This plan should also have a backup system, which means a fall back option. You need to sit down do
some war gaming and then decide what do you do and how do you do it, to achieve a milestone, and
what do you do when obstacles arrive.
Life and milestones are like driving a car, constant acceleration and steering are required to achieve a
destination, career goals in our discussion. So, one needs to constantly think, plan, war game and
have measurable pointers to know that you are moving in the right direction, take time out to fill the
fuel tank again, make sure you are serviced properly. One needs to constantly keep evaluating to
plan for challenges that come and obstacles that arise.
There is however a catch to that, and I call it the perfect trap, when is it too late to try the same
strategy and when is it time to change the strategy. This is a decision which can shape your life,
mould it, or ruin it. You will come across many professionals who will say, I missed this wonderful job
because I thought it was not right for me, similarly, you will come across many who will say I got into
this job at the right time to make my big bucks. I believe, there is planning behind this and that is what
makes you lucky.
Clearly if you push too much with a wrong decision or stop too early with the right decision, you’ve got
it wrong, and these will not help in the achievement of the goals. There are numerous more examples
on either side. What this means to us is, the decisions we take, properly planned and articulated, how
we take them and most importantly when.
It is not always important to change the job or profession, neither is it important to be a die-hard
loyalist. To ensure that your professional destiny moves the way you want it to move, you don’t
necessarily have to plan big. There are supplementary ways of contributing value, which are called
“resume selling” attributes. How do you build a resume which has small attributes, which are
strengthening to your goals, this is where you need to focus. Your milestones need to answer the
questions, what are or is the resume selling attributes you’ve added to yourself. This is applicable
even if you’re running a business or a shop.
© Mandeep Singh, http://in.linkedin.com/in/mandeeps123

3. © Mandeep Singh, http://in.linkedin.com/in/mandeeps123
The last thing being, how does one get to know whether the path of achieving the milestone needs to
be changed? The answer is simple, whenever a re-alignment process happens, it is essential to
rework the path, may not be necessary to change it. However, it is a very good idea to have atleast
one trusted person around you whom you explain everything in detail. See the person’s responses,
answer their questions, all this will give you an introspective exposure to analyse you plan better.
Remember, adaptability, with correct decision making and having a trusted partner with proper
planning on a well thought out life goal will ensure you have complete control on your professional
destiny.
So go ahead and indulge, and dream.
© Mandeep Singh, http://in.linkedin.com/in/mandeeps123