What’s Your Career Mission?

Even if you work for a large company, you are still a company of one. You are you own CEO, CMO, CFO and CIO, on ocassion, you’ll be your own intern but that’s a different story. Every great company has a goal, a mission, or a vision, to be successful, you should have one too.

During this rough economic time you should be doing some soul searching, the market has changed and you need to evaluate how you’ll position yourself –even if you’re still employed. Scrutiny abound, you should start to think about what your long term goal is, beyond filling in your weekly status report.

Do you have a career mission? What exactly is it that you want to do when you’re at the peak of your career?

I’ll start. My career mission is to help companies successfully use the web to reach customers, and this blog embodies that. While I’m focused on social technologies now, the web will evolve to something else and I’ll be there, hopefully leading. In retrospect, I should think broader to ‘digital’, but at least the next decade will have a strong focus on the internet.

We all get invited to events, websites, and activities of limitless ends, there are more events every single night in silicon valley then there is time to attend, as a result, we need to start getting focused on what our true goal is to achieve our needs..

Now your turn. Over the coming weeks, really think about what your long term mission is, everything you do to better yourself (training, reading, blogging, events) should align with your overall mission. We’re rallying our clients to be focused during this rough time, and I’m encouraging you –the company of one– to do the same.

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34 Replies to “What’s Your Career Mission?”

  1. I like that you encourage us to take a moment to reflect on our career mission, but why not expand the scope of reflection to what is our life mission. Why not elevate this to a more personal level? After all Social Media is about connecting with people on a human level.

    I feel sometimes we overly focus on our careers. We tend to excessively associate our identity with our line of work. But what are we really passionate about? How can we make a living doing what we love? What life dreams do we aspire for? Mine is to sail around the world. How can we find balance in our life, between developing our career, pursuing our dreams, and satisfying our personal responsibilities to family and friends? For me this is an ongoing struggle, but everyday I strive for this goal. What is your live mission – this is what we should pause to discover.

    I would like to close with an excerpt that is particularly meaningful in our current economic climate:
    ….What does a man need – really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in – and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all – in the material sense. And we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade.
    The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it the tomb is sealed.

    Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?

    In Passing ~ Sterling Hayden (1916 – 1986)

    Happy New Year. I hope we all find our passion.

  2. My career mission is to make user interfaces as pleasurable to use as possible. Of course what constitutes “user interface”, “pleasurable”, and “as possible” changes per day, per project, per budget, per client…

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