Ditching the traditional 'working your way up' mantra when it relates to your personal or professional brand strategy might feel uncomfortable but 'aiming high' and embracing failure as a tool for success offers you a refreshing alternative that can significantly enhance your career brand.
Traditional advice often revolves around the steady, incremental ascent: work hard, gain experience, and move up the ladder one rung at a time. While this approach has experience-related value, aiming high consistently outperforms ‘working your way up’ when it comes to your career-brand strategy and positioning.
If the ambition or goal isn’t big enough, you don’t need strategy but when you set audacious and seemingly unattainable goals, you’ll naturally push beyond your comfort zone. This stretch will need innovation, creativity, long shots and a drive to succeed. In contrast, a cautious, step-by-step approach can sometimes lead to complacency with the focus being on maintaining rather than advancing.
Failure as a tool for success offers you a refreshing alternative that can significantly enhance your career brand
Failure isn't a setback
Aiming high means you're more likely to encounter failure but this isn't a setback—it's one step closer to success. It also presents an invaluable learning opportunity and by aiming high versus starting at the bottom, you’ll inevitably land further along.
By targeting high-impact goals, you’ll open doors to opportunities that might not be accessible through a more conservative approach—potentially attracting attention from key industry players, mentors, and potential employers who recognise and appreciate your ambition. This can lead to faster career advancements and unexpected opportunities, but it can also enrich your expertise and ultimately make you a more well-rounded professional.
Ditching the traditional 'working your way up' mantra when it relates to your personal or professional brand strategy might feel uncomfortable but 'aiming high' and embracing failure as a tool for success offers you a refreshing alternative that can significantly enhance your career brand.
Regardless of what you do or what you’d like to be doing, it’s your career and therefore your choice—don’t let any perceived limitations stop you from setting the biggest vision possible for yourself because when it comes to professional success the daring and determined often leave the most lasting impact.
- Explore what future versions of you could exist: Write down all the things you could be doing as a career. These don’t need to be realistic, in fact it’s better if they’re not at this stage so that you free up your thinking. If you dreamt of being an astronaut as a kid, add it to the list! Think 5, 10, 15 years ahead and write it all down in a 'long list'
- Explore how these future versions make you feel: Revisit your long list and go through each of the possibilities asking yourself: If this was my reality, and I was doing [insert future version of you], how would it make me feel?
- Identify the one thing that excites you most: If you’re going to apply strategy, it may as well be to get you somewhere that you actually want to be! Out of all your options and ideas, which of those future versions excites, energises and challenges you most—it has to feel slightly (or a lot!) out of reach. This is going to be the one thing you focus on, this is your big ambition and this is where you can start to think strategically around how you position yourself to close the gap between where you are today and that future version of you.
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