Chapter 18
The Crystal Ball

You stand by the kitchen window with your coffee in your hand. It’s 7 a.m. and the rising sun envelops the surrounding buildings in an orange glow. You cast your eyes across the worktop. From left to right: bread knife, coffee grounds, ID card.

As daybreak begins to warm the room, you remember looking down to see that card in your hand on your first day at your current job. It’s true: the days are long, but the years are fast. One has just passed by. Winter is making way for spring. The old becomes new. Buds unfurl and gloves go back in the cupboard.

You had a new start a year ago. It started with trepidation. A big career move, a leap into the unknown. On reflection, things turned out fine. Your team is talented and you feel like on most days you’ve been doing a good job. Mostly. You’ve made new friends and connections. Like Indiana Jones, you chose wisely.

But what does the future hold? You think about why you took this job in the first place. It was for a multitude of reasons: a new city to explore, a new company to immerse yourself in, and a new role to master. However, your career still has plenty of years left to come—decades, in fact. In some sense, you’re only getting started. When you’re standing with your morning coffee five years from now, where will you be? What will you be doing? Most importantly, will you be happy?

These are all fundamental questions that have complex answers. After all, the future is never fixed. It’s like looking out of the window of a moving train. It manifests through a mixture of luck, opportunity, willpower, and acceptance.

This is the final chapter of the book. Like most endings, it’s actually a new beginning in disguise. With all of the tools in place, you now have the ability to imagine where they could take you. We’re going to be doing an exercise together that allows you to think about your career development, although to some extent, your thoughts will be broader than that, covering life, the universe, and everything in between.

Here’s what we’re going to look at:

• We’ll think about the future, and why it is so important for you and your staff to continually revisit where they want to go and who they want to be.

• Then you’ll go through an exercise that defines your career vision. It’ll be fun. We’ll think about the past, the present, and the future. We’ll dream a bit. Then we’ll get into the details of how you get there in your plan.

• We’ll wrap up the book by condensing the exercise into a concise set of instructions so that you can do the same with your own staff.

Grab a pen and paper for this chapter. It’s interactive. Make some time, make a coffee, and get comfortable. We are going to travel through time together.