Toward Better Career
Decisions
by Jean Houston Shore, CSP, CPA,
MBA
Copyright 2007
"A simple version of the
tool can be invaluable for those of us trying to prioritize our career
development efforts."
In this exploding information age,
your opportunities for career development are almost limitless. Unfortunately,
the time you have to devote to such pursuits is not. What's a successful
professional like you to do? For the answer, look no farther than industry's
recent quality movement.
Some of the handiest tools used to
aid manufacturing companies in improving the quality of their products are a
group of matrices known as Quality Function Deployment (QFD) Matrices. When
used in projecting product fault tolerances or project management, QFD matrices
can become quite complex. But, a simple version of the tool can be invaluable
to those of us trying to prioritize our career development efforts.
HERE'S HOW IT WORKS
See the example below as you review these instructions.
Define WHAT your overall career and life goals are. For example, you may want
to move into a position of broader responsibility, spend more time with your
family, or get out into the community more often. Enter your WHATS across the
column heading on your simple matrix. (A) Next, list down the
side the many career development opportunities you have uncovered.
(B) These are your HOWS. Your list might include opportunities
like attending an industry conference, taking an Internet class, or giving
speeches to local business groups. The HOWS you have identified are listed in
the rows of your matrix in whatever order you like.
PUTTING IT IN PERSPECTIVE
Now the real value of this kind of
decision-making tool becomes apparent. Your next step is to assign a weighting
to each of your career and life goals. What is really most important to you
— making more money or spending more time with your family? Write your
weightings in the columns underneath each goal.(C)
Next enter symbols in each of the
interior cells of your matrix to indicate the strength of the correlation
between your career development opportunities (HOWS) and your career/life
goals(WHATS).(D) The official symbols are a filled circle (
 ) for a strong correlation representing a weight of nine, an empty
circle ( ) for a moderate correlation representing a
weight of three, an empty triangle ( ) for a weak correlation
representing a weighting of one, and no symbol for no correlation. (Of course,
you don't have to use the symbols you could just use the weighting numbers
instead.)
Your final step is to multiply the
weighting of each column by the numerical value of each symbol, and sum the
results to assign a score to each career development opportunity. (E)
As you review your completed prioritization matrix you can easily see
which of your career and life goals will be most influenced by each of your
development opportunities. You might also find that some of your career and
life goals are not being addressed at all. You would want to find growth
opportunities to help in those areas.
It is often difficult to properly
prioritize the many options we have. By using a quality tool we can bring our
choices back into perspective!
Example
Prioritization Matrix
(A)
Potential Activities |
Position
of Broader Responsibility Weight = 5 |
Spend More Time With Family Weight = 7 |
Develop Community Presence Weight = 3
(C) |
Total Value: Sum of Weight x
Score(E) |
| 1. Attend
Industry Conference(B) |
(9) (D) |
|
(1) |
48 |
| 2. Take a
Computer Class - Internet |
(3) |
(1) |
|
22 |
| 3. Give Speeches
to Local Groups |
(3) |
(1) |
(9) |
49 |
Strong Correlation = 9
points,
Moderate Correlation = 3 points,
Weak
Correlation = 1 point, BLANK No Correlation = 0 points
|
