On this page, you can download PowerPoint versions of the charts that are found in Chapter 12 of Learning to Fly. Writing your thoughts down on paper is a great way to make them real and tangible.
The first worksheet is designed to help you articulate your experience, constraints, and passion.
The next worksheet is meant as a guide for crafting your personal story. The guide has a section for each of the two metaphors discussed in the book as I find some people respond better to one than the other.
The Story Line section allows you to list each job you have had and explain why you took it, what you learned and achieved, and why you felt it was time to move on.
This chart is designed to capture your first impressions concerning space, role, and place. There are additional charts for each of the three aspects, but you should get some ideas on paper as soon as possible.
Although the future is uncertain, each one of us has the ability and even the responsibility to chart a path for our professional future based on our assumptions and guesses about what it might look like. You might paint two or possibly three different scenarios.
The chart gives some guidance and starts off with asking you what the time frame of your scenarios is. I suggest 15–20 years, but it is up to you.
This chart is designed to help you see how the scenarios you have created will impact the spaces, you are interested in. You should be able to give an overall rating to each part of the framework, and I suggest color coding them as very positive (green), uncertain (yellow) or perhaps in deep trouble (red). You will need one chart for each scenario.
This chart is designed to help you see how the scenarios you have created will impact the roles you are interested in. You should be able to give an overall rating to each part of the framework, and I suggest color coding them as very positive (green), uncertain (yellow) or perhaps in deep trouble (red). You will need one chart for each scenario.
This chart is designed to help you see how the scenarios you have created will impact the places you are interested in. You should be able to give an overall rating to each part of the framework, and I suggest color coding them as very positive (green), uncertain (yellow) or perhaps in deep trouble (red). You will need one chart for each scenario.
Having gone through the analysis of your different ideas of space, role and place, the next chart gives you a place to write down the best combinations using creativity, ambition and pragmatism at the same time.
The challenge is creating a couple of combinations that will allow you to be part of a space that you feel deserves your time and energy at the same time as playing a role in which you will add value and be able to live and work in a place or you want to be.
The next chart is designed to help you make a choice between the different combinations by going through the different aspects of happiness raised in Chapter 7 of Learning to Fly.
This has to do with the degree to which each option will give you the autonomy, mastery, and sense of purpose that Daniel pink discusses as well as looking at more practical matters such as which will pay more and which locations will cost more or less to live.
An important question is when to leave a specific position. The first part of the chart is designed to help you reflect on where you are in the one you currently hold using Paddy Miller’s framework called Mission Critical Leadership.
The second part is more focused on specific problems you may have with your current situation and whether it is time to quit.
This chart is designed to encourage you to think about your own purpose at this and the next phase in your professional life. The questions ask if the specific combinations you are looking at will allow you to be true to that purpose and what are the trade-offs that you may have to make.
In case you feel that you need some additional training, this chart gives you a place to list the different options you may have uncovered and compare them.
What makes this difficult is you may find yourself comparing courses and programs which are very different from each other since education is undergoing a profound change.
The last chart is there to help you chart out your next three of four moves in the next phase in your professional life or even the phase after that.
I do not recommend that anyone try to change the space they work in, the role they play, and the place they work all at once unless they are independently wealthy or have been given the opportunity by someone they trust completely.
Instead, it might make sense for you to play a new role or go to a new location in the space you are currently in. Perhaps you can change another dimension in a couple of years and reach your goals over time.