MGT 514 Module 8 Career Advancement and a Development Plan Example

From Client Calls to Running the Agency: A Career Development Plan Built on Small Experiments

Student Name

Master of Business Administration, Aspen University

MGT 514: Human Relations Management

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

From Client Calls to Running the Agency: A Career Development Plan Built on Small Experiments

I have worked as an account manager at Front Range Creative, a composite advertising and design agency in Denver, Colorado, for six years. I manage relationships with eight clients, from a regional credit union to a ski equipment maker, coordinating campaigns among designers, writers and media buyers. I am good at the work, and clients ask for me by name. Yet what gives me the most satisfaction happens out of the clients' sight: fixing broken schedules, figuring out why projects run over and helping teams work better. My goal is to become director of operations, overseeing scheduling, staffing and budgets for the agency's 70 employees, within three years.

A Self-Directed Career

Hall (2004) traced the protean career over a quarter century: a career managed by the individual rather than the organization, guided by the person's own values and measured by psychological success rather than position alone. He identified two meta-competencies for such careers, identity awareness and adaptability. My goal fits this model. The agency has no defined path from account management to operations, so I must direct the move myself, and the move matters because it fits what I value: making work run well for the people who do it.

What Predicts Success

Ng et al. (2005) combined studies of career success and distinguished objective success, such as salary and promotions, from subjective success, such as career satisfaction. Human capital, including education and experience, and organizational sponsorship, such as support from senior people, predicted objective success. Proactive personality and sponsorship predicted subjective success. Sponsorship appeared in both, which suggests that the most important step in my plan may be finding a senior person who will advocate for me.

Assessing Myself

Drawing on Module 1's lesson about checking self-views against others' views, I asked my manager and two colleagues for feedback. They rated me strong on organizing work, client communication and calm under pressure. They rated me weaker on budgeting, since I have never owned a budget, and on giving direct feedback to colleagues, a gap I recognized in Module 3. My MBA courses are building financial skills.

Why Operations Fits My Values

Hall's emphasis on identity awareness asks what a career move says about who I am. Looking back at the moments I felt proudest at the agency, few involved winning a client. Most involved untangling a schedule so a designer could take a planned vacation, or finding why a project had run 40% over and changing how we scoped similar work. I value fairness to the people doing the work and systems that make good work easier. Operations is where those values matter most.

Gaps to Close

The feedback and my own review point to three gaps. I have never built or managed a budget, which the operations director does for every department. I avoid direct feedback to peers, which an operations leader must give when schedules or habits cause problems. And I know the account side of the agency well but understand little of how media buying and finance work day to day. The experiments and courses in the plan are chosen to close these gaps.

Testing the Goal Through Experiments

Ibarra (2003) studied professionals who changed careers and found that most did not plan their way into new roles. They acted their way in: crafting experiments to try new activities, shifting connections to people in the field they hoped to enter and making sense of what they learned. Plans built before experience, she argued, often reflect an old identity rather than a new one.

Proactive Steps Now

Ng and colleagues found proactive personality predicts career satisfaction. Being proactive here means acting before a role opens: volunteering for the scheduling experiment rather than waiting to be asked, proposing the overtime project myself and telling my manager about my goal now, so my interest is known when the operations director, who plans to retire in about three years, begins thinking about succession.

Building Sponsorship

I will ask the chief operating officer to be my sponsor, explaining my goal and asking what experience she would want to see. Following Module 4's lessons on managing relationships upward, I will bring her updates on each experiment and ask for feedback.

Telling My Clients

If the move succeeds, my clients will need new account managers. I will begin introducing a junior colleague to two clients this year, so the transition is gradual and clients do not feel abandoned. Keeping those relationships strong protects the agency and my reputation in it.

Protecting Against Overload

Module 6 taught me to watch for stress when adding responsibilities. I will hand two smaller accounts to a junior account manager during the scheduling experiment, so the experiments do not simply add hours.

Learning the Business Side

To close the budgeting gap, I will take the MBA finance courses in my next two terms and ask the agency's controller for an hour each month to walk through the agency's monthly financial reports. Understanding how account revenue, staff hours and overhead fit together is the core of the operations role, and it is the area where my experience is thinnest.

Reviewing the Plan

After each experiment, I will write a short reflection on what I learned and whether the goal still fits. If operations proves less satisfying than expected, I will consider other directions, such as a client services leadership role.

Conclusion

Hall's protean career explains why I must direct this move, Ng and colleagues' meta-analysis points to sponsorship and skill building, and Ibarra's research shows how to test the goal through experiments. Drawing on lessons about feedback, relationships and stress from earlier modules, the plan gives me three years and three experiments to find out whether operations is the right next step.

References

Hall, D. T. (2004). The protean career: A quarter-century journey. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 65(1), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2003.10.006

Ibarra, H. (2003). Working identity: Unconventional strategies for reinventing your career. Harvard Business School Press.

Ng, T. W. H., Eby, L. T., Sorensen, K. L., & Feldman, D. C. (2005). Predictors of objective and subjective career success: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 58(2), 367-408. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2005.00515.x