In this article I invite you to apply the CSF concept on to your career goals and objectives. CSF stands for Critical Success Factors. The CSF concept was first applied by D. Ronald Daniel on Business projects in the 1960s. According to D. Ronald Daniel CSF are the essential areas of activity that must be performed well if you are to achieve the mission, objectives or goals for your business or project. In order to apply the CSF concept on to your career aspirations you must look at career advancement as a project with a career goal and/or objectives.
Building on D. Ronald Daniel’s work on CSF, J.F Rockart defined CSFs as: “The limited number of areas in which results, if they are satisfactory, will ensure successful competitive performance for the organization. Applying this definition on to your career advancement project it is easy to see that there are a few key areas where things must go right for your career to flourish. If results in these areas are not adequate, your career advancement project will not achieve its objectives. Identifying Critical Success Factors in your career advancement project helps you to create points of reference against which you can measure success of your advancement efforts. It is to these areas that you must direct your attention even in a busy work schedule. If you have a job like me you have perhaps experienced the frustration that goes with having so many tasks and assignments to do and having little or no time left for anything else. So many important matters can compete for your attention in a job that it is difficult to set aside time for your career aspirations let alone your livelihood.
So what is your career advancement goal? What is it you want to achieve in your career in future? What level do you want to reach in your career? Setting career goals helps you choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. Critical Success Factors are strongly linked to your career goal. While the goal will focus on what is to be achieved, the CSF will focus on the key areas you must critically focus and concentrate on if the goal is to be achieved. A junior professional I was coaching set as her career goal; “Becoming an expert in my field of work”. In her company job positions were described by level of expertise. Employees at different levels of expertise carried different knowledge and skill- sets commensurate with the level of expertise. Each level of expertise had a different set of requirements and in order for her to move from one level of expertise to another she needed to develop and master new competencies (knowledge, skills and behaviors). Working together in an iterative process we identified the following as the critical success factors for the employee’s career goal based on the Express Expertise conceptual framework to career enhancement:
- Increasing Job knowledge
- Increasing knowledge of organizational values, policies and procedures
- Improving functional and core competencies required of the position
- Developing a positive attitude towards success
- Demonstrating self-initiative
In our interactive process we concluded that these areas are absolutely essential to achieve the employee’s goal of becoming an expert in her field of work. To achieve your career goals you must understand you will have to be knowledgeable of your job and understand the institutional policies and operating procedures that influence your work as well as acquire the requisite functional and professional competencies for high level performance. You must acquire the ability to interpret institutional culture and take advantage of the culture to attain high levels of performance.
Next we set to evaluate the employee’s strengths and weaknesses in each of the critical success factors using the performance rating and assessment criteria. The results of the assessment were then mapped on a “Wheel of Life” adapted from the “Mind tools Club”
The Wheel of Life® helps you consider each area of your life in turn and assess what’s off balance. As such, it helps you identify areas that need more attention. Applied on the critical success factors it helps the employee to identify areas that require critical attention and effort if the career goal has to be achieved. Excelling at your work is a personal responsibility and hence one must identify individual core qualities and use them to improve one’s own performance. You will be required to overcome pitfalls to your performance, set performance challenges and stretch yourself to the next level in your career ladder. In order to do this you will be required to formulate smart performance improvement intentions and develop effective performance improvement plans. By identifying your Critical Success Factors, you can create a common point of reference to help you direct effort and measure the success of your career project.
For more information about Critical Success Factors visit our Email coaching program at http://www.expressexpertise.com/lesson/getting- started/ and make a coaching request