Chances are you have accumulated some experience behind you in your professional career and some young executive, who is at a transition point, or crossroads sort of, happens to come to you to seek your advice. He has couple of years of experience behind him in both large and emerging companies.
Transfer Skills
He has painstakingly honed his set of relevant vocational skills and now wants to transfer them to an altogether new industry. The person is looking for advice with regards to finding a fit into that industry and the ways and means that need to be adopted to enable the person to reach the desired eventual goal.
The Best Laid Plans
It is quite natural to lay down a logical path that would help one to reach their destination. You can’t help getting impressed by the thoughtfulness of people who go all out and try to meticulously plan the next decade of their careers. At the same time you are reminded of the profound lines by Robert Burns, the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.
Get Comfortable With Discomfort
Planning future life is indeed pointless as wondering what the future holds is indeed a difficult question to answer at any age. Instead of trying to figure things out one need to get comfortable with the discomfort that uncertainty brings in its wake. In light of the above you would be going ahead and offering some contrary advice.
Serendipity
Smart and ambitious folks tend to be extra watchful; they try and anticipate every possible contingency especially 
with regards to career planning. In your personal experience you must have observed many times, that you’re very best opportunities come knocking serendipitous. Life has a way of making your road-maps worthless, some say it is up to the extent of ninety percent. You must have observed this many a times with your friends and your colleagues as well.
Take Stock
When you look around you would find all the people who experience a high degree of job satisfaction never put things or their current roles for that matter on a long term career road-map. When you take stock of your career every now and then or at the most every few years, you need to be asking yourself a few questions. Do you love doing what you are currently engaged in? Also, do you admire the people you are working with at the moment? Do you see yourself learning and growing your skills? Are you able to discern an internal career progression path for yourself?
Final Words
In the event that you have satisfactorily answered all of the above may you continue to grow in the present role? If half of your answers are correct the situation warrants the triggering of a soft evaluation of the options in front of you. In this case you may start looking around, you would be amazed to find roles that you never really planned for or if that was even possible especially with sweeping changes in the workplace that technology brings in its wake.
