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What to expect and the work to be done

June 16, 2025

Peter Drucker famously said;

“Cultivate a deep understanding of yourself - not only what your strengths and weaknesses are but also how you learn, how you work with others, what your values are, and where you can make the greatest contribution. Because only when you operate from strengths can you achieve true excellence.”

The goal of the structured framework you’ll work through in this free email course is to help you cultivate a deep understanding of yourself in the work context so you can focus on what matters to you and what you do well to achieve excellence and the satisfaction that comes along with it.

This framework follows a simple yet comprehensive structure that ensures you consider all the elements that combine to make you uniquely effective in the workplace. It acts on you in two ways:

It forces you to consider your strengths and derailers and to consider actions to accentuate your positives, cultivate new capabilities, and mitigate your flaws.

It is both a framework for assessment and the basis for planning.

This exercise will enable you to define and gain satisfaction in your career or vocation. It is principally a means for assessing where you are now in terms of the development of your skills, temperament, experience, and communication; identifying gaps; and helping you consider where you want to go and what you’ll need to get there.

This knowledge will help you plan how to bridge the gaps you discover…and the goal is to discover the gaps.

This framework doesn’t necessarily replace any other tools you might use, such as Gallup’s Strength Finder, but is specifically intended as a structured reflection and planning tool that can be used repeatedly throughout your career.

The principle intent is to give you clarity on what you care about, where you are right now and where you want to go in the future. This will help you plan with confidence and develop the commitment to take the steps necessary to get there. It’s about assessing where the rubber meets the road for you, now, and is designed to be reused frequently over time to assess progress and to re-prioritize as you go.

For ease of retention, We've framed the elements of the framework up as 5 C’s. They are; Competence, Character, Charm, Chance, and Care.

The order is important as each reflects a central aspect of career planning, working from the inside out from Competence to Chance and united and informed by the things you “Care” about. None is necessarily more important than the other. When they are all aligned they are a flywheel.

By improving your understanding and abilities in one domain you improve all the others. As they improve, they in turn support and develop others. Think about it. How can you really know what skills (competences) to develop if you don’t know what you ‘care’ about? What is the point of persuasive communication (Charm) in pursuit of the wrong goals?

These elements act as a solid means to understand all aspects of how you move your career forward by working on the things you can change and control and understanding the things that you can’t, shouldn't, or won’t.

View this as a practical self-assessment process, so you need to be honest with yourself about where you are, what you want, and what you are likely and able to accomplish.

This is not a blue-sky exercise. It is about what is. Rather than what should have, could have, or would have been. As practical as this is, however, don’t lose sight of the overall goal, which is to work out how to develop a satisfying career that meets and develops your skills, temperament, and aspirations as they evolve over time. You are aiming to identify and accomplish your ideal career outcome at any given point.

The intent of being very clear and practical isn’t to lower your aspirations but to align them pointedly in the direction of what will provide you with the most satisfaction and accomplishment. It’s about getting focused and focusing on a time horizon that is manageable.

“Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values. ”

Peter Drucker, again.

Successful careers are created by preparing for the opportunities that can’t be planned for but will inevitably arise as you pursue purposeful excellence in your skills, and conduct.

  1. Competence is …. Potential and POV (current and increasing)

  2. Character is… Potential mediated and advanced by your approach

  3. Charm is… Communicating persuasively according to the environment

  4. Chance is… Seeing, sharing, and seizing opportunities

  5. Care is … In service of something that naturally matters to you.

Really digging into these elements is work. So make sure to set aside enough time to really do it justice. When you dry up in one, then move to the other. You’ll soon find that an analysis of your ability to communicate will tell you something you need to know about your skills and vice versa.

So, while we recommend you step through these in turn, we also suggest you go back and add and take away in the light of the subsequent answers you give. Then, the document you finally create will have a cohesion that helps you and resolves unconscious energy-sapping tensions that hold you back.

But one warning…while we promise you’ll have more clarity, you will also have to be comfortable with complexity.

You’re not a simple person, and the careerscape is not a simple place. There will be some ambiguity in your answers.