Creating Your Career Advancement Blueprint

Anita Brick: I'm Anita Brick, and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth to help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted to be speaking with Karim Ismail, who is the founder and CEO of Avidium Inc., a Toronto-based international consultancy that helps organizations and people achieve their toughest goals. He's the author of the best-selling Keep Any Promise: A Blueprint for Designing Your Future.

He actually used a lot of the thinking and research behind that to fuel his own—and I know, Karim, you're going to talk to us a little bit about this—his own dramatic personal transformation, which included climbing Mount Kilimanjaro less than two years after not being able to walk to the end of his driveway. Wow. Karim has more than 20 years of executive-level experience in hospital management and the development of complex healthcare and cultural facilities worth more than $750 million.

He's a serial entrepreneur and has an MBA from the University of Toronto. Karim, thank you so much for making the time. I know that life is very busy, so thank you for your willingness to share some of your wisdom with us today.

Karim Ismail: I'm delighted to be on the call, Anita.

Anita Brick: At a basic level, we had a lot of questions that came in—how do you define a career advancement blueprint?

Karim Ismail: That's a great question. I'd suggest we break it up into two. First, let's look at the blueprint part. And then let's look at career advancement.

Anita Brick: OK. Fair enough.

Karim Ismail: The best way I can describe that, and it comes from my background as well, is that if you or I were tasked with constructing a new building, we would define its purpose. We would define the impact we wanted the building to have, develop a set of plans or blueprint; we would implement those and then we would make refinements and monitor that along the way.

So in the same way that we would want to develop a magnificent building, people want to have a terrific, happy life. And so a blueprint or plan—one that is written, one that is clear, one that is thought through—becomes essential to doing that. Yet, Anita, whilst most people would automatically develop a set of plans before creating a blueprint or a script before shooting a movie, they don't have a blueprint for their life.

Anita Brick: True. I mean, some people even have a blueprint for their vacation, right? You know, it's kind of— it's funny. So how does the blueprint then dovetail with career advancement?

Karim Ismail: Very easily. The first thing I would look at, however, is that people should not really develop a career advancement blueprint, but a life blueprint within which career advancement or business growth is certainly an important part. The reason is that paying attention to important things like relationships, health, spirituality, contributions they want to make to the world, etc., and focus exclusively on the career side.

They are likely going to end up at some point or the other being either quite unhappy or ending up paying a huge price, as I did. So I think—and that's why I wrote the book that I did. So I think it's important that people develop a life blueprint within which the career portion can certainly and should certainly be an important part.

Anita Brick: OK. So from your personal experience and the book, Keep Any Promise, and also in your consulting, what are the most important things to consider before creating the bigger blueprint and then the career portion of it as well?

Karim Ismail: I think it's important to know yourself well. There's always a long way to do this, and you can take, you know, 10 or 15 years to figure this out. Or, there's the shortcut. Shortcut—and a very effective one—really there are two books I have found, or two resources, one called Unique Ability by Dan Sullivan, and the other is StrengthsFinder 2.0 by the folks from Gallup with Tom Rath in particular.

I think going through those becomes a very good way to identify one's key strengths, and knowing oneself much better. I think within the career advancement portion, it's important to think about some qualities, and this is what I have found or I have learned to be useful. The first is to really be a continuous learner all your life. The second that I found work for me, and I'll give you some quick examples, is to keep in mind that skills that one develops in one area are very transferable.

In the early ’90s, when I was asked to manage huge construction projects at a major teaching hospital, I was neither an architect nor an engineer. I had a bit of a healthcare background, but that was it. That was actually my greatest blessing and the organization's greatest blessing, because I could ask the quote unquote stupid questions because I had a bird's-eye view as opposed to being immersed in the situation.

I have had many other examples of being able to be innovative because I have been able to bring in an outside of very different perspectives. I think that's really key in terms of careers. A couple more things is to always work from, always appear from integrity, because to me, reputation is everything. And I think lastly, what served me well, and I think what would serve others well, is to be bold in your thinking. Whether it's for your organization or if you're growing a business, doesn't matter, but think bold and big.

Anita Brick: Those are really great things. In fact, one of the students had asked this question. He said, I feel I'm committed to a career in startups but don't have reasons that are compelling. It sounds like maybe the bold big piece is missing for him. This is actually an Executive MBA student. How do I take a goal and make it compelling and sustainable?

Karim Ismail: I think the situation needs to be looked at the other way around. I think rather than starting with a goal, it's important to start with the harder question of defining one's life purpose. From there can and should flow the goal. And so without that life purpose, you know, you're just going to be dressing up the goal, but it will never have meaning.

I would say that the student needs to step back and take some time to think about what his or her life purpose is, and then that goal will probably take on its own clear meaning.

Anita Brick: OK, so there was another person, an evening student, who asked about that because I'd like us to talk more about purpose because I think it's very confusing for a lot of people. For a long time it was very confusing for me. So I'd like if we could talk a little bit more.

But let me add on the second question. This evening student said, I learned from your book that you believe that purpose can drive people to greater success. I know my goal of strategy consulting, but not sure what my purpose is and how purpose and consulting connect. So I guess the first question that I have out of what you said before is how do you know what your purpose is? It seems a little ephemeral.

Karim Ismail: That's a very good question. And it's one I struggled with for quite a while and to do a lot of research, thinking, etc., to come up with a simple process …

Anita Brick: OK.

Karim Ismail: … which is outlined in my book, but I'll trace it out very simply. What I ask people to do in the book and in workshops I hold is to first get to know themselves and their values. People are able to do that quickly enough. I then ask them to sit back and write the kind of obituary they would like written about them at whatever age they think they're going to pass on.

And this is a bit of a sobering exercise, you know, and they have half an hour to do it. So it's not as though they take forever. In that time you can come up with the essence. You can always polish it up and make it Pulitzer Prize–winning later. But people come up with the essence, and it's remarkable. I’ve had people from 27 to 75, and they've all been able to do it. So hundreds of people have done this. Once they do that, I ask them to summarize that, and then summarize it further. And that in essence becomes, you know, a clear purpose for their lives.

So it's not very difficult to do. It's something that people shy away from. It's something that we're not taught how to do in schools, etc.. But I think it's actually not very difficult to do at all.

Anita Brick: I remember a long time ago I was in a management program and that was the exercise. We did the obituary exercise. There were, I think, 15 of us, and about five people just could not do that exercise because it was too upsetting. You know, they had lost a family member recently. They couldn't go there. Is there an alternative to the obituary exercise? Is there an alternative that maybe is not about the end of your life, but maybe about some time in the future?

Karim Ismail: It's a great question. The alternative could be to look at the question in a different way and say, if you or I had no obstacles and we could achieve what we wanted to in terms of a career or other parts of our life in the next 20 years, what would that be? And that's a sufficient time frame for many people to be able to think far enough ahead and to think big enough.

So that’s a good substitute for somebody who might not be up to writing that obituary. But I think writing that obituary is far more powerful. And maybe when the time is right, that person can come back and, you know, then do the obituary. Because I think that helps summarize things in a much better way than just looking at 20-year goals.

In fact, what I ask people to do is once they come up with that obituary so that it doesn't end up becoming very vague and ambiguous and so on, we go through an exercise where people will develop two or three or four 20-year goals, which they then can review and update every, you know, 20 years. And these goals tie into that obituary to that life purpose.

Anita Brick: It's good. I was very surprised. In mine I was actually living in Australia, which I've never been to, yet there was a lot of detail in it because a half hour is a long time to write. We did about a half hour too. It's one of those things that can be incredibly powerful.

Karim Ismail: So I’ve found it to be extremely powerful, and I am constantly surprised and pleasantly astonished when I read these obituaries of— people share them, and often they are emotional at the imagination and that breadth of vision that people will bring to their lives or to the possibilities. Then, of course, the question becomes, how do you actually go about achieving that? That vision is in all of us, right?

Anita Brick: It's true. You're right. So there was a question from a weekend student who said, from my research about your approach, it looks great, but it also looks time-consuming. How can I create a blueprint process that I can actually do? A weekend student is working full time, usually flying in or driving a long distance to get here so the time is tight. How can someone do this with a limited amount of time?

Karim Ismail: What I've tried to do is actually create a process that takes as little time as possible, but it will take some time, and I did it up and it takes about just over an hour a week. Most of us can, you know, grab a few minutes here, a few minutes there and certainly come up with an hour a week: you know, when they're traveling, sitting at an airport, whatever they're doing, it really becomes a question of making it a habit to think about, you know, the week coming up, the month coming up, the quarter coming up, etc., as you would do in, you know, constructing a building or, you know, developing a business—that kind of discipline that, you know, I've been able to bring from other years of my life into life planning.

Anita Brick: It's sort of like doing a business plan but for you. So you're going to go in and look at the foundations—in the company, the core competencies; in you, your strengths, the qualities that are important to your talents, your values, your motivators. All of that becomes the foundation that you then build a plan. What kinds of things do you do in that hour?

Karim Ismail: Each week I look at what kind of results or outcomes I want to achieve in that week, and I still keep very busy, but I keep very busy in a controlled sense. And what I mean by that is that I make sure that there is time in my life for staying fit and healthy, for relationships, for all those other things.

And then I look at the time I have available—and to which I have a number of businesses I'm running volunteer activities, etc.—and I try and come up with two or three key outcomes that I want to achieve each day that tie in to the goals I have for the month and so make sense for the month, are then drawn from goals for the quarter and goals for the year and three years and, you know, 20 years. And of course ties into life purpose.

It doesn't mean I don't get off track once in a while … but there is a built-in mechanism to self-correct when I go back and look at the end of the week and see, you know, whether I was able to achieve those results and if not. And so I focus on results as opposed to activity.

And I say that because I used to be probably, you know, one of the world's top Mr. To-Do List. Every software that came out on how to manage tasks and so on. I was a completely early adopter, and one day my former business partner said, look, how long does it take you to keep on top of all of this a week? I said, you know, three to four hours. He said, OK. And do you find that you complete all this stuff? And I go, never. And he goes, so how do you feel about that? I said, not so good.

So he said, after spending all this time, you still don't feel good about it? I know you're accomplishing a lot. Is there a better way? And I said, I don't know. He said, you should go cold turkey and get rid of these to-do lists. Oh, that was, you know, an epiphany. And it took me a month. It's like, you know, Linus without his blanket. But I have become probably two or three times more productive by really stopping, you know, focusing on tasks and to-dos and really focusing on the results I want to achieve, and the activities are really targeted to those outcomes or results.

Anita Brick: Makes perfect sense. It's actually a little comforting to know that you still have challenges and that you're still a work in progress like the rest of us.

Karim Ismail: Is this little thing called life and distractions, and they're everywhere you look. But it's easy when there is a systematic way to go about planning your days, weeks, months, and so on to stay on track.

Anita Brick: Well, and it's good. There were a number of questions, because I think this is probably the biggest area of interest in this whole topic is around the challenges and how do you transform them. An Executive MBA student asked, she said, I have big goals and know where I want to go in the long run. What advice would you give to someone who can see the vision and the next steps and gets stuck in the middle part? In other words, how do I keep going when the excitement of the start starts to wane?

Karim Ismail: That's an excellent question. To me, it boils down to seeing life as a continuum between the short term, which is sort of the next steps; the medium term, which is, you know, your months and quarters and years; and then, you know, the longer term, which is 20 years and a lifetime. The way I keep it exciting is I set tough goals.

I also set goals that are more bucket-list-type things that are fun to do, that I don't have to do them, or challenges that really get my juices going. So just as an example, I did Kilimanjaro, as you know, as you mentioned, but I then went on to do Machu Picchu, Cotopaxi, Annapurna in Nepal, and I am no super athlete, mountain hiker, or anything.

I started this really at age 45. This year. I thought I would change it up a bit and I'm— in six or seven weeks, the third week in July, I'm taking part in a 100-kilometer hiking challenge that's billed as the world's toughest team hiking challenge, raising money for Oxfam. I have never done anything like that, and I can tell you when I went for a 12.5-kilometer hike, let alone a 100-kilometer hike … I was on this trail. I was tired after the 12.5 kilometer, so I have no idea how I'm going to get there.

But by setting a challenge like that, something that seems perhaps possible, but also literally impossible and very challenging, it keeps life interesting. So the next few weeks will be certainly a lot of training. But that's also balance, because forcing myself to do that kind of training means that I'm not sitting at my desk or focusing on my business, so it puts more balance into my life.

Anita Brick: That sounds great. And please report back and let us know how the 100-kilometer event goes. But it sounds like even if you have the long-term vision and you see what's right up ahead, you need a little bit of excitement now and again. Like maybe some goals that are, as you said, either related to your longer-term goal or that create some diversity and some balance to keep you motivated. That's great advice.

Another question, this time from a weekend student. He said, this is not my quote unquote normal pattern, but lately I've been without goals that are important to me. I've been so busy with my company's goals that I have allowed myself to get lost in the process. My motivation is weak, but I want to move ahead and recapture my balance. Help! Where do I start?

Karim Ismail: Great question, and I think it's a situation I'm very familiar with, having been there myself more than once. I think it's important that the student get— firstly, connect to their purpose. Is that purpose clear? Is it exciting? Is it a huge purpose? That is, all of those will lead to big, exciting goals. But even when that is in place, balance is key.

And I think if you allow yourself to spend all your time on company goals, and people end up doing that, it sucks the energy out of you. There's actually an article in the May issue of Harvard Business Review, page 127, the Managing Yourself section on extreme productivity, I think, is an article that the students might want to read. You know, talks about how to end up being productive, but also looking at balance. When somebody focuses too much in one area, and, you know, sleep suffers, relationship suffers, etc., then we are less productive at work.

We put in a lot of time, there is time and then there's results. Right. And I think the ability to think innovatively, smartly, etc. comes from, you know, making sure that there is good balance. There's never a perfect balance. I appreciate and understand that, and I don't have it either, but at least there is some modicum of balance as opposed to getting very unbalanced, like, you know, the student seems to be.

Anita Brick: Yeah. And there was another and maybe this is a trend with weekend students because I know they have so much going on. But another weekend student said, what's the best way to move ahead on my long-term goals and dreams when my current time commitments are so extreme? I think it's sort of a variation of that last question.

Karim Ismail: Yeah, I think there's two ways to look at it. If the current time constraint is so extreme, and one, because, you know, the student is in a program and just needs to get through that, then I think you just, you know, sort of duck down and get through that in the short term, you find people who are busy constantly all their lives and what should be a temporary situation becomes a permanent situation.

I think that's what one should avoid. But perhaps they are so busy with work, commute, etc. that they don't have time to think, plan and think about the long term. Fair enough. Get through the short term, then take some serious time to think about the long term and look to establish that balance so that this very busy situation doesn't become a way of life.

Anita Brick: It's a really good point, because I think it very easily could ... A former colleague who used to get into the office around 9:00. Eventually he burned out and had to leave and ended up taking three years off because he was really out of balance. But he was trying to do more and more. As you said, there's activity and there are results.

The results weren't there, but he was spending a ton of time, and it really took complete disengagement for him. Not that I'm recommending that, but disengagement for him to actually create a new equilibrium.

Karim Ismail: Yeah, I learned that equilibrium when at a time when I was burning out in a job, when I was very young, tons of responsibility thrust onto me, tons of issues, and I had somebody I reported to who ran this huge hospital, very complex. What was remarkable was that my boss would come in at 8:30. He would leave by six, 6:30.

He would never take work home. And it took me a while to figure out, and yet I was staying there longer, etc. yet he got through all of it. The hospital ran very well, etc. How he approached it really is a great example of somebody who had balance. One of the things he did was he was a runner, so he made absolutely sure that come what may, he ran, you know, in the morning or at the end of the day, usually in the morning.

He made it a point to go home for dinner with family. He had 12 people like me reporting in to him, and he managed to run all of that very well. So it was a very valuable exercise. And here I was running, you know, a 10th of what he did and was burning out. So I learned from, you know, from that exercise.

Anita Brick: That's really a huge thing. And it's so easy to get caught up in the activity trap, though, it really is. Now an evening student is struggling with getting those results. He said, I seem to be really good at the planning process. Great project plans down to the details, but I'm struggling to find time to implement consistently, and I'm falling behind in my goals.

Karim Ismail: Great question, and I see it happening often, and I would challenge the student. The first question I would ask is, are there too many projects and plans? The second question I would ask is to go behind the scenes and say, is there a fear of commitment? Because sometimes we can all spend a lot of time planning, and then we plan something else and we plan something else, but we don't implement because there could be some kind of a fear of making a commitment.

When you go to implement, is there a lack of focus? And my sense would be— and that, again, happens. And it happens with people who are very bright, often who are capable of doing many things. So they take on or they start many things because it seems easy to them. But focus is important. So my suggestion would be to take one of the excellent plans that the person has developed and see it through—focus as exclusively as you can on making it happen. Then plan the next one and go from there.

And if you run into difficulty with the first plan, get some outside advice. I found personal coaches to be very, very helpful to me whenever I've gotten stuck and have been able to just bring in a fresh perspective. To take an example from my life when I had to get over, you know, business issues, health issues, relationship issues, etc., this was around 2002, 2003. I knew that I couldn't tackle all of those at once, and I chose to focus on health, and I focused on that, you know, as much as I could.

And it culminated in, you know, the climb and Kilimanjaro. And it was sort of a two-year saga going through all of that. By doing that, I was able to achieve so much more. And then once I did that, all of the other things started falling into place. So I would say, don't start too many projects, focus on one or two and, you know, see those through and then develop the confidence to then take on other things.

Anita Brick: I think that's very wise, especially with the people who are listening, because you're right, you can do so many different things. Some people are very good at the start and not as good in the follow-through. One of the things that we often recommend is to find someone who doesn't like to do those detailed project plans, but who's great at execution and the two of you together can, or the team, you know, whatever the team looks like, can actually get things done. You do— like you said at the beginning, just discovering your strengths, knowing what those are, and really building on those. So sometimes you need a partner who does what they love to do, but that you don't.

Karim Ismail: Absolutely. And I found that to be critical in any of the business startups I've had, and I actually now design them to make sure that there is that complementarity between skills, interests, so on, so that not everybody is good at just the startup phase because then nothing is getting really accomplished and everybody is just creating new ideas, right? You’ve got to have people who also can take those ideas and execute, or people who are good at starting them.

Anita Brick: Absolutely. Do you have time for a few more questions?

Karim Ismail: Sure. Absolutely.

Anita Brick: OK, great. So an alum said I've worked for more than a decade post MBA. I had a very clear blueprint for my future. I've achieved that goal, and now I'm not sure how to create the next blueprint. What would you suggest as some steps toward a restart?

Karim Ismail: OK, interesting question. I'd like to challenge the person who posed the question. I think one goal does not a clear blueprint make. My sense is that this is a great opportunity. It's terrific that the person has accomplished a big goal in their life. I'm assuming it has to do with career, but this is perhaps, you know, the best time to sit back and take on an approach like in my book or in you know, you may find it somewhere else too, where you actually do define a blueprint for your life.

You do define that purpose for your life, etc., and from there will come two or three 20-year goals, a whole bunch of three-year goals. And I think it's a time to rejuvenate and a good position to do it when you've achieved, you know, one important goal like this person has obviously. So that's what I would suggest they do.

And what might help them as well is on my website KarimIsmail.com. There is a life quiz. Doesn't cost anything, and this may help them get a sense, very quick sense, takes about 10 minutes to do, of really how they are faring on 50 different questions that are there that may help guide them, as well as to where they perhaps need to pay more attention in their lives.

Anita Brick: Great. I'd like to ask you a question about you right now, and actually, I can't take credit for it. It came from an Executive MBA student. He said, when you think of things that you wish you would have known earlier in your career that could have added to your success and well-being, what would those be?

Karim Ismail: It's a great question. It's a brilliant one. I think the most important thing would have been to have had better balance. I went through at least two major, how shall I say, blowups. Simply because I became a workaholic. I am generally good at what I do, which means I get more responsibility, which means I put in more time, which means I get more responsibility, etc. etc. I paid dearly for that in terms of health, relationships, etc., in fact, to the point where I was so unhappy, even though most people saw me as being successful, that I wanted to end my life.

It really took me stepping back to look at why I was unhappy, even though I was achieving so much on so many fronts. And it was really that lack of balance. I would say first, developing and maintaining good balance is key. The second, I think that's important too, I wish I had known earlier, is really getting a firm handle on what my unique abilities were so that I could focus my time on those things, and made absolutely sure that I found a way to delegate or share other tasks that other people could do that I may have been good at; I may have been excellent at, but that I was not unique at. And I use the word unique ability because it is in the title of this book by Dan Sullivan, and it is really an excellent way. I looked at it when I was in my mid-40s. I wish I had looked at it when I was in my mid-30s or earlier.

So I think that's, you know, key. And the third is when I left corporate life, I was extremely bold in corporate life and also with my volunteer work. I think when it came to starting or, you know, getting into business, I wish I had been bolder and started with a bigger vision, a bigger plan, a bigger business that would have allowed for much more growth. That was really what if I had known earlier would have been much better for me.

Anita Brick: Right. Now, if we bring it up to the present. So what are three things that a person could do today to begin or take the next steps on his or her blueprint?

Karim Ismail: What they might want to do is to spend a bit of time sitting back and planning. And three resources I mentioned, but I'll just repeat them. Unique Ability by Dan Sullivan, StrengthsFinder 2.0, and then the Keep Any Promise book it would take about 20 to 24 hours of time to get through that work. Better that than people taking 20 years to figure these things out.

Anita Brick: Absolutely.

Karim Ismail: So to me, that's, you know, key, and in essence end up with a clear, written blueprint for your life. I think the second thing I would suggest is that they review that with a coach, with a mentor, but with somebody else, not just keep it internalized, because that can often bring out some inconsistencies, challenges, people, etc. Third would be to really make a commitment today to planning and reviewing for your life, just as one would in a career or in a business.

We do it automatically there. Then why not do it for our lives as well? And it doesn't take much time. As I said, about an hour a week and if I could add a fourth item, which is to model success, there is success all around us. We don't have to reinvent the formula every time, we just need to study it carefully. I think it's important, you know, that people learn to do that easily.

Anita Brick: Agree. Agree. Any final words of wisdom you've given us? Lots of really good thoughts and advice and insights. Any closing words?

Karim Ismail: I think it's important for people to assess with some objectivity where they are today in their lives, whether they're happy with where they are in terms of career, relationships, health, etc.. I designed the life quiz that I mentioned at my website to help people do that. And then if they really want financial abundance, great health, you know, terrific relationships, make an impact on the world, etc., inculcating and developing the habit of planning short term, medium, longer term, just as one would with an enterprise, or in a business or in a career.

It's critical. To not do that is like saying, I want to create a movie, but I don't have a script. It might turn out OK, but chances are it may not. I would strongly suggest to people that they assess where they are at today with some level of objectivity and honesty, and then if they're very happy with where they are, maybe they don't need to do anything else.

And if they're not, then there are ways and easy ways for them to really plan out and implement a plan of action to get to where they want to be and to achieve that balance, which to me is critical in terms of getting to happiness.

Anita Brick: Great wisdom. It sounds like you've created a life for yourself that feels very complete and balanced, and there's a lot of contribution that you make to yourself, of course, but to many others. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that with us today. And thank you for making the time.

Karim Ismail: My pleasure. Thank you.

Anita Brick: Thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.