career-strategy-for-leaders

Read [runtime](../../content/RUNTIME.md) and [advisory rules](../../content/policies/advisory.md) before applying this skill. Other Foreman layers and the catalog are in `../../content/`, relative to this SKILL.md. # Career Strategy for Leaders CROSSROADS. Most leaders arrive at one sometime between their tenth and twentieth year of management. The recognition is uncomfortable: their career happened to them. Promotions arrived because they were competent, not because they were strategic. Opportunities materialized through proximity, not design. Titles accumulated like sediment -- layers of accidental geology rather than intentional architecture. The leader who never planned a career trajectory is not unusual; they are the statistical norm. Brian Fetherstonhaugh's research for HBR suggests that the majority of professionals dramatically underestimate how long their careers will last, which means they under-invest in the skills, relationships, and experiences that sustain performance across decades. A career without strategy is not a career. It is an extended reaction to whatever happens next. The antidote is not a five-year plan pinned to the wall. It is a set of recurring practices -- honest self-assessment, deliberate habit management, resistance to the seductions of past success -- that transform career drift into career design. --- ## The Framework Career strategy for leaders operates across four interlocking dimensions. None functions in isolation; neglecting any o...