The Executive Career Direction Decision Guide
Examine what an opportunity would add to your career, what it would keep you doing, and what you’d gain and give up before you commit.
For Directors, VPs, SVPs, and executives considering a promotion, a different role, or whether to stay.
Being qualified for a role doesn’t mean you want the career that comes with it.
Before you say yes
Your experience may be bringing you credible opportunities. A recruiter sees a fit. Your employer offers a promotion. Another company wants you to bring your experience into a different industry. Their interest tells you something about where they could use you. You still need to decide whether you want what the role would give you.
You know you can do it. You need to establish whether it would broaden the work you’re trusted with or keep strengthening a reputation you want to expand.
The title, team, and compensation may grow while the decisions you own remain much the same. Decide whether those benefits serve what you want now.
You need to understand which parts of your experience transfer, what you’d need to learn, and whether the new role would give you the responsibility you want next.
Travel, relocation, working hours, and leadership conditions are part of the offer too. Examine what you’d gain and give up before deciding whether the increase is worthwhile.
Each move adds to the experience people use to understand you. A few more years doing familiar work can keep attracting similar opportunities. That may be a choice you want to make. This guide helps you examine it before you commit.
The decision process
Examine the problems you’ve handled, the decisions you’ve made, and what you’ve been trusted to own. Identify what that record supports and distinguish missing experience from evidence others may have overlooked.
Decide which work you want to keep doing, what you want more opportunity to lead, and which conditions matter. A broader role, better compensation, or more sustainable work can each be a worthwhile direction.
Examine the decisions, resources, responsibilities, and working conditions behind the offer. Separate what is confirmed from what still depends on someone’s approval or an uncommitted future opportunity.
Build a Career Direction Brief you can use with a recruiter, in an internal discussion, or when comparing real options. Decide what merits your attention, what needs negotiation, and what you need to know before saying yes.
Included with your Decision Guide
Teaching, examples, and practical tools help you examine career repetition, choose role requirements, compare staying or moving, and develop your Career Direction Brief. Work digitally or in print.
Use the recordings when you need help interpreting what your experience proves, forming a direction when you’re unsure, or weighing two opportunities with different benefits and costs.
Recognizing What Your Experience Proves
Finding Direction When You’re Unsure What You Want
Weighing Opportunities and Making the Tradeoff
“You’ll own the business” leaves important questions open. Use specific questions, follow-ups, and verification steps with recruiters, hiring leaders, and prospective peers to examine actual ownership, approved resources, and working conditions.
Danielle, a fictional VP of Operations, compares an internal SVP role with an external General Manager opportunity. The promotion offers more money and a larger team, but leaves commercial ownership elsewhere. She also revises her initial assumption that the GM role’s promise of business ownership confirms its decision rights. Follow what she verifies and why she pursues the GM role despite lower first-year compensation.
What you’ll leave with
Frequently asked questions
You can begin with the work you want to retain and one condition you want to improve. The guide helps you form a working direction to investigate. You don’t need a target title or an offer before you begin.
That can be a sound choice. Use the guide to establish which improvements would make the move worthwhile, such as compensation, travel, leadership, or flexibility, and what you need to verify. Greater scope is useful when it serves the future you want.
No. Use it while considering a promotion, assessing recruiter interest, or deciding whether to keep investing in your current organization. If an internal path is uncertain, establish what is committed and what would have to happen before relying on it.
The scorecard helps you examine your reasoning. Essential requirements and material unknowns need separate attention. A favorable total cannot settle an unanswered question about a condition you need.
No. Follow the path for exploring a direction or evaluating a real opportunity. Use the examples and audios where they help. Some questions require conversations or information you’ll need to gather, so you can return over several sessions.
The $75 one-time purchase includes the fillable PDF, all three audio walkthroughs, Questions to Ask Before You Accept, and Danielle’s complete example through your Positioning House library. Work digitally or in print. Save a blank copy and a separate working copy. Automatic scoring requires a PDF reader that supports PDF JavaScript; the printed formula is also included. Individual advisory sessions are separate.
The Executive Career Direction Decision Guide
Establish what you want your experience to lead to, what the role would actually provide, and what you’d gain and give up by choosing it.
Get the guide + 3 audios · $75