Strategic Career Orientation Program (SCOP)

Understand what is required to be successful in life.  This topic will explain what is required to be accepted and respected by others around you.

Understand that only you are responsible for your life.  Others can help but you need to figure out what is important and valuable to you.

Understand what it means to be successful at work and how to achieve this.

Learn how to become self-confident and why this is necessary for success in all endeavors in your personal and professional life.

Learn about yourself and understand your strengths and weaknesses.  This is essential to set meaningful goals and will dictate your interactions with people for successful relationships.

Learn about the communications model and how to take necessary steps to ensure that your communications with others are going as intended and there is no confusion between all parties involved in the communication.

Learn who is important to you in life and who is really interested in your growth.  Ensure you are not being influenced by the wrong person - a simple tool is presented here for this evaluation. 

Having a growth or agile mindset is very important in today's ever changing world. Learn why and how a growth mindset is better than a fixed mindset and how to use this to stay relevant in todays evolving work place.

Understand interactions at work and how to convert individuals into a performing team.

Learn what stress is and how to identify stressors and take action when you feel situations in your life are generating stress in you.

Learn how to set goals and achieve all your short, intermediate and long term plans in a systematic and methodical manner.

Learn how to control and use your emotions in productive manner and not let them get the better of you in situations where you are being tested.  Understand that people who manage their EI do just as well or better than people who have high IQ or intelligence quotient.  Channeling your EI is critical for maintaining good relationships in your personal and professional life.

Learn how to be morally and ethically compliant at work and why this is required to be respected and to grow in your chosen profession.

Understand the difference between Responsibility and Accountability and which is better to gear you towards success in the workplace.  Steps to help you are provided.

Interpersonal skills are key for maintaining good relationships and to achieve success in life.  Understand what the key interpersonal skills are and how to get them to stand out at work and get better opportunities.

Maintaining a positive mindset is very important to ensure that a tough situation does not get out control.  Learn how to be optimistic and transfer that optimism to people around you to keep things under control.  Keeping a positive mindset is very important for success in life.

Anyone can point out problems but you want to do more than that.  You want to provide solutions and multiple solutions at that - this is how you will get noticed at work and be known as a solution provider and a go-to person. 

As they say - its not how much you make, its what you do with it that makes the difference. 

This topic talks about saving and investing small portions of your paycheck or income from the first paycheck (or the next one).  Developing this critical habit today will ensure financial independence over time which is what EVERYONE wants in their lives.

Knowing what to do and how to do your assigned tasks are definitely important.  But not as important as WHY you are doing it.  Understanding how your work contributes to the overall strategic plans of your company will ensure that you ask for projects and roles that are important and that gets you noticed as an important contributor in the company.  This is key for success in your career.

This topic discusses how to perform effectively as an independent contributor by planning and executing assigned tasks within given timelines.  This skill is very important as you grow in your career because it shows that you have organizational skills and the discipline to complete work by yourself.

Assertive communications is about conveying messages in a firm but polite manner.  This exists between submission and aggression.  People who can do this effectively are respected externally because they speak their minds clearly and feel good about themselves internally as they usually do not bottle anything inside themselves which can cause all kinds of problems later.

Being able to communicate clearly what is on your mind whether it is to another individual, small group or large audience is absolutely critical to climb up the management ladder.  This topic talks about the do's and don'ts of this key skill.

The importance of time management in your personal and professional life cannot be overstated.  People who can do this well will always have enough time to do everything they have planned in their lives unlike those who complain that they do not have time to do things.  A few tools are shown here for use.

Sending properly crafted emails is a requirement in a business environment and understanding how this is different from social media writing is important to show and maintain a professional image.  This topic covers how to do this and discusses common errors made while sending emails.

Most people are afraid of making decisions, even important ones, in life for several reasons.  One of those reasons is not being aware of how to actually make good decisions.  This topics covers how a decision-making matrix is structured and how you need to use it to make decisions in every aspect of your life.  You need to practice this till this becomes second nature to you as this is another key skills required for career success.

Unusual problems require innovative solutions.  This topic covers how to start generating creative solutions for abnormal problems and how to implement solutions when others around you have no idea how to even begin forming a solution.

Recognizing a conflict happening around you whether or not you are involved and pro-actively taking steps to resolve the conflict without management or supervisor intervention is a sure way to show your maturity levels and let people know that you are ready for bigger opportunities at work.

One of the most needed but overlooked aspect of career success is managing upwards or managing your manager.  Understanding what you manager needs for their success and doing your best to make that happen is vital for your own growth.  Those who understand this and ensure that this is happening at work find their own path to success opening up without the usual roadblocks. 

Learning how to work in a team and generate synergy from a group of individuals is very important to complete work in organizations.  People who know how to make this happen will quickly get promoted to higher levels of management. 

Recognize that workplace politics is an unavoidable aspect where people work together.  Learning how to navigate your way through this is thus, very important.  This topic covers how to identify that politics exists where you work and what actions to take in such situations.   

This topic covers the various elements of project management and how to a take a project systematically from initiation to closing in both the waterfall and agile methodologies.  It also discusses when to use which methodology on your projects. 

In today's busy world, it is very rare for employees to working on only one project at a time.  Learn how to prioritize your work when you are working on multiple work elements and how to ensure that you are making progress on all of them simultaneously. 

Learning how to change and evolve over time is necessary in this ever-changing world.  Those who cannot or do not do this will soon find themselves redundant and irrelevant at work.  Learn how to condition yourself to have a growth mindset, continuously learn new skills and technologies and remain updated with advancements that are required for your career and personal life. 

Learn how to identify and deal with various kinds of "difficult" people in this topic.  Those who can do this effectively and effortlessly find their path toward upper management roles become easy and more opportunities coming their way.  Proper use of your EI, remaining calm while addressing difficult people and resolving tough situations is not easy and most people cannot do this well - this is why those who can do it stand out!

This topic tells you what a SWOT analysis is and also shows you how to do one for yourself.  A detailed SWOT analysis is required before you start the process of goal setting for yourself as it will ensure that you are taking advantage of your strengths while keeping in mind your weaknesses - this will make sure that you are not setting impossible goals which may not be realized and in turn, will affect your self-confidence negatively.

This topic introduces some tools for you to identify and become familiar with your own personality traits.  This is the first step towards knowing yourself and becoming self-aware. 

"Knowing yourself in the first step towards wisdom".

One of the main goals of the SCOP Program is to take you towards preparing a personalized IDP - this is the main action item.  An IDP should be prepared with a lot of thought and consideration because it will guide your actions and efforts going forward and as such, must be productive, fruitful and in line with the goals you have set for yourself.  So give this some time and thought!

This topic covers the initial years (or confusing years) of your career and provides several action items to do or not do during this period.  Paying attention to this topic will ensure that you do not waste a lot of time in the initial phase of your career as time is not reversible, only lost if not used properly.

Learn how to set SMART goals for yourself as this technique teaches you how to define meaningful goals for your personal and professional life and set related timelines to ensure proper completion.  Remember to use this technique while setting goals.

This topic talks about the importance of networking and establishing contacts with people who can guide you or help you on your path to career success.  Learn and employ this extremely useful skill to grow in your career.

This topic talks about ways to organize yourself and your work and why organized people give the impression of having things under their control and are given opportunities that other people do not get at work.  This is a key skill to learn and employ on your path to career success.

The 20s - 30s - 40s principle talks about what areas to give attention to and at which times of your career progression.  We are all guilty of focusing on wrong things at the wrong time and by the time we realize this, time is lost or energy is lost of maybe even relationships are lost.  Learn this principle to avoid making the same mistakes that most people make during their career path.

Finding a mentor in life is one of the most important things that you could possibly do - whether it is your personal life or your professional life and whether it is a family member or outsider.  Learn why this is important and how to do this so that you can find a guide to help your avoid career pitfalls and to assist you to make important choices and decisions in your life.

This is one of the most important skills and areas that people should focus on in their personal and professional lives, but unfortunately do not.  Proper evaluation of risk in all your efforts and endeavors can ensure that you are prepared for most unexpected events with a response and give you some sense of control over events in your life, which is essential for self-confidence building.

One of the goals of the SCOP program is to ensure that you are pro-actively looking for management roles in your quest for career progress by demonstrating that you are ready for these roles and by generating RESULTS in your work. 

Asking for bigger opportunities after proving yourself is a compelling way to achieve success in your career - and such requests cannot be easily ignored by management officials.

Achieving a position of authority is probably one of the most important things that you can do in your life.  Getting to this stage means that you have established a position of respect for yourself and ensures that people around you come to you for assistance with things that they cannot handle by themselves. 

This topic covers what this position means,  how to get to this position and why this is critical for career success.

This topic is a quick recap of all the tools, concepts and skills provided in the SCOP program.

This topic covers the essence of the SCOP program.  4 roadmaps are provided as starting points for 4 key areas of your life - financial management, self-improvement, career success and attending interviews. 

The goal is for program attendees to use these roadmaps as a guide to start the process in their lives and then make changes or modifications to them to create a customized path to success in these 4 areas. 

This topic concludes the SCOP program by providing a clear understanding of what a strategy is and how a strategy is made up of individual plans.  The main goal of this topic is for program attendees to set strategies for their goals and to achieve these goals over time.