Innovate Today! - Transforming Your STEM Career Through Leadership and Innovation - page 135

management table, create a schedule for you to pursue each item in your idea
portfolio. Identify the ideas that are most important for the current stage of
your life, so you can get the most of that 5 years, 10 years, or however long
you decide to plan for in your Career Management Plan.
As you are constructing your innovation goals, keep in mind the personal
development goals created with your comprehensive Career Management Plan.
Set a regularly scheduled time-out to focus on your Career Management Plan
and IP. Remember, your Career is your responsibility. While many of us have
been fortunate to have mentors, supportive bosses, and a supportive family, even
with all of this, our career is our responsibility and we need to treat it as such.
This means having a current vision, understanding what is needed to achieve
that vision, and, if I want to be an innovator, giving myself the opportunity to
learn how to accomplish these things. Innovation has become such a critical
component to STEM careers that I felt I needed to grow within the field by
educating myself on this component.
Some of the best advice I ever received from my mentor, Dr Howard G. Adams,
was “take four hours per week to work on yourself,” and he told me this as I was
entering my career as an engineering professor. While I never thought I had more
than two weeks out of the year where I actually had a full four hours to devote to
this task, I am very mindful of that advice and it has been a source of motivation
and encouragement for me over the years. Take the time to put yourself in that
environment where you can be creative and envision your plans realized.

Step 3: Risk Assessment and Research
Perform a Risk Assessment on each of your ideas, taking note of its poten-
tial value, potential challenges you may face, who will be impacted, to what
degree they will be impacted, the financial implications of a failure, and the
short- vs long-term implications of a failure. If the short-term failure is a loss of
$5,000 and the realization of the goal means $5 million, it may be worth about a
thousand failures!

What if I fail?
I had a professor who used to say, “Just because you make a great grade on the
test, it doesn't mean you're going to get an A in the class; and just because you
get an F on a test, it doesn't mean you're going to fail.” Failure is not always
final, and there's no way your knowledge won't be advanced if you are invested
in something. Given the likelihood of failure in trying totally new ideas, it is
important to weigh the impact of a failure on your ultimate career goal.
So, what if you fail? You will survive! You'll learn! You'll get through it!
The more important questions are not “what if's” but something more along the
following:

How will this impact my current position if the plan fails? l

How can I learn or benefit even if the innovative activity fails? (i.e., new rela-
tionships, advanced knowledge, etc.)

l