The Best Career Advice I Never Gave Myself

I was over a decade into my career, MBA in hand, before I heard the term “career map.” I barely knew what an informational interview was, let alone when you were supposed to do one or why.

Nobody assumes you still need the basics once you’re senior enough. So nobody offers them.

Nike didn’t let me stay in that gap for long.

A career map is a proactive document, not a resume with better formatting. It’s how you think strategically about where you’re headed before a role change forces the question. An informational interview is a conversation with someone doing work you’re curious about, held well before you need anything from them. Not a favor. Exploration, with a purpose behind it.

At Nike, both were expected practice. Massive, global, functionally sprawling organization, and the culture had built an actual answer to that sprawl: you did informational interviews on a regular cadence, ahead of any planned move, to see how your skills might transfer into work that looked nothing like your title. The career map was what you brought to those conversations instead of vague curiosity.

Here’s the part I didn’t expect. I’d spent 8.5 years at adidas’ North America campus before Nike. Former adidas colleagues were scattered across Nike’s functions, regions, and teams by the time I arrived. I had a built-in network that people with longer Nike tenure had to work for. My outsider history was a strategic asset before I did anything deliberate to earn it.

By the time I was Director of Creative Operations, the direction had flipped. I was the person other people wanted to talk to. Anyone eyeing a move from another function into creative found their way to me. Five to ten informational interviews a month, for years. Call it somewhere north of 300 conversations, easy.

I was so busy being the resource that I stopped being deliberate about my own map.

(I gave the advice on repeat. I took almost none of it myself.)

That pattern didn’t stay at Nike.

I see it now in the leaders I work with constantly. The people most generous with career clarity for everyone around them are frequently the ones who haven’t drawn their own map in years. Too senior to be handed one. Too busy being the resource to build one. Quietly assuming that where they are is where career maps stop mattering.

They don’t. If anything, the stakes go up.

A VP who stops being deliberate about their own trajectory is the one who wakes up five years later in a role they didn’t choose, wondering how they got there. Clarity about where you’re going doesn’t become optional once you have seniority. It just stops getting protected.

Does this still matter once you’re senior? More, not less. The career map isn’t a job search tool you retire once you land the title. It’s how you keep choosing your direction on purpose, instead of finding out later that you didn’t.

I built a career exploration curriculum for my own kids before either of them hit a first job search. No one should have to be a decade in with an MBA before someone hands them the map.

You’re the person everyone comes to for this. When’s the last time you drew your own?