Career development can feel like a test of your certainty. It’s easy to assume that progress depends on choosing the right role early, following a single upward route and always knowing your next move.

That pressure persists because career stories often skip the false starts, frontline work and changing priorities behind them. The result? Capable people can end up treating uncertainty as failure, rather than as useful information.

Nick Clark is a partner and director at Boston Consulting Group (BCG). He has spent more than nine years at BCG, having previously worked as a transformation director at TalkTalk, bringing hands-on experience in customer service, operations and organisational change.

Below, we explore how practical experience, influence, mentoring and values can provide a more grounded way to make career choices, drawing on Nick’s own story.

In this guide

• Career Development Starts With Useful Experience, Not a Fixed Script
• Move From Individual Problem-Solving to Leadership Influence
• Make Senior Conversations Useful, Not Just Detailed
• Use Values and Feedback to Choose the Next Direction
• A More Grounded Way to Progress

Career Development Starts With Useful Experience, Not a Fixed Script

Your career doesn’t need to start with a polished plan to find a valuable direction. Nick’s early work showed how frontline responsibilities can reveal strengths, interests and problems worth solving.

Treat an Early Role as Evidence, Not a Verdict

His first role after university involved taking calls about water-meter installations, before moving into complaint handling. Not glamorous, perhaps, but it gave him an understanding of customers, colleagues and service delivery that he has drawn on ever since.

Notice Friction and Make It Visible

A manual process meant some installation dockets kept ending up at the bottom of the pile. Nick built an Excel macro to reallocate the work, an early sign of where his interest lay: improving operations through a customer lens.

Build on Patterns That Hold Your Attention

The useful signal wasn’t simply that he could solve a technical issue. It was a recurring interest in processes that didn’t work well and in the people affected when they failed. So, it’s worth asking yourself:

• What problems repeatedly draw attention?
• What practical improvements have already been made?
• Whose experience changes when the work is done well?

Questions like these turn experience into evidence. They help you tell the difference between a passing task and a pattern that’s worth developing further.

Progress often starts with taking opportunities seriously enough to learn from them, then using what you’ve learned to make your next choice with more intention.

Move From Individual Problem-Solving to Leadership Influence

The behaviours that get you noticed early in your career aren’t always the ones that make you a leader. As your responsibility grows, the work shifts from personally fixing every issue to helping others move towards a shared goal.

Know When Doing Becomes Directing

Nick draws a clear line between being noticed for initiative and leading through influence. At a more senior level, if you’re constantly stepping in yourself, it’s fair for people to ask whether you’re delegating effectively.

Manage Scale Without Losing Sight of Impact

At TalkTalk, the sheer volume of customers meant small percentages really mattered. Even a high success rate could still leave thousands of people affected, which called for clear priorities rather than an attempt to fix everything at once.

Frame Change as a Shared Problem

A constructive case for change starts with what’s actually happening, including customer frustration and the data available, rather than blame. Being genuine about how it feels can add urgency while keeping everyone focused on fixing the problem.

• Describe the issue without assigning fault.
• Use evidence to show who is affected.
• Set out a practical next action together.

This gives people something to act on. Change becomes less about winning an argument and more about solving a problem that matters.

Leadership influence comes from direction, judgement and follow-through, not from being the person with all the answers.

Make Senior Conversations Useful, Not Just Detailed

Experience and analysis are valuable, but they need translating when your audience is short on time and juggling a wider set of concerns. Influence at senior levels depends on spotting the real issue behind the question in front of you.

Adapt the Level of Detail to the Decision

Nick is most comfortable with operational detail, planning and examples from past work. However, senior leaders often need something different: a sharp insight that helps them decide what matters, why it matters and what to do next.

Pause Before Answering the First Question

Quick-fire questions can make you feel you need to respond point by point. Taking a moment to think about why a question is being asked can reveal the real concern, or a better question that will unlock it.

Give a Clear Steer With Appropriate Humility

A low-ego approach doesn’t mean keeping your opinion to yourself. It means treating the work as a shared problem while still offering a clear direction, along with the context people need to use it well.

Before your next senior conversation, it helps to ask:

• What decision is really being considered?
• What is the most useful insight for that decision?
• What context makes the recommendation responsible?

Preparing this way turns everything you know into a contribution that’s actually relevant. The detail is still there if it’s needed; it just isn’t competing with your main point.

The aim isn’t to sound more certain than the evidence allows. It’s to make the conversation clearer and more useful for the people making the decision.

Use Values and Feedback to Choose the Next Direction

A more deliberate career isn’t the same as a rigid plan. It’s about regularly checking in on what matters to you, recognising your limits and leaning on people you trust to help decide which opportunities deserve a yes.

Let Your Priorities Change With Experience

Nick describes an early phase of saying yes to almost everything, followed by a more discerning one. Along the way, he realised that climbing steadily towards general management appealed to him less than staying close to the work itself.

Use Mentors to See Your Strengths and Gaps

At key points in his career, several managers gave him candid feedback, encouragement and guidance. The most useful mentoring combined honesty about what needed improving with the space to decide for himself which capabilities were worth building.

Come Back to Your Values When You Feel Lost

If you’re feeling unsure, Nick recommends setting aside time to write down your values, your strengths and the behaviours that can become unhelpful when you’re under stress. You can then weigh up your options against what genuinely matters to you, rather than status alone.

• Name the values that matter most.
• List the realistic options available.
• Look at where each option aligns with your values and where it drifts.

Think of this as a reset you can return to, not a one-off exercise. Your priorities may become clearer with experience, while your core values can flag when your work has drifted too far from them.

If you’re early in your career, there’s still plenty of room to try different things. Where you are at 23 doesn’t decide where you’ll be at 26, or much later.

A More Grounded Way to Progress

Real career stories are rarely a straight line. Frontline work, unexpected opportunities and periods of uncertainty can all tell you something about where you can contribute best.

Start by paying attention to the work that reveals a recurring strength or a problem worth solving. Then, as your responsibility grows, shift from fixing things yourself towards shared ownership and clear direction.

Build influence by listening for the decision beneath the question and giving recommendations with the right context. Lean on feedback from managers, mentors and trusted peers; they will often spot the adjustments you need to make before you do.

Career development becomes more purposeful when you test your choices against your values rather than an assumed ladder. That won’t make uncertainty disappear, but it does turn it into something you can learn from.

Here’s a small challenge: pick one problem, opportunity or decision you’re facing right now and write down what it tells you about your strengths, your values and your next useful experiment. It’s a far better basis for action than waiting for the perfect plan.

Conclusion

Career development doesn’t require a perfect plan or a straight path upwards. By learning from experience, building influence, seeking honest feedback and staying connected to your values, you can make more thoughtful choices as your priorities evolve.

The goal isn’t to predict every step ahead. It’s to use what you learn today to choose your next meaningful step with more clarity and purpose.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Does Career Development Look Like Without a Fixed Plan?

It often means trying out credible opportunities, learning from each one and becoming more selective as your priorities and strengths become clearer.

How Can an Early Role Support a Later Career?

Early roles, even those that don’t feel like part of a plan, can reveal practical strengths, customer insight and recurring problems that point towards work worth pursuing.

Why Does Influence Matter More in Senior Roles?

Senior roles are less about personally solving every problem and more about setting direction, building shared ownership and helping others act.