Hello again, this is Amy Giaculli. Welcome to the Capstone Project and the Career Brand Management Specialization. Now as you've reached the culminating point, where you can apply all the knowledge and skills you've learned in the specialization. Let me provide you with some information about the remaining course. First, why do we call it an annual retreat? In the business world, corporate retreats are very popular, many organizations use them for some purpose. For example, retreats are used for getting to know each other, bonding, team building, problem solving and collective thinking to name a few common purposes. Retreats are essential for strategic analysis and planning. Business strategists recommend that periodically, usually once a year, managers should step back from their day to day operations and think about the organizations future and its strategic direction. This advice seems to be working well on a global scale. This is probably because managers are usually preoccupied with too many tactical and operational decisions that need to be made everyday. As a result, it's very difficult even for a highly experienced decision maker, to be engaged in strategic thinking on a daily basis. In order to not lose perspective and keep up with environmental changes managers host annual retreats. Shouldn't you do the same when you act as a CEO of your own career? Let's see what else you can learn about retreats from the corporate world. Usually annual strategic retreats in organizations take a few days. Sometimes they are conducted in a remote location to isolate participants from their daily routines, and concentrate on strategic issues. Very often, retreats are conducted by external facilitators to provide structure and to help develop an objective view of the organization. Typically, strategic retreats are focused on finding answers to the following three groups of questions. First, what is happening in the outside world? What are the environmental changes? What opportunities and threats are likely to pose for the organization? Next, where are we? Where do we want to be? How do we get there? And what needs to be done? Last, what strategy should we use? What are our concrete steps? And how do we succeed? Here are some of the advantages of the annual retreat format for organizations. A retreat is conducted periodically so the strategic function is exercised regularly. A retreat doesn't take too much time to attend. It provides necessary structure and helps staying focused on strategy. And is participative and allows organizations to combine and coordinate the efforts of all involved. All in all, annual retreats seem to be very useful for strategic planning in organizations. In this course, we'll attempt to use the same format for individual career development. Like corporate managers, individuals are busy with their daily routines, which leaves them with very little room to strategize. Realistically it is difficult to imagine someone who could spend lots of time self strategizing on a daily basis. It may be a good idea to dedicate time for self strategy and go on retreat at least once a year. To help you begin, we're using the annual retreat format for this course. Basically, what we're going to do is to pretend that by taking this course, you were attending an annual retreat on the theme of self-strategy and individual career branding. The goal of the retreat is to step back from day to day demands and strategically focus on gaining a competitive edge on the job market. For this purpose you investigate new opportunities for career growth. Conduct a thorough audit of your skill building and self marketing strategies and develop new ways to enhance and showcase your marketable skills. We believe that this approach will allow you to integrate concepts and tools from the entire specialization. As a result, you should be able to more effectively manage your career brand, and increase your personal effectiveness. Working as external facilitators will provide you with a structured approach, and assemble your tasks. We'll also organize group work, in which you will be expected to work on individual projects. Receive peer feedback, and peer review, self developmental and self promotional work done by other students. So here's the agenda for the retreat. There are three groups of questions that we would like you to work on. As you can see, these questions mirror the ones that are typically asked at corporate strategy retreats. One, career investigation. What's happening in the outside world? What are my career choices? What can be done within one year? Two, self-audit, where am I and where do I want to be at the end of this year? How do I get there? And three, career planning. What are my plans, execution strategies and concrete steps for the year? How do I succeed? Those types of questions are equally relevant for an undergraduate student or a corporate manager, and they should be answered at least once a year. This course is structured to help you find answers to those all important questions. We also added one more item leaving room for your individual endeavors or so called field experiences and reflection. Most of the learning materials and self-coaching tools that you will need in the course can be found in the previous course in this specialization. For your convenience, we'll provide brief review lectures and materials, including the knowledge map, the self-coaching toolbox guide, and a self-information management system review. There are four peer reviews in this course. There are designed as highly practical activities in the developing tangible results for your career branding. Peer Review 1 deals with career investigation in the area of your interest. Peer Review 2 aims of creating a digital artifact to demonstrate and showcase your skills. Peer Review 3 is designed to create a range of communication strategies for your digital artifact. Peer Review 4 is reserved for working on an individual project tailored to your particular situation. Overall, the course is intended to help you self-organize and hold yourself accountable to your self-strategy. It is designed to give you dedicated time for career brand development. To practice the use of self-coaching tools, to increase motivation, and to help you never give up on your self developmental work. As a fitness gymnasium this course will allow you to re-energize and re-invigorate your career branding activities by working in a cohort of like minded career activists. With peer reviews being the only grade of learning activity in the course, we cannot overstate the importance of giving and receiving of quality peer feedback. When striving for a competitive edge, you are preparing your skills portfolio to be evaluated and judged by other people, including your supervisors, colleagues, investors, selection team members, and other publics. It makes a lot of sense to practice an external evaluation of your skills in advance and Coursera provides an excellent opportunity for that. It's up to you how to use this opportunity. As course developers were included a special lecture on how to make peer review assessment work for you. After all, giving and receiving feedback is an important skill in itself. As for the time frame, we've assigned four weeks for you to complete this course because weeks is the Coursera default. You can certainly focus and complete it in just three to four days, making it a perfect annual strategic planning retreat. If you like the format and find it useful you may decide to repeat the retreat again next year. See you in a minute.
