Clayton Christensen Quotes

I have never been choosy throughout my career.

'Downton' has really pushed me to a new level in my career, but it's not like I have a big career plan. They are about as useful as a birth plan; they should be burned.

One of the things I'm most proud of about my career is the fact I've managed to keep options open.

I never planned my career. I never planned to be president of Harvard. People would have thought I was crazy, probably, at the age of 8 or 10 or 20, if I had said that. So what I would say to people planning their careers is to be ready to improvise. Be ready to follow up on opportunities as they unfold.

Have a goal. Know where you want to end up. Knowing where you want to end up is a lot easier than figuring out how to start and how to get there. You will figure out how to get there. Do not chart your career. Trust me; you do not want to chart your career.

I've never looked at my career as something that I was striving to get to one position or another. For me, it was one step at a time.

I have been constantly shaping and reshaping my career. I laid a foundation by doing respectful work in all media. And I am happy with what I have done.

I don't really have foresight as an actor as far as career trajectory - I just stick to no-brainer situations.

I've never really had much of a career plan, and interesting opportunities kept cropping up.

I've never been good at making smart career decisions or doing the right strategic thing, and yet somehow it's all led me to exactly the kind of career that I would have dreamed of having - if only I'd been smart enough to dream something like that.

I never really had a career, to be honest with you. I never in my life sat down and planned it. I have thought, 'Oh, I'd like to do this,' like anybody would. But I'm not the type that says, 'If I do this, it will lead to that.'

I have never, for better or worse, thought about a 'career path' or anything like that.

I don't think I've ever had a real desire to pick out any particular role - I just see what comes up.

I think about my own career, and when I graduated from college, the Internet didn't really exist yet. And so not having a specific plan, being able to be opportunistic at the end, is what enabled me to make some of my best decisions, which is to go to places that were growing but that I didn't plan to have happen.

Your career is not going to go the way you planned. It is impossible at the age of 23 to pick the right industry, the right company, and you can visualize what you're going to be doing in your 40s, 50s, and 60s, but chances are that it's going to be something quite different. So remain open to opportunities and change.

I find in my career that I never know what's going to happen in two months.

I started out as a lawyer and came in laterally to Goldman Sachs. So I learned myself that life is unpredictable. That you really should, in terms of your career, try to be excellent at what you're doing. I think if you focus on your job, and you focus on being broad in the context of your job, the next jobs follow from that.

As actors, you like to think about the luxury of having choices in your career, but for the most part you kind of take whatever comes your way and hope that you carved out something that you're proud of in the end.

I'm a goal setter, but in broad strokes. I don't have a by-October-2009-I-want-to-be-here plan. All I do is work with an element of challenge and an element of enjoyment. With that, anything can happen.

I might act like it's an accident but the opposite is true. I'm incredibly calculated when it comes to my career.

Failed plans should not be interpreted as a failed vision. Visions don't change, they are only refined. Plans rarely stay the same, and are scrapped or adjusted as needed. Be stubborn about the vision, but flexible with your plan.

It doesn't always happen according to the way you have planned things out but I feel if you have covered most of the aspects, it does help out there in the middle.

I have never chosen my next job. I focus on what's in front of me, and serendipity steps in.

I spent 26 years in the business without ever knowing what I was doing a month from now.

I have no big career plan. It is better for me that way.