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How to Win in a Winner-Take-All World: From Career Ladder to Career Lattice, with Neil Irwin, Senior Economics Correspondent, The New York Times, and Author, How to Win in a Winner-Take-All World
Make lateral moves
I think I grew up hearing the term career ladder, and I think it’s something we’ve all heard. You start in a job, you start as a junior associate or whatever the title is, and you work your way up to associate, to director, to vice president, to whatever your ambitions may be. And that’s fine, there are certainly those hierarchies that still exist in most companies.
But what I’ve found is that it’s really important to think of it as not just a ladder, but a lattice, a grid. And it’s not just about moving up, it’s also about moving sideways, sometimes even moving down slightly. I think the key is cutting across different types of technical specialty, and understand how they fit together. It’s not just about, if you’re a marketing person, becoming the very best marketing person. It’s becoming the very best marketing person who also understands the technology, the engineering, the finance, the strategy, how those pieces fit together in a modern organization.
If you can’t do that, you’re not even that good a marketing person. You’re not going to get to that top rung because you haven’t made those lateral moves and understood how the pieces fit together.
Raise your hand
The best thing about being new into the workforce, new into the corporate world, is that you have a lot of room to grow, and you’re not so established that you can’t really jump around. And the thing about becoming more senior is, those sideways leaps on the career lattice are a lot riskier and a lot more dangerous. If you fall down, it’s going to hurt a lot more.
When you’re at lower levels, it’s actually less of a risk to raise your hand and volunteer for some team that’s out of your comfort zone, in a different department, to embed with a different group, to sign up for a special project that an executive wants done. You can take those assignments and those risks without too much risk, if it goes bad, that you’re in a terrible spot. So I think that’s actually a wonderful place to be.
I think the key is having the courage and the ability to really raise your hand and say, I want those opportunities. Part of working at an organization, it’s not just the pay and benefits they pay you. It’s also the experiences they give you, and how they will set you up for the future. And I think earlier in your career, you’re not making that much money. The difference between a small raise or not is not as big as, are you at a place that is letting you grow? That is letting you expand your horizons and become the person who can ultimately rise to the top of that lattice, not be stuck at lower levels.
Think in 3-year blocks
The idea of a tour of duty is a concept that’s existed for a long time in the military and the diplomatic world. Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, first applied it to the corporate world. And I think it’s a really useful concept. The idea is, when you sign up for a job, you’re not signing up for some indefinite term of service. You’re not going to do the same job for 20, 25 years. What you’re saying is, I’m going to do this job and take on this project that might take two years, three years, however long it may be. And after that, we’ll reevaluate.
And you’re providing a certain commitment to the employer, the employer is providing a certain commitment to you. It’s not forever, though. And it’s kind of being honest about the fact that jobs aren’t forever. I tend to think of it as what I call the three-year itch as building on the tour of duty concept.
First year, you start a new job. You’re just trying to learn the ropes, figure out how to do it well. Second year you’re hitting your stride, you’re doing well. By the third year, you have to train yourself to have this three-year itch. Start to look around and say, how can I explore the next option? It doesn’t necessarily mean changing employers, it doesn’t even necessarily mean changing jobs. It’s saying, okay, three, maybe four or five years has passed. I really need to make sure I’m broadening my experience and gaining something other than just doing the same job over and over again.