The broken ladder

Let’s begin with the stark reality which many people face in their organisations. Growth means only going up a ladder, it's viewed as a management trajectory. But take a look at your organisational chart, there’s only so many places available on the ladder. Which means you either have to push someone out of the way to replace them, or that person also has to move on at the same time. It’s like moving pieces around a chess board, there are tight boundaries of where anyone can go. Here we have the first pitfall of the career ladder - it creates competition among colleagues. People are vying for the next position, and focussed solely on the internal politics of gaining that position rather than being of service to the customer or client of the company. 

The other shadow side of this ladder is its deeply limiting nature. Moving positions rarely takes into account much of the individual's full attributes. Instead, we box tick that the individual is sufficient in filling that role, or we experience the classic failing of tenure - just because someone has been at the company for a long period of time, suddenly they are thrust into a new position regardless of whether they are fit for purpose. 

So, what is the alternative? 

The era of career pathways 

Rather than a linear mindset about careers, we need a holistic approach that considers both the company’s needs and the needs of people. Career pathways is a growing approach that progressive companies are adopting to provide more varied growth opportunities. These are companies who have tapped into the realisation that the ladder is broken, and are fully aware that as human beings we have an intrinsic desire to grow and develop. All the untapped potential, and energy for improvement is lying dormant in many organisations, because they’re holding onto that old ladder. But not in these progressive places. Career pathways open up the possibilities for people to fully explore their potential and map their own way.  

However, before you decide to swap one frame for another, I want to make it clear that this isn’t another copy and paste method like the traditional career ladder. The traditional career ladder has been duplicated across organisations because of its organisational history. It was easy and efficient to build career ladders, and brought about the movement of meritocracy, which enabled many people to make a better life for themselves regardless of their social status. 

But career pathways are not career ladders. They are not as easy and efficient to create. They require organisations and individuals to do deep reflections, and to craft something that aligns both company and individual needs. It’s not an easy approach if that’s what you were hoping - but who said the great things were ever easy? 

A jobs marketplace 

Getting pigeon-holed into a career can be stifling for people. It’s no wonder there is a rise of people experiencing a quarter life-crisis. Being stuck doing the same thing forever sounds more like a prison sentence than a fulfilling worklife. People want to be able to change careers and try out new things. But too often that means having to leave a company and find a new job because the company can’t offer any alternative opportunities. 

What if instead, there was a roles marketplace? - Where people can take a look at the opportunities available to them within the current company and give something new a try? 

A Jobs Marketplace as it is termed, provides people within a company the opportunity to look at new roles available. Encouraging people to navigate to new areas of the business rather than leave. People can move sideways, and across, rather than just up. 

This practice became well-known at the Brazilian Manufacturing company Semco, led by entrepreneur Ricardo Semler. In the early 1990s they began a jobs marketplace, where they would internally post roles that would become available, and anyone from anywhere in the company could apply. Of course, there were key requirements, but if you wanted to retrain, that would also become possible. 

Job crafting 

As highlighted previously, the career ladder can feel deeply impersonal. We can feel more like we’re moving from one box to another, rather than letting our unique skills and abilities shine. In some respects, it's as if we leave parts of ourselves at the door when we walk into work, meaning we lack fulfilment. 

But what if we could make it all more personalised? Just like we personalise our clothes, our homes and our cars. 

Job crafting is one popular approach that is revitalising our work and our career paths. Considering all aspects of ourselves, from our skills and abilities, our passions and hobbies, all the way to our likes and dislikes, we can redesign roles and career paths. 

This means we can journey through our own career compass, not one that’s been predetermined by someone else. As expert job crafter Rob Tailor shared on my podcast, “We’ve got in the habit of thinking of work in uniform ways, in boxes. But that’s not working in the current environment, and we need to do something different.” 

When job crafting is taken that step further, a career pathway is developed and driven by  individuals personal goals rather than solely the functions of the management structure. 

Afterall, not everyone wants to become a manager. There are numerous ways people want to grow and develop that sit outside the traditional ladder. 

Grow don’t climb

I’ve saved the most radical idea for last, because this approach will challenge your thinking above and beyond. 

What if there was no ladder in the first place? What if you were working in a flat organisation with little hierarchy? Then how would you grow and climb? 

This is the reality for hundreds of people around the world who operate in self-managed or horizontal organisations. There is no such thing as a career ladder. At first glance this might sound horrifying to some, more like a career death than rebirth. Especially when we’ve been conditioned in our education system and our wider society that to become successful you must climb each rung of the ladder. 

But as I detailed earlier, the spaces on the ladder are finite and not always fulfilling. The ladder to success becomes a golden cage. 

In these progressive organisations, growth isn’t tied to positions or managing people. After all, there are no managers. Instead, growth is personal, and aligned with an individual’s desires for ownership of work and specialisation.  

Take for example self-managing software company Mayden, based in Bath UK. At Mayden it is the individuals who must own and manage their progression. There is no manager navigating it for them. As Mayden share in their book Made without Managers, “Mayden’s responsibility is to provide opportunities and training, but it’s up to the individual to make the most of those and manage their personal development.” 

Mayden openly shares that people can struggle with a lack of a predetermined path because it’s what we’re all used to. But as a company that now has more than 100 people, it’s clear that for many this sense of ownership over their path is far more satisfying than fighting for the next step on the ladder. 

The future is adaptive 

We cannot predict the future, but we have already begun to see the influence of AI on the jobs marketplace, and that means our careers will also have to adapt. Seeing career growth in a rigid, linear fashion will not help us become agile to the world, it may well mean we become at risk. 

In 2023, I attended a keynote talk by Maarten Ectors, a specialist in AI and Web3. Maarten’s talk was named Superhuman Work, and revealed the link between AI and the reshaping of work as we know it. Maarten’s key take-away was that there is a possibility in the future that AI and advanced technologies will take jobs, which means we have to consider what skills will be needed, and how we will find work. Maarten has a fun future prediction that one day we might wake-up and have a “Netflix for Work” style platform. It will know all our skills and attributes, and will provide us with a list of that day's work opportunities. We will be able to select what we feel like doing that day and our work will be hyper varied. Of course, this is a utopian sci-fi example but it does bring into question our rigid beliefs on how and what work we do, and therefore make us rethink careers.