Career Planning—Climbing a Ladder or Navigating an Obstacle Course?
Amazon's process used to promote employees was recently in the news. Based on what was said in employee interviews, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos believes that the performance bar is raised with every hire, and only the exceptional talent should be promoted within the organization.
There can be differing views with respect to Amazon's approach, but one fundamental question remains—Is climbing a ladder the best analogy for how you manage and plan your career?
In Adam Bryant's book The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, Barbara Krumsiek, CEO of the Calvert Group, says:
I believe that the whole career ladder concept is a very disruptive concept because what does it suggest? You can’t get past the person ahead of you unless you push them off the ladder. It promotes aggressive behavior. When you think of an obstacle course, there are a lot of people on the obstacle course at the same time, and my success doesn’t impede your success.
Krumsiek’s words represent an interesting analogy of career management as an obstacle course, which gives a definitive structure for looking at your career. By viewing a career as an obstacle course, it somewhat brings down the pressure related to beating other people to reach the next level.
Former CEO of Yahoo Carol Bartz provides another perspective when she relates the career to a pyramid and says:
You need to build your career not as a ladder, but as a pyramid. You need to have a base of experience because it’s a much more stable structure. And so that involves taking lateral moves. And it involves getting out of your comfort zone.
Bartz's approach of relating career planning to a pyramid clearly favors horizontal movements in your career. The pyramid approach puts a lot of stress on building the solid foundation of knowing more functions throughout a career span and building relationships along the way. Having a track record with a diverse foundation better prepares an aspirant to take the top job.
The fact is that most organizations associate rewards and incentives on achieving that elusive next level. This only pushes people to believe that the ladder approach is the way forward for them. However, one crucial aspect of hierarchical, ladder-based organizations is stated in the Peter Principle: Members of an organization where promotion is based on achievement, success, and merit will eventually be promoted beyond their level of ability.
The Peter Principle clearly states the perils of the ladder-based approach to career management when upon reaching a level of incompetence, the employee has no chance of further promotion—effectively reaching his career's ceiling in the organization.
To be fair to its merits, the ladder-based approach gives you the direction; the pyramid approach gives you the solid foundation; and the obstacle course approach gives you the right attitude to move forward.
How about designing your own career advancement approach that takes the best from all these approaches?
