SCALING THE CAREER JUNGLE GYM

I just finished Sheryl Sandberg‘s thought-provoking book, Lean In: Women, Work, And The Will To Lead. (My bad for taking so long to get to this book.) Sandberg’s thesis is that women’s career advancement has been hindered not just by sex discrimination, but also by our own desire to be liked; hesitancy to assert ourselves; and relationships with husbands and partners.

These are important themes. However, I think there’s another important career bit of advice she provides for both sexes: It’s better to think in terms of a career jungle gym than a career ladder. That’s great advice for today’s college graduates struggling to launch careers in a down economy. Here’s why.

Be T-shaped.

Many of today’s problems are just too complex to be solved by one discipline. The ideal employee in today’s marketplace will be T-shaped bringing a deep understanding in at least one field and have the capacity to, at the very least, converse in the language of broader range of disciplines. To be T-shaped means you build a career not in the traditional way. Instead of going after job titles as you would climbing the corporate ladder, pursue skills reaching across the jungle gym to go up.

(At let’s clear one thing up. Benjamin Franklin actually said, “Jack of all trades. Master of one.”)

Hierarchy is old school.

Albeit not a new concept, broadbanding aka flattening has evolved to mean collapsing tiers of positions into a few wide bands to manage career growth and pay. In plain speak, career ladder rungs are removed, and the way to move up and earn more (isn’t pay not title what you’re really after) is to add value to the company by developing new skills.

What’s appealing about this to grads launching their careers?

• Less formal reporting structure
• Organizations can be more flexible, quicker to respond to the marketplace
• Decision-making is moved closer to the point where knowledge exists in the organization

Career paths are no longer linear.

Not all engineering majors become engineers. Not all English majors become editors. Not all doctors or lawyers are in their respective practices. (In part, it’s why a parent asks his/her college student: You majored in what?) In much the same way, a linear, hierarchy-based career path one in which employees work hard and over time rise up a predictable path to the next level until they can no longer climb is an outdated way of thinking.

Scaling a jungle gym provides many more career path options.

• You develop a deep skill set and become highly-skilled, mobile and adaptable
•  You make a series of lateral moves with an organization to become T-shaped constantly taking on new challenging tasks that broaden your experience and value—more value equals more pay
• You build a portfolio of transferrable skills from a wide range of positions that you can take anywhere—you are a free agent

Sandberg writes, “I could never have connected the dots from where I started to where I am today.” I share in her experience as do many others (another good read for college students, Dig This Gig.)

Help each other out

Climbing a ladder there is always someone trailing behind another person and it’s almost an impossible move to get ahead of the lead. Scaling a jungle gym, you can scramble all over it sometimes alone and sometimes together, lending a hand to create new career opportunities.