I just read a great article in the Harvard Business Review by Ron Ashkenas, Senior Partner of Schaffer Consulting. Ron is an internationally recognized consultant and speaker on organizational transformation, post-merger integration, and simplification.
He makes a great point about thinking of career development as being both lateral as well as vertical. Too often we only accept that career advancement being vertical – moving up the ladder. The reality is that today’s workplace – with flatter organizational structures - has less vertical opportunities.
Where the new opportunities are though are with lateral or horizontal moves where you can grow your experience and influence. This is more in alignment with how organizations are structured.
I have had this discussion with many of our career coaching clients and have seen many of them employ this strategy successfully in advancing their careers. I hope that you can successfully apply it to your career as well
Here is Ron’s article:
What's going on here? Why do people assume that a big title trumps a value-creating initiative? The answer is that hierarchy is more than just a way of designing the organization: It drives how we think about relationships, contribution, careers, and success.
Most of us have grown up assuming that career success is vertical. We climb the ladder and move from junior positions to senior ones. As such, we implicitly compete with others because there are fewer positions as we advance. It's like a reality show where people get kicked off the island.
The problem with this powerful paradigm is that today's work is no longer divided up into small tasks that require higher and higher layers of management to put together. Instead most work is accomplished through horizontal processes that cut across different functions, geographies, and specialties. Therefore real success comes less from controlling people that report to you, and more from the ability to align stakeholders who surround you.
Given the hierarchical structures of most organizations, we will still have upward career paths. More and more however, the real contributors will be the process owners and project leaders that are able to provide horizontal leadership. To support this shift, organizations will need to reward and recognize horizontal contributions as much, if not more, than hierarchical positions. At the same time, each of us will need to overcome our personal assumptions about moving up the career ladder, and think more about how we add value across. When that happens, everyone will congratulate "Bill" about his promotion to the task force leadership role.
What's your view about career progression — should it be "up" or "across"?
