“People spend their whole lives climbing that ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. – Thomas Merton
As a child of the 1970s-80s I was brought up to believe the “right” path to success was to attend a good college after high school and a wonderful world of job opportunity doors would magically open upon graduation. It sounded like a solid plan until my generation entered an historically lousy job market thanks to the glut of Baby Boomers who didn’t retire or move on to greener pastures as predicted.
What’s funny is this: Even now, 30+ years later, Generation X – my generation – is still reeling from the effects of these same Boomers quite simply refusing to retire.
And, you know what? That’s OK! Because as a fantastically resilient generation we decided to toss aside the traditional career ladder playbook and chart our own course – much to the dismay of our Traditionalist parents.
But we X’ers had a front row seat to shifting workforce dynamics. We witnessed the erosion of two-way loyalty between employees and employers as parents were severed from their companies after 20+ years of service, back-breaking work and thankless hours. In many cases, those same companies and jobs are the reason we grew up as latch-key kids, products of dual-income households sometimes out of financial necessity and sometimes out of the increasing female empowerment movement.
My generation decided to view the career ladder as more of a garden trellis, where the vines of our careers could grow free, wild, and feed off any and all nourishment, education, and experiences.
Yes, our exodus from the traditional corporate workforce has left a bit of a leadership void. Where are all the mid-level executives meant to fill those succession bench charts? Oh, we are off running our own start-ups, thank you very much.
What does this mean for the companies who are feverishly attempting to create internal career paths for their employees? (Note: I used to be one of those HR executives who led these types of career path projects.) It means it’s time to stop thinking about careers as a linear, straight-line ladder. It is time to recognize experience IS education, concerns about “gaps in employment” is total BS, and you can pretty much teach anything about an industry, processes, or product.
Leadership – of self and others – is the hot commodity and it comes in many forms. It’s developed through time spent volunteering in the community, or running a corporate technology conversion project, or managing the sale of your aging parents’ house while placing them into long-term care, or coaching in a youth soccer league.
It also means it’s time to stop front loading hiring processes with behavioral interviewing questions that are grounded solely in corporate experience. It’s time to change the algorithm on the resume screening ‘bots to recognize the multiple dimensions of experience that comprise the “what” on people’s resumes.
More than anything, it’s time to stop thinking of work as a “family” where everyone MUST. BE. LOYAL. It is time to instead recognize each job is another rung – sometimes lateral and sometimes diagonal – on a person’s career journey.
Our lives and our careers are no longer dictated by a ladder that leads in one direction, up one wall, that may or may not lead to the right destination. It is time to embrace the fully blooming trellis – one that creates multiple paths over the course of a lifetime.
