Why squiggly careers are better for everyone
[Music]
when we met at university
20 years ago we made for unlikely
friends
i’m an extrovert who gets involved in
everything and talks to anyone
and i’m an introverted ideas person who
finds extroverts
energizing but a bit intimidating
despite our differences
we both had an ambition to climb the
ladder and have a successful career
we were motivated by how far and how
fast we could progress
and we thought that our route to the top
would look something a bit like this
and in those first few years of work we
were all about promotions and pay rises
we were preoccupied by the positions
that we held and
how senior our job titles sounded and on
the surface
everything seemed to be on track but we
started to get this sense
that the ladder might actually be
holding us back
the obvious next step wasn’t always the
most appealing
and we were both excited about exploring
opportunities that weren’t necessarily
based on what we’d done before
it wasn’t what we’d anticipated but our
careers had started
to look and feel much more like this
squiggly a squiggly career is
both full of uncertainty and full of
possibility
change is happening all of the time some
of it is in our control and some of it’s
not
success isn’t one size fits all our
squiggles are as individual as we are
and for me that’s meant a career where
i’ve moved from working on foldable
credit cards in one company
they didn’t catch on to building and
launching a loyalty app for another
and that one is still going and i’ve
moved from
making magazines to working on food
waste
from a five to a four day week so i
could spend more time on personal
projects and volunteering
i’ve already had more jobs and worked in
more organizations
than my dad and he’s been working for
twice as long as i have
and i’m the rule not the exception when
we started to share the idea of squiggly
careers with people
we were surprised by how much it stuck
it seemed to give people
something that perhaps they didn’t even
know that they needed
a way of describing both their
experiences and their aspirations
someone even told us that they took our
book which has a big squiggle on the
front of it
into a job interview as a way of
describing their career
so far but we underestimated one big
problem the legacy of the ladder is all
around us
it’s in the companies that we work in
and the conversations that we have
it sounds like being asked in a job
interview where do you see yourself
in five years time it’s the
uncomfortable question of how we reward
and motivate people who do a great job
but don’t want to be promoted
and it’s the unfairness of our learning
being unlocked by the level that we
reach in an organization
career ladders were created as a way to
manage and motivate
a whole new generation of workers in the
early 1900s
and that world of conformity and control
from over a hundred years ago
is unrecognizable today especially when
we consider
only six percent of people in the uk now
work nine to five
we can all expect to have five different
types of career
and the world economic forum estimate
that fifty percent of the skills that we
have right now
won’t be relevant by 2025.
ladders are limiting they limit learning
and they limit opportunity
and if organizations don’t lose the
ladder they will
lose their people the people that are
always
adapting that never stop learning and
who are
open to the opportunities that come
their way
2020 disrupted the way that all of us
work
and none of us know what will happen
next but one thing we can be confident
about
is that the ladder is a redundant
concept of careers
losing the ladder starts with redefining
our relationship with learning at work
we all now have the chance to curate our
own curriculums
and we can be really creative about what
that looks like whether it’s the ted
talks that you’re watching
the books and blogs you’re reading the
podcast you’re listening to
your learning is personal to you and the
good news is
your development is no longer dependent
on other people
our learning can’t be limited by the
level we reach in an organization
or only available to the fortunate few
it’s not the responsibility of a single
department
and it doesn’t just happen when you go
on a course
no one has a monopoly on wisdom in
squiggly careers
everybody is a learner and everybody is
a teacher
we’ve been inspired by mvf a global
technology and marketing company
who’ve introduced a program called
connected learning
they blind match their employees so that
people can learn from each other
without barriers like what job they do
or who they know getting
in the way their ceo michael tuxera told
us
everybody is in charge of their own
learning here we all learn
from each other and with each other and
we’re much better off as a result
in squiggly careers we need to change
our perspective on progression
the problem with career ladders is that
they only go in one direction
and you can only take one step at a time
if progression
purely means promotion we miss out on so
many of the opportunities that are all
around us
we need to stop asking only what job
comes next
and start asking what career
possibilities am i curious about
exploring our career possibilities
increases our resilience
it gives us more options and you create
more connections
we see how we can use our strengths in
new ways and spot the skills that might
be useful for our future
we can all start exploring our career
possibilities
it might be an ambitious possibility
that you don’t feel ready for yet
or perhaps it’s a pivot that feels
interesting
but just that bit out of reach or maybe
it’s a dream that you’ve discounted
the most important thing is that you
give yourself the permission to explore
and this is not a one-way street we need
support
from the people that we work for and the
organizations that we work in
and we’ve seen how this can work in
practice a food manufacturer called cook
they have something called the dream
academy
and in this academy their colleagues can
explore
any career that they’re intrigued by in
or out of the organization
and even rediscover abandoned ambitions
it could be
to try stand-up comedy to write their
first children’s book
to move from marketing to finance become
the ceo
nothing is off the table one employee
said
the dream academy didn’t open doors for
me
it helped me to have the confidence to
open them for myself
in career ladders our identity can
become about the titles that we’ve held
rather than the talents that we have
everyone is talented
and we can use those talents in many
ways we don’t need to constrain our
careers
in the words of my favorite band
fleetwood mac you can go your
own way one of the things that sticks
with me
from my time at microsoft is that i’d go
into the office
and i’d see a sign that said come as you
are and do what you love
and this was more than just words on a
wall as a non-techie
with a podcast on the side i certainly
brought something different to the
organization
but my uniqueness was embraced and there
was no pressure to fit
a perfect mould i felt like i could be
open about what i wanted to do and where
i wanted to go
even if that was different to everybody
else
in squiggly careers there is room for
everybody to succeed
and no two squiggles are the same the
ladder
has been holding us back for far too
long but
it’s not easy to change something that’s
been around for over a hundred years
what we need now is more than a radical
rethink
we need a radical redo and change comes
from action
together we have an ambition to make
careers better
for everyone and we’ve seen just what’s
possible when people let go of the
ladder
we see people who define their own
success and take control of their
careers
and we see organizations who benefit
from adaptable employees
who are curious confident and
continually learning
we want to ask you to become an advocate
for squiggly careers
you might be a manager who could help
somebody to explore their career
possibilities
or maybe you’re a mentor and you can
give someone the confidence to see how
they can use their talents in new ways
and now that we’re all teachers let’s
share what we know
so that everybody can succeed
it’s finally time for us all to step off
the ladder
and into the
thank squiggle