Sarah Ellis and Helen Tupper The best career path isnt always a straight line TED
Transcriber:
Helen Tupper: 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,
Sarah Ellis: … and I’m
an introverted ideas person
who finds extroverts energizing
but a bit intimidating.
HT: Despite our differences, we both had
an ambition to climb the ladder
and have a successful career.
SE: 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 the 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.
HT: 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.
SE: 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.
HT: 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.
SE: 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 100 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 estimates
that 50 percent of the skills
that we have right now
won’t be relevant by 2025.
HT: 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.
SE: 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 podcasts you’re listening to.
Your learning is personal to you.
And the good news is, your development
is no longer dependent on other people.
HT: 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 Teixeira, 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.”
SE: 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?”
HT: 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.
SE: 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
at 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.”
HT: 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 mold.
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 100 years.
What we need now is more
than a radical rethink.
We need a radical redo,
and change comes from action.
SE: 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.
HT: 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.
SE: It’s finally time for us all
to step off the ladder
and into the squiggle.