Why Would I Do That?
Emma’s Dilemma
I met Emma in a small conference area, and the expression of pain on her face sucked out what little fresh air was left in the room. Emma—not her real name—was a member of an engineering team in a biotech company I was working with several years ago. She found out she did not get the promotion she was “promised.” The most frustrating part was that she had met all her goals that year. As I recall, this was not a situation where several people were competing for one job. This was about moving to the next level. She was devastated. She felt this was not fair. When I asked if she had ever talked directly with her boss over the past year about what it would take to get promoted, the answer was a resounding “no,” followed by complete silence, then after a few moments, “Why would I do that?”
Not getting a promotion is a big deal. It’s a blow any way you describe it. Some people back up, take stock, and figure out what it will take to move forward. Others quit and go to another organization, hoping to get back on the bandwagon someplace else. Some jump and become entrepreneurs and business owners. Others are stuck and feel defeated, depressed, and uncertain about what they really want to do. And some people will carve a nontraditional path forward, motivated by something more deeply personal.
Success contributes to our need to feel valued. Striving for success in the workplace—what we “do for a living”—plays a major role in how we define personal success. We need to feel good about who we are. We need to know that we matter and that people see us, acknowledge us and our contributions, and appreciate us for who we are and what we do. Without this, we are forced to run our own race, to do our best to separate ourselves from the pack, and to constantly take note of who’s ahead of us and who’s behind us.
Did Emma think she failed to get a promotion, or did she consider herself a failure? I suppose the only way to know for sure is to have asked her at the time. I was too busy trying to give her a pep talk about what to do rather than understanding her personal situation. In hindsight, it’s that understanding that has inspired me to write this book.
My purpose is to:
1. Validate the hazards in climbing the corporate ladder.
2. Propose a different approach to career development.
3. Describe the principles, practices, and skills needed to engage in work with meaning and purpose.
We will also explore the broader challenge issued by Clayton Christensen, former professor at Harvard Business School, to consider “how will you measure your life?”1
Our sense of success and value is tested in times of turbulence. We couldn’t share a more common experience than what we lived with in 2020. We climbed Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, moving from safety and security to feelings of self-esteem and purpose, only to get pushed off and start over.2 Jobs were lost, living situations shattered, and livelihoods destroyed. In times like these, feeling valued is a distant second to survival. It’s hard to dig deep when you’re digging out.
How we navigate our careers and sense of success is tested through a more enduring and treacherous type of turbulence—the climb up the corporate ladder. The climb requires accumulating and tracking personal accomplishments, much like a person collects wine or baseball cards. We refer to these achievements by many names—goals, objectives, outcomes, deliverables, results, and resumes. These are manifestations of our American belief system. Put your shoulder to the wheel. Persist. Work hard, and you can be anything you want. The sky is the limit.
The problem is—the ladder is a mirage. It is based on a set of material rewards that, over time, lose their motivational power. It is an illusion, where the top is invisible to all but a few. Different rungs are all too similar in their exclusivity, especially at the higher levels. Women and people of color have known this and experienced this, forever.3 The climb itself is treacherous, often an expedition into territory where mergers, acquisitions, restructures, natural disasters, economic upheavals, and leaps in technology render certain jobs useless and skill sets obsolete. At one time, ladders were images of certainty and predictability. Today’s social awakening and economic uncertainty expose the ladder for what it is—the road to not good enough.
There’s no fixing the Ladder, no industrial strength glue to put it back together, no pregame motivational speech like, “it’s time for the tough to get going,” something I was attempting to do with Emma. No. This is a new era, a time to challenge and support individuals who want to, who need to, and who will contribute to something bigger than themselves.
Look to the horizon of the workplace and you will see two groups of people. One is a group of recent college graduates with different expectations than their predecessors.4 The other is a group of employers engaged in a war for hiring and retaining them. Graduates are looking for engaging work. And they aren’t the only ones. Are organizations able to deliver? Will signing bonuses and double lattes sweeten the deal?
Amid the flurry of different expectations and the havoc created by the pandemic, here is one principle everyone needs to frame and steady their situation: Only one person is responsible for your career development. You. Your boss and your organization may have your best interests at heart, but they can’t control what’s important to you or make future promises about where your career will head. Neither can your significant other, friends, mentors, or your mother.
We will discuss how to find other options to waiting your turn to climb the ladder. Moving forward doesn’t mean moving upward. You’ll see how people with different backgrounds and interests have pursued purpose and meaning wherever it has taken them.
Looking at success in the workplace started long before you walked through the door to your first job and stared up at the Ladder. For most of your life you have been engaged in two games—the game of Education, which I refer to as Achieve and Advance, and the game of Climbing the Corporate Ladder, the Road to Not Good Enough. After a brief background on American beliefs and the construction of the corporate ladder in Chapter 1, Chapters 2 and 3 discuss these games, how they shape what people do, and their impact on how and who defines personal success.
Chapter 4 begins the discussion of the third game— Ladderburning—Pursuing Work with Meaning and Purpose—a different approach to career development. Then, we’ll move to the principles and skill sets Ladderburners need to cultivate in Chapters 5 to 9. These chapters describe each of these steps with case stories and recommendations for what you can do.
In the war for talent, organizations are spending millions to figure out how to engage employees—to get them to join and then get them to stay. I will make a case that we need a different perspective on personal motivation: the pursuit of meaningful work is an individual, not an organizational, responsibility.
Food for Thought
As you contemplate your career development:
1. How do you define success in your professional life?
2. What is the role of the corporate ladder in this process?
3. Why do professionals leave something as important as their jobs and careers in the hands of other people to decide their value?
4. What types of thinking or experiences have Emma and millions of her colleagues had that would lead them to believe “a good job should speak for itself”?
5. At what point do personal and professional success merge?
6. How will you measure your life? I’ll ask this again later.