Main Content

CAREER TRACK R.I.P.

Multiple Stories to Career Building

Socioeconomic changes have altered people’s priorities and their conception of professional development.

Steve Jobs’ extraordinary story of professional achievement was already legendary long before his death on October 5, 2011 at the age of 56. A college dropout, Jobs founded Apple computer with partner Steve Wozniak at the age of 21. By 27, he was one of the world’s youngest millionaires. In 1985, he was forced out by Apple’s board, only to return 11 years later. In the intervening years, he had acquired Pixar animation studios, which Disney bought from him in 2006 for $7 billion. Following his return to Apple, Jobs led the company to phenomenal success, despite ongoing health problems that ultimately claimed his life.

Jobs’ unconventional curriculum vitae is illustrative of how professional life is changing: the conception of a career trajectory as a continuous upward progression on a pre-set track barely exists anymore. Today, it is more accurate to talk about career ‘paths’ that are flexible and adaptable to personal needs. This paradigm shift is directly linked to radical trends in markets, products and society.

Given these new realities, there are various things that people can and should be doing to make themselves more employable over the course of their lifetimes. And there are also things that companies should be doing to foster greater employability and more harmonious career transitions.

Widening the Path

For decades, career success was associated with climbing the corporate ladder, and achievement was measured in terms of responsibility and remuneration. To succeed, a person had to invest time and effort in the same industry, often with the same firm. Today, success can no longer be conceived in these terms. Product and service life cycles have been drastically curtailed and globalized markets are developing quickly. As a result, investing in knowledge that cannot be used across industries or companies is fruitless.

In a business world where companies and entire industries are regularly shaken up, approaching career success as a single investment in just one area is risky, to say the least.

One example is Samsung, the South Korean consumer electronics giant that has announced a move toward solar panels, energy-saving LED lighting, medical devices, biotech drugs and batteries for electric cars. According to its patriarch and chairman, Lee Kun-Hee, “The majority of our products today will be gone in 10 years.” To survive, an article in The Economist pointed out, the company must go in new directions, opening itself up to work with new partners and acquiring new skills. The same applies to individuals.

Leaving the Rat Race Behind

For many, the term career evokes the image of a race involving a group of individuals who set off from the same starting point, but there can only ever be one winner. Designing a career plan based on this premise implies that everyone is in the same race together, with each having the same time and energy to devote to reaching the same end goal. While this idea of the career track was prevalent during the 1980s and early ’90s, much has changed since then.

Instead of racing against others, it is now about following your own path and achieving the goals that you consider to be worthwhile for your particular circumstances. In this way, career success becomes less dependent on earning the recognition of others, and more about setting individual goals and deciding for yourself which path you will take to achieve those goals.

Under this definition, we must recognize that what once counted as success may be worthless in directing today’s paths. For example, accumulating a stock of sector-specific knowledge is not nearly as important as having a breadth of experiences. Success depends not so much on knowing something here and now, as having the capacity to learn whatever is needed at any given moment — in other words, learning how to learn.

The Keys to Retaining Talent

Individual career paths are heavily influenced by the organizational environment. Our research has yielded four organizational features whose presence favours — and whose absence decisively hinders — the development of satisfying professional paths.

1. Offer ‘Feasible Flexibility’. The percentage of households with dependents, which includes single parents, is on the rise. Furthermore, with longer life expectancy, 85 per cent of households are also caring for elderly relatives. This brings a redistribution of tasks within the home and additional responsibilities for both partners.

The workers most affected by this trend are those in their 30s and 40s. They have family commitments, be it small children or elderly parents, as well as financial commitments, requiring them to take on heavier workloads in return for promotion or higher pay. One solution to deal with the difficulties arising from this situation is ‘feasible flexibility’ – arrangements designed to allow people to meet their personal or professional obligations, without having to sacrifice either sphere for the sake of the other. It ensures that people can tap into vital support mechanisms, especially when that support comes from the family or external social networks.

Let’s face it: not everybody needs to be in the same place at the same time to get a job done. In any organization, the proportion of jobs and tasks that require a person to be physically present is relatively small. With few exceptions, there is usually some way in which we can improve the balance between work and family life and make our companies more flexible, both in terms of time and space.

The need for flexibility will only become greater, as those currently in their teens and 20s enter the labour market. This tech-savvy generation uses information technology extensively, and actively builds relationships via informal channels and social media networks, and as such, they will work far more effectively in flexible environments.

2. Foster Development-Oriented Relationships. People are both rational and relational beings. We learn and improve through self-reflection, acquisition of theoretical knowledge, practice and interpersonal relationships. The latter are an endless source of learning. Through them, we learn about ourselves, understand others’ interests and beliefs, and get to know the wider social, political and economic realm in which we operate. We also develop skills such as communication and delegation, while practicing empathy and patience in the process.

Companies can foster the exchange of experience and knowledge by becoming actively involved in industry and professional associations, or by setting up common interest groups among employees. Hewlett-Packard and Eli Lilly have been building such networks for years, not always directly linked to professional concerns. Some networks come from simple things such as language classes, which bring together different types of people from different departments; sports tournaments, in which all employees are invited to participate; or cultural outings, which are open to employees’ families. Ideally, these networks will include different sorts of people, giving access to multiple sources of support and fresh viewpoints.

At Ernst & Young, each employee is assigned a counselor whose job is to guide that employee during his or her time with the company, giving feedback on performance, designing an annual action plan and reviewing it every six months. Similarly, at KPMG, each consultant rotates across different projects, and it is the counselor’s job to ensure that the consultant learns from each experience by checking on progress in conjunction with the project leader. It is important to note that such programs should not be linked to remuneration or promotion, which would distract employees from pursuing the true goal — their personal and professional development.

3. Ensure Visibility and Transparency. As you make your way along your path, you constantly need to scan the horizon to see what’s coming your way and try to guess which way markets and technologies will go. In times of crisis, companies may go into ‘lockdown mode’, making it difficult for employees to find the challenging projects and support they need. Yet that need not be the case. There are things that even companies in crisis can do, such as reassigning tasks and projects among different members of a team, rotating employees between jobs, encouraging geographic mobility through external assignments and assembling multidisciplinary teams.

Speaking at IESE, Rolf Breuer once described the process he used when he was CEO of Deutsche Bank: he identified 20 high-fliers from different areas of the bank and divided them up into four groups of five. Then he tasked them with finding solutions to the major strategic challenges for which he himself had no ready answers. Each team was mentored by a senior executive.

In this way, Breuer didn’t just issue a clear challenge; he also assigned specific support. The teams worked on the task for a whole year, mostly through online channels. Team members were geographically dispersed and had to keep up with their own ongoing responsibilities. Finally, at the bank’s annual executive committee meeting, each team presented its recommendations for all to debate and discuss. Through its CEO Challenge, Deutsche Bank found a way to visibly and transparently develop up-and-coming career paths.

4. Encourage Diversity. Companies have a duty to create environments in which diversity can flourish. Unfortunately, at many companies, diversity is suppressed. It is a sad truth, for instance, that women stand less of a chance of being promoted than men, as studies by IESE and others have shown. An article in The Economist recently acknowledged that, “the number of female bosses of large firms remains stubbornly small. Not a single one on France’s CAC 40 share index or on Germany’s DAX index is run by a woman. In America, only 15 chief executives of Fortune 500 companies are women. Britain does better, but not much: five of the FTSE-100 firms have female bosses.”

But gender is just one aspect of diversity. According to Anna Ruewell, head of BP’s talent development program, diversity comprises more than gender, race, education or nationality; it encompasses the whole way that people process information, analyze problems, search for solutions and view the world. Working with people who have contrasting views, experiences, capabilities and leadership styles is a challenge that enriches both the individuals involved and the decisions they make. Diverse environments protect against the dangers of groupthink — when people with uniform views seek to impose unanimity — and polarization — when groups are driven to extremes that individual members would be much less willing to accept. When these things happen, learning is nullified and decision making is impoverished.

In closing

As indicated herein, there is no place in the future of talent management for a one-size-fits all approach. The career track has had its day. It is time for companies to create environments in which people can pursue professional paths adapted to their individual circumstances.

Modern talent management entails fostering flexibility, development-oriented relationships, visibility and transparency, and diversity management. Integrating these elements in a dynamic fashion that recognizes individual needs will enable your organization to meet the challenges of the future.

 


Mireia Las Heras is an assistant professor of Managing People in Organizations at IESE in Barcelona, Spain, and academic director of the IESE International Center for Work and Family. This article first appeared in IESE Insight (Issue 12, 2012.) This excerpt is taken from the approved reprint in the Winter 2013 issue of Rotman Management. To subscribe: www.rotmanmagazine.ca