So I recently attended what we call a "Lunch and Learn" where we had a speaker come in and talk about his career. He was interesting because he's had a very diverse career path. He started at the plant, went to R&D, into marketing, and now back into package development, where he loves it. He's now a Section Head. One of the older audience members asked him if he knew then what he knows now, would he still take the marketing assignment... He said yes, but earlier. The person pushed some more, but he wouldn't budge on still taking the marketing assignment.
This is one of my pet peeves... this idea of you don't want to move around, stay where you are, gain deep mastery. People point to the fact that people who stayed in one place are more successful. There's a flaw to that logic. I would argue that people are more successful when their talents and their passions are aligned with the job they're in. Right out of school, you're placed in a job almost by random chance. If that job is a place that fits your passions and talents, then you'll be successful, and be one of those people who stayed in one place and got successful.
But what if you're a square peg, and placed in a forest of round holes? You hammer away and never fit. So you move to the next round hole. Never fit. Should you stick around until you're all hammered out? Or should you keep moving until you find your square hole?
The problem is first, when you're new, you don't know you're in a forest of round holes. And you don't know what that forest looks like. Plus you get all this advice about staying in one place until you gain deep mastery. Then you get hammered and hammered and never fit. Then you get rated "below expectations" and then you get even more scrutinized (and hammered even harder).
I think people need to be constantly discovering themselves, and as they do it, move around. If the rest of the people in the company would embrace that discovery process, it would help these people who lost the dice roll find their square holes faster, and improve the productivity of the company.
And yes, my career at P&G is a perfect example of this.
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2 comments:
I think that in an ideal world, everyone would search until they found their square hole - that's what would make them happiest in terms of their career.
The problem for most people is that life gets in the way and they find their time, talents, and energy being divided among different areas (and for some, this isn't really a problem). In terms of their career, if they can make the round hole work and be pretty good at it, it works for them because it allows them to do things like, buy their house, play with their kids, or practice their instrument several hours a week.
i agree with your comments. I think the only reason to stay around one place would be because you love love love that item and actually enjoy learning more about it specifically. career advancement is sure to follow if you're any good at it though.
i do think that people with many experiences bring more to the table though in general.
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