Crafting A Career Thats A Fascinating Journey

Elaine Backman
November 20, 2017
Vinod Parmeshwars career at Oxfam America has been a fascinating
journey. He began by helping set up a large microfinance program for the
organization. From there, he moved into communications, serving as
Oxfam Americas first brand manager. He then became deputy director of
the policy and campaigns division. The next stop on Vinods fascinating
journey was human resources, which he now heads up. When he spoke
with us about his career for our latest updates to Harvard ManageMentor,
he explained:
My journey has been propelled, in part, by my own values and how I
preferred to move in the absence of what I would call a conventional
career, a linear career trajectory where you go from an officer to a manager
to a director to the vice president, et cetera. For me, the important piece is
that I've never had a long-term career plan. And the reason I feel
comfortable in that is that I've always felt I need to keep the avenues open
for myself. The next role has always to be something that aligns with my
values as well as my needs, both personal and professional, at that point in
time.
The shift from the ladder to the lattice
Vinods description of his career is in sync with the emerging view of
todays changing career patterns. Traditionally, career progression was
moving up the ladder. An employee would spend time in a given role and
making it to the next rung on the ladder was based on past performance.
In todays world, careers look more like a lattice than a ladder, and the
progression is no longer a straight line. People may move up, move
laterally, or even temporarily move downward as they take greater control
of determining their career paths.
One reason underlying the shift from ladder to lattice has been the
changing nature of work. Todays organizations are flatter, more team-
based, and faster-paced. Assignments and roles change more frequently.
And promotion depends not just on past performance, but on the ability to
take on new challenges.
Learning agility: a lattice-based career requirement
Having a successful lattice-based career requires building your learning
agility.
Vinod is a great example of an agile learner, someone who embraces
curiosity and actively pursues personal interests, acquiring knowledge that
may become relevant as new career opportunities open up. As Vinod
pointed out, learning is very important as a value to me. When a new
opportunity emerged, if he felt the next job would allow him to learn
something new, and thereby add value to myself, he pursued it.
Other hallmarks of an agile learner include:
Building an intellectually diverse network and tapping it for multiple
opinions
When facing a challenge, not jumping on the first solution
Dampening natural defensiveness against new approaches
Accepting that you will make mistakes along the way
Searching for lessons in unsuccessful and successful outcomes
Research has shown that developing a growth mindset is an important pre-
requisite for learning agility. When you have a growth mindset, you assume
that your abilities can be improved through self-awareness, hard work, and
the help of others. Armed with growth mindsets, agile learners often
engage in job crafting, achieving learning objectives by focusing on tasks
with the biggest learning payoffs and building relationships with people with
diverse viewpoints or skills they want to learn.
With the emergence of the latticed career model, weve updated our Career
Management topic in Harvard ManageMentor to reflect the importance of
learning agility in moving to that all-important next step in your career.
Is career progression in your organization lattice-based, ladder-based, or a
combination of both? Whats your take on the importance of learning agility
to your career?
Elaine Backman is a project editor with Harvard Business Publishing
Education. Email her at elaine.backman@hbsp.harvard.edu.