How to stay out of their box (in your career)
The world is desperate to put you into a box and most of us are more than willing to comply. Here's how to stay out of their box. [Work in Progress: Part 08]
Series: Work in Progress | Part: 8 of 10 | Reading Time: 5 mins
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This is the 8th part of the series Work in Progress. Last week, I talked about early stage innovation - what it’s like at the beginning of innovation. Subscribe to get the next part in the series.
Most career advice is about linear careers on a narrow track.
It comes from people who lived through these tracks before. And they pass them on now. It’s the default path that the world tries to push you through.
And while there may have been a time when these tracks worked, they rarely seem to anymore.
“There’s a common misconception that our résumés ought to tell a linear story, free from breaks, twists, and turns. But this assumption is not borne out in reality.” -
, from In Praise of the Meandering Career
I’ve held a dozen different roles, across a dozen different teams. I’ve resisted being classified into one niche, in order to stay out of any box.
This is what I’ve learned…
They want you in a box
The world is desperate to put you into a box and most of us are more than willing to comply. It’s the label(s) by which they can define you. It’s how they understand you.
At work, these boxes are your title, expertise, team, region, or any other way they try to define your turf or lane.
Boxes can be good for you. They create a container for people to understand your value, “as someone in this position should accomplish these things.” And they create guardrails for you to operate within.
You are easier to understand when you have a box around you. You can be put on an org chart, sorted, and ranked based on what you do and your level.
Boxes can be bad for you. If you want something else. If you want to move around. If you want your work (or life) to be diverse. If you like to try new things and learn new subjects. If you simply hate being confined to a box.
The problem comes when you take someone else’s box and carry it with you, sometimes for your entire life (and not know you’re carrying it).
“We are convinced that the only way forward is the path we’ve been on or what we’ve seen people like us do. This is a silent conspiracy that constrains the possibilities of our lives.” -
, from The Pathless Path
How to avoid their box
▸ Collect an identity, but don’t consume it.
At some point, you will have to accept an externally imposed identity (like a title), to help people understand what you do. The key is to keep it external. It’s not “who you are,” it’s just a temporary title that they need (but you don’t).
▸ Think of work as a series of projects, not a series of jobs.
We like to construct our identity like a resume - a list of jobs, from one to the next. Instead, you can think of your work in terms of projects, both within and outside of jobs. This reframes work as something you do, not something you are.
▸ Pull threads of connection.
Your work is connected to other parts of the company or outside with other vendors/suppliers. Get to know the people on the other teams you interact with. Learn their work and what they are trying to accomplish. Go to their team meetings. And be useful back to them. Help them understand how they can interact better with you, and vice versa.
▸ Go deep, but don’t shift your identity.
Maybe you get a chance to do something different, like take over a new team in a new domain. By all means, learn the area as deeply as possible. But there’s a difference between learning and changing your identity. For example, I spent a lot of time learning product design without ever trying to call myself a “Designer.”
▸ Stay wide.
Certain roles drive people into tighter and tighter boxes. A good example are roles that require a very particular type of expertise. But these roles can set you into a track that is hard to get off or expand beyond. Generalist roles with broad scopes (e.g. “General Manager,” “Operations” or “Product”) allow you to cross multiple domains and stay fluid across multiple boxes.
▸ Understand the fundamentals.
Who is the customer? What is the product? How does the business make money? Understanding these basics enables you to play across domains. You not only know where you fit in the grand scheme, but also where everyone else fits. You’d be surprised how many people (even leaders), have their head in the sand about other parts of the business beyond their own.
▸ Unload your turf.
The common advice is to build up your territory of responsibility, which will grant you more seniority. But if you want to take on different stuff, you sometimes need to get rid of the old stuff. That could be discarding old titles or handing the reins of your team to someone else.
▸ Smaller is probably better.
The larger the company gets, the more they’ll want you in a box. In small companies, they are desperate for people to flex to different parts of the organization. As the company grows, specialists get hired in, sometimes pushing generalists out. So there may be a point where the company is no longer a fit for you.
▸ Follow your fulfillment.
Simone Stolzoff writes of meandering careers, and the one common trait among them: high degrees of fulfillment. “When you’re not following the markers of a well-worn trail, it forces you to become acutely aware of your own internal compass.” And when you aren’t judging success by which of their boxes you fit inside, you’ll look instead to finding “purpose, passion, and engagement in (your) work.”
▸ Understand the game, but don’t get caught up in it.
The world is filled with systems that have rules or principles. They are games that can be won. But there’s a difference between learning to play a game, and embedding the game into your identity. The philosopher C. Thi Nguyen shares how we can take on the role of a player and detach from the game: “I can experience the various thrills of the game: the absorption, the intensity, the drama, and the like. But it is only a temporary agency, one that I set up and inhabit for the sake of a particular experience - and, ideally, one I can discard at the end of the game.”
▸ Leave.
Sometimes, this is the only option. And what I’m talking about next week…
Further Reading
The Pathless Path, by Paul Millerd
In Praise of the Meandering Career, by Simone Stolzoff
Games: Agency as Art, by C. Thi Nguyen
Next up, I’m going to talk about the tricky topic of when to leave:
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Note: views are my own and do not represent the views of any companies or people referenced within.
I like the idea of thinking of work as a series of projects and not jobs. Also your observation about pulling on the threads of connection, this is something I do deliberately. Well said Rick!
The idea of temporarily adopting a persona, without accepting it as your identity is an important divide to move away from black-and-white thinking (something I catch myself with)