Activate your career lattice with boundary spanning thinking

The problem:

Many civil servants spend most of their time nose down, doing their work. They’ve heard that excellent work is its own reward and that accomplishment can’t fail to be noticed. Yet, it’s easy for reliable producers to be taken for granted. When they lift their heads and look around, they may feel that they’ve been left behind.

Why it matters:

The organization depends on talented, reliable employees who are reasonably content and do not spend all their time jobhunting. Human capital departments are keenly aware of the need to retain such employees and provide opportunities for continued learning and growth, yet there’s only so much HR is equipped to do at any given time.

A solution:

Employees could exercise agency by recasting their career goals from ladder (up) to lattice (up, down, and sideways), dedicating a small portion of each week to boundary spanning intended to discover previously unseen aspects of organizational territory. This refreshing practice could prepare them to request new career conversations with their supervisors.

Rethink your possibilities.

Do you feel taken for granted and overlooked? There is a constructive way to create a win/win for you and the organization. You win by injecting fresh air and movement into your situation; your organization wins because you’ve begun taking action that will eventually add more value.

Many of my former colleagues thought that the only way to advance was to climb the ladder; I took a different path and had many opportunities, with increasing pay, until I retired. Both approaches are valid. If you’ve had your heart set on an executive position for years, there are approaches that do not involve surrendering your unique strengths. Or, maybe your priority is to experience novelty, or be in the room where important decisions are made, or have influence. Unless you want to spend years waiting for the right opportunity to fall in your lap, while you become ever more morose, you will have to take action. But what can you do?

Employees can usually envision how the career ladder relates to their hierarchy: W reports to X supervisor, who reports up to Y manager, who reports up to Z executive, or something similar. They also may be aware of other parts of the hierarchy outside their chain of command, and have vague notions of what it would be like to be “Z,” somewhere.

Our purpose here is not to discuss the dynamics of accomplishments and stretch opportunities that can put people on the fast track; it is to consider how to begin thinking about the informal network of people that’s baked into every hierarchy so that they can tap into it. Think about it: do X, Y, and Z only ever talk to others who are above or below them on the org chart? If you are not talking with colleagues who work in other components, what would it take, and how could you start?

Prepare for a new kind of career conversation.

You could decide to do some groundwork for a new conversation with your supervisor, stoking your curiosity by learning more about what different parts of the organization do. Read Aligned boundary spanning is more effective: Understanding alignment is a source of strength if you need ideas about how to start. Pay attention to which aspects of the work, or the unit it occurs in, attract you, and figure out why. Could you see yourself doing something similar right where you are, with a tweaked position description that reinvigorates your career, or would you have to move? If you’d have to move, what kind of preparation would you need first, if any? Might you decide to reach out to someone “over there” who could fill you in? And so on.

Write down such questions, and any discussion points, without editing – get everything down in writing. Then, you can draw from what you’ve written down to make notes for your discussion with the boss. Once you’ve done that, and you’ve envisioned the sorts of things you’d like to ask for, request a conversation. If all you want is a new lease on life, remember that. If you think you need to expand in a particular way in order to keep growing, remember that.

Why does this work?

Although it can be hard to believe some days, the organization values you – it needs some talented, reliable employees who consistently do excellent work. In fact, the author of Radical Candor, Kim Scott, refers to people like you as “Rock Stars” for this reason! If you can bring creative ideas to the table and work out solutions together with your supervisor, it creates a win/win for all parties and boosts confidence and energy to create a path that’s uniquely yours. You owe it to yourself to do this from time to time, whether or not you’re aiming for the corner office. And if it doesn’t work the first time, don’t give up.

This post is written by Kitty Wooley, founder of the Senior Fellows and Friends network and a retired civil servant in the US federal government