Metaphors offer visuals, insights and lessons. Metaphors provide us a vision of what to expect from work. The career ladder is a great visual metaphor. A person started at the bottom and with the right effort climbed each rung. The career ladder told us what the organization, its work, and expectations were for each of us. The career ladder is pretty much dead. A career more often follows a zig-zag journey of knowledge acquisition and personal fulfillment. However, the ladder metaphor was inspirational because it implied there was always an opportunity for a promotion and a place to go.
One commonly heard metaphor is we’re becoming actors in the theater of work. We’ll move from job to job, project to project much like actors move from play to play, production to production on TV, radio, movies, and Broadway. Some roles are starring – most are supporting.
Or, career moves are described in terms of horizontal or lateral progression in a webbed organization. We start at the middle and move outwards on one of the strands. Sometimes, we detour on a lateral strand to start a new career, job, or even a business. This is happening already.
Or, is your career a patchwork quilt? You develop value-adding skills and move around a chessboard or patchwork quilt. While these metaphors are not as powerful and inspirational as the career ladder, one will arise that most of us will accept.
Life Lesson Earned: What’s your career metaphor? What does that mean for your work, career, and job?