Why zigzagging is key to a successful career

What We’re Told: “There’s nowhere to go but up.”



This refrain has its roots at rock bottom. It’s something we hear when things are at their worst. It’s what we tell each other (or ourselves) to inspire a belief that things will get better. But in the workplace, it describes the mindset that many people have when it comes to the ideal career trajectory . To get ahead and grow on the job, the thinking goes, we have to move up vertically. We have to pick a single path—and once we do, we have to stay the course. Doing otherwise, we’re told, is a distraction that will keep us from reaching the top of whatever mountain we’re climbing.



The Truth: “Success has multiple directions.”



Although many of us may have first encountered the “zigzag” as a roadside warning sign in driver’s ed, zigzagging is in fact an excellent way to plot a career.



Unfortunately, many people are convinced that the only way forward at work is up. It’s not surprising why. Almost all the language we use to describe professional progress is vertical. We get raises and promotions for a job well done. If we need more training to do our work (or to do it better), that’s called upskilling. We ask if a company or industry offers upward mobility. Perhaps most importantly, we grow up believing that our careers will—and should—resemble a ladder: We begin our lives on the bottom rung, and if all goes according to plan, we follow a vertical, linear trajectory until we reach the top of our department, our company, even our industry. We rise, we ascend, we move up.



As a result, ambitious professionals are obsessed with increasing responsibilities, seniority, and pay while climbing step by sequential step and succeeding rung by rung. We seek out a specialty and then stick to it, hopeful we’ll be rewarded for staying the course.



In corporate lingo, the phrase for this trajectory and mindset is vertical growth .



But there are some real pitfalls involved with this approach to professional progress. What if the role we’ve spent our entire career mastering gets automated one day? What if the company we’ve dedicated our entire career to suddenly goes bankrupt or gets bought? What if the industry to which we’ve dedicated our entire career becomes obsolete? What if we get to the top of the ladder and realize we don’t like it, but we have nothing to fall back on?



Horizontal growth , on the other hand, describes the less traditional, less well-trodden career moves we’re less inclined to make and often resist—the ones that bring us neither a more prestigious title nor a better salary. Instead, they bring us to a new department, division, company, or even industry without an accompanying promotion or obvious value proposition.



By most tangible metrics, horizontal growth often doesn’t feel like growth at all, especially not in the moment. In my experience, though, lateral career moves can also serve as a step up. When approached and executed the right way, horizontal growth can become what I call diagonal growth—and enable us to progress professionally further, faster, and in a much more secure manner than a vertical upward path ever could.



That’s because with a career that zigzags we’re adding breadth and not just height. The goal isn’t to move up, necessarily, at least not exclusively or immediately. It’s to gain vast experience, learn new and varied skills, and get exposed to a variety of people inside and outside our organization—people we might not have encountered, connected with, or learned from had we marched straight up to the top.



By zigzagging, we’re not climbing a ladder—we’re spinning a career web, one that can extend infinitely in any direction, with many options for development and progress. It isn’t just more exciting and interesting than the alternative. It also opens us up to a world of possibilities that might have otherwise remained impossibly out of reach. By the way: It’s way less roundabout and indirect than it may seem.



While I believe the start of our careers is all about following the opportunities to figure out what it is we love and want to do with our lives, I believe the rest of our careers should be about expanding the possibilities we have and maximizing our potential. We can only do that by zigzagging and crisscrossing, rather than walking in a straight and narrow line.



What it looks like is different for everyone. But generally zigzagging means remaining a generalist—at least for a little while—and fighting the urge to find a niche too early. As David Epstein , author of Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World , argues, limiting our expertise and experience to a single subject or skill set can end up constructing an artificial ceiling on our growth and hold us down.



It may seem like specialists, who identify and start working toward a goal quickly, have a leg up. But according to Epstein, they tend to plateau earlier. Generalists—who experience a “sampling period” in their professional lives that helps them recognize and continue to refine their interests and abilities—tend to surpass them. By remaining open to other possibilities and getting a variety of preparation, training, and experience, generalists gain an advantage. In short: The skill that serves people most in the workplace is, as Epstein’s title puts it, range.



And we get that range by zigzagging. By familiarizing ourselves with topics that aren’t in our purview, learning skills that aren’t in our job description, and seeking out (or simply saying yes to) unexpected responsibilities in a role we already hold—and unexpected roles relative to our interests.



Occasionally, that requires us to leave our jobs entirely. It’s a sad and sorry fact that women are less likely than men to become CEOs by moving up internally in an organization. More often, we end up leading when we come in from the outside. So if leading is our goal, we have to leave where we are to get where we want to be.



But even if our ambition isn’t to become chief executive or join the C-suite, there are reasons to depart a comfortable position rather than stay. As every good zigzagger knows, our jobs shouldn’t be measured by how long we’ve worked somewhere but by what we’ve learned and accomplished . . . and how much is left for us to keep learning and keep accomplishing. Once there isn’t much left—or once it becomes clear that there’s more potential for challenge, fulfillment, and growth elsewhere—it’s time to go. If we’re bored, we’re getting stale. If we’re coasting, we’re not staying sharp. And disinterest and disengagement don’t go unnoticed, at least not for long.



Hopping from one role, one company, even one industry to the next may still feel risky. But in many ways, zigzagging is the modern career path . With technology evolving at the speed of light, entire sectors of business rising and falling with the click of a button, and jobs that took years to train for disappearing or morphing into something else entirely, the best way to survive and make ourselves more valued and valuable is to be a zigzagger—to expand our options, pursue every possibility, and stay open to the potential of our destination changing—all while truly being made better by our journey.



The world of work has always been ever-changing; only the rate of change feels faster these days. The way to keep up has always been to stay one step ahead by having more than one skill set, interest, and area of expertise.



In doing so, we avoid putting all our eggs in one basket. We also harden our shells and make ourselves less vulnerable to drops, cracks, and any other external pressures.



Of course, making it to the top of a career ladder, or the apex of some metaphorical corporate mountain, can be our goal. It’s good to have goals! Maybe we end up at the top of the mountain. Maybe we end up on another mountain entirely. But we don’t have to climb straight up. Whatever our final destination, we can and should get there by zigzagging.







Excerpted with permission from 15 Lies Women Are Told at Work . Copyright @ 2024 by Bonnie Hammer. Reproduced by permission of Simon Element, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved.