How do you go from Linear to Exponential career growth?
A few years ago, one of my VPs setup an all-hands and took to the whiteboard to explain various career growth curves. He drew something like the below
- Linear growth: Individuals who have sustainable average growth over the years. They do well, but don't really end up as senior leaders and executives within the company.
- Exponential growth: These are the stars who have unbelievable impact and growth within the company, and often end up as senior executives within the company.
When one of us asked "How can one shift from a linear curve to the exponential curve?", we had some group conversation, but nothing popped up.
Over the course of the last few years of my career, I have thought about this problem a little more - the way we can make the shift, is by using the concept of "Inflection Point"
Inflection Points are essentially points, where there is a change in the direction of the curvature. So what are the inflection points that are applicable in this scenario - "Change"
- Change in assignments/ projects - Take up some other projects and try to establish your credibility and impact there. This it's usually a great option if you have great relationship with your mgr and team, and are just not working on high impactful projects
- Change in manager/ Team : Sometimes one needs to change teams or manager to identify more interesting areas of work - so that one can use the passion and the renewed vigor to make higher impact. It also helps with resetting any issues with "bad blood" with the current manager or team
- Changing the company: Sometimes, the only way to bring about meaningful change is to change your company - usually this is true as one spends more and more time within a single company, your performance history, and bad patches are essentially blocking you from making the most of your career there, and oftentimes the best way out is to look for a position outside.
I would love to hear thoughts and feedback. How have you been able to make a shift from linear to exponential growth
Environmental Specialist at Williams
1yGood read, thanks for posting.
Technology Leader
3yI think the key idea here is "Exponential" Simply put, most organisations and businesses reward 'hunters' better than 'farmers' in the long run. Hunting is a trait one has to be comfortable with all along, so it is generally unsustainable for farmers and to switch sides. For farmers to achieve exponential growth, specially in and post their mid-careers is entrepreneurship, but it comes with a fair degree of risk and passion. Farmers do tend to get lucky thru stocks with tech and new age companies every now and then.
Head of AI Research @ Microsoft Purview & Cloud Ecosystem Security Division, Microsoft India
3yI personally feel exponential growth happens when one faces an adverse situation with grit and resolve. Identify and provide that value to the organization. It could be new revenue stream or new market as Shorit Ghosh mentioned, or even some change in process or a technology innovation or slack reduction or anything else for that matter that adds more value to any of the customers/partners/employees/... Coming to Vijay Krishnan view around the ways, like change in projects, change in assignment, change in managers, etc. As long as the changed environment aligns to your goal, your passion, your dream, then whatever change one makes would help propel. If thats not the case, slightly philosophical, it's just running away from one adverse situation to another. Quoting from the '3 idiots' movie, find you true inner passion and follow it, success will run behind you
XM Executive Advisor at Qualtrics
3yI think ideating on and leading something new and risky that opens up significant revenue streams or new markets is a huge value add not just to your career growth but to the organization you serve.