Is Your Work Expanding Your Options?

Learning at work doesn't only help us perform better in the job we have. Over time, it can expand the range of work we're capable of choosing next.

We usually think about learning at work in terms of the job we already have.

We learn something new and become better at what we do. We handle a more difficult assignment. Take on greater responsibility. Develop judgment that we didn't have a few years ago.

All of that can improve our performance today.

But learning can do something else that may be less obvious while it's happening.

It can increase the number of things we're capable of doing next.

Career mobility begins before we move

We tend to think about career mobility as an event.

Someone gets promoted. Changes departments. Joins another company. Starts a business. Moves into an entirely different kind of work.

But the ability to make those moves develops much earlier.

It develops as we encounter situations that expand our experience. We solve problems we haven't solved before. Work with different kinds of people. Learn how another part of the business operates. Take responsibility for something larger or less familiar. Make decisions that once would have required someone else's help.

Nothing about our job title may change while this is happening.

Our options can still be changing.

More capable can also mean more mobile

As our capability grows, we become able to contribute in more situations.

That may create opportunities within the organization where we already work. It may also make us more attractive to another organization. Sometimes it gives us enough confidence and experience to consider work we wouldn't previously have considered at all.

That doesn't mean learning inevitably causes people to leave.

It means development creates choices.

A person who can handle a wider range of situations has more places where that capability might be useful.

From the individual's perspective, that's an important part of what learning at work can provide.

Mobility isn't the same as promotion

Career development is often pictured as movement upward.

More responsibility. A larger title. More people to manage. Higher compensation.

Those may be desirable, but they aren't the only evidence that someone's options are expanding.

A person may develop enough knowledge to move into another function. A specialist may become capable of working more independently. Someone who has spent years in a large organization may develop capabilities that transfer to a smaller one. A manager may discover that their experience has prepared them for work that doesn't involve managing people at all.

Learning can increase the range of work available to us without pointing toward a single next step.

Sometimes development is less about moving up than having more directions in which we could move.

Not all experience increases our options

Years of experience can certainly make us better at what we do.

But if the work remains largely the same, we may become increasingly proficient without substantially increasing the range of situations we're prepared to handle.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Some people have work they value and want to continue doing exceptionally well.

It is simply worth recognizing the difference.

Ten years spent deepening expertise can create one kind of career value. Ten years spent encountering increasingly varied problems, responsibilities and environments can create another.

The question is what we want our experience to make possible.

The next opportunity may already be inside the current one

It's easy to begin thinking about career development by looking elsewhere.

What jobs are available? What qualification am I missing? What would I need to learn to make a move?

Sometimes the more useful place to start is with the work already in front of us.

There may be an assignment that exposes us to a different part of the organization. A problem nobody quite owns. An opportunity to work with a customer more directly. A project that requires a capability we haven't had much reason to use. Someone whose experience could help us see our own work differently.

Those experiences may never appear in a formal development plan.

They can still change what becomes possible later.

Organizations face an interesting tension

There is an understandable concern that developing people makes it easier for them to leave.

In one sense, that's true. Greater capability can increase someone's mobility.

But limiting development isn't much of a retention strategy.

A more useful question may be whether some of the possibilities created by a person's growing capability can also exist where they already work.

If someone becomes capable of contributing more broadly but the work continues to ask exactly the same things of them, another organization may eventually provide somewhere for that capability to go.

Sometimes the issue isn't that someone has developed enough to leave. It's that they have developed beyond the opportunities available in their current work.

What is your work preparing you for?

We don't need to know exactly where our career is going to notice whether our options are expanding.

We can look at what our work is asking us to learn now.

Are we encountering situations that require something new from us? Are we developing judgment as well as skills? Are we becoming capable of handling greater complexity, different kinds of problems or work outside the boundaries of our current role?

One question may bring all of that into focus:

If I stayed in this work for another two years, what would become possible for me that isn't possible today?

If there are several answers, the work may be doing more than helping you perform today. It may be creating choices for tomorrow.

If the question is difficult to answer, that may be worth noticing too.