Corporate Careers: Grass Grows in Its Time

"Mr Knoop, what do I have to do to take the next step?"

I hear this question often. Usually it is ambitious, talented people who are willing to go the extra mile. My answer regularly surprises them. Because a career has only limited to do with hard work. It has a great deal to do with where you direct your energy and with the art of creating the conditions for success rather than managing worries.

Worry-bearer or shaper

I recently coached a client facing a major challenge. She was to introduce a new, complex HR tool across the company. The decision for the tool had been made long ago, by someone else. But she was now responsible for the result.

She came to coaching with a long list of concerns. She wanted to know how to "make the risks transparent". In practice this is often code for hedging against impending failure: if it goes wrong, I did say it would be hard.

We changed perspective. Instead of spending energy on what could go wrong, we formulated the conditions for success. What does it take to make this project fly? What resources, what decisions, what support?

The shift was fundamental. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Stephen Covey describes the difference between the Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence. Anyone who pours energy into worries they cannot influence shrinks their room to act. Anyone who concentrates on what they can shape grows their influence. My client made exactly that shift. She came to coaching as a worry-bearer and left as a shaper. Instead of explaining to the board why it would be difficult, she formulated what it would take to succeed.

In my article When the job wobbles I describe this model in more depth. Here we see an application that goes beyond crisis: the Circle of Influence is also the key to strategic career design.

High Impact, High Profile

If you really want to rise, my advice is simple: find yourself a task with management visibility. I call these "High Impact, High Profile" projects.

Such a project carries strategic relevance for the company. It might be winning back five percent of margin, rescuing an at-risk customer relationship, or introducing a technology on which the company's future depends. In these projects you see what really makes a leader: the courage to take responsibility, the will to stay the course against headwinds, and the ability to steer a team through resistance.

I remember well my own project many years ago. It was about achieving a breakthrough in LED technology with an Asian partner. My mentor at the time gave me a sentence I still carry with me: "Learn to enjoy pressure." He was right. In such phases your integrity becomes visible. Will you become a yes-man because you are afraid for your status? The notorious "golden handcuffs" of salary, company car and bonus keep an astonishing number of leaders trapped in a comfort zone where they stop speaking uncomfortable truths. Or do you stay independent enough to say no when it serves the long-term good of the company?

The research backs this. With their Self-Determination Theory, Edward Deci and Richard Ryan have shown that people perform best when three basic needs are met: autonomy, competence and relatedness. High-Impact projects serve all three. They give autonomy because they often sit outside routine processes. They challenge competence and grow it at the same time. And they create relatedness because you work in a team striving together towards a demanding goal. Anyone who finds such a project invests in their career without waiting for a promotion.

The equanimity of the gardener

For all the ambition there is a limit. In my article Why nobody steps back I describe the Peter Principle and the trap of promotion as an end in itself. Anyone who wants the next career step too badly often loses the authenticity and inner independence needed to hold up at the next level.

There is an old piece of wisdom I share with clients in such moments:

Grass does not grow faster if you pull at it.

A career cannot be forced. Anyone who pulls hard at their promotion becomes visible to those around them as someone who cares about the rise, not the work. And that is what people in decision-making positions notice. They rarely promote those who shout loudest. They promote those who, they sense, would take on the task even without a title or a raise attached.

Only those who feel they could hand back the laptop and the keys at any time make truly free decisions. That sense of inner independence is the prerequisite for holding up at the next level. Because there the decisions get harder, the compromises more painful and the pressure greater. Anyone who sits there only because they wanted the title will fail. Anyone who sits there because they want the work has a chance.

What you can take with you

Choose your tasks wisely. Find the stage where you become visible, but do not play a role there; be authentic. Formulate what it takes for something to succeed, instead of explaining why it will be hard. And then let the grass grow.

The best careers I have coached are not the steepest. They are the ones in which people remained themselves along the way.

Further reading

• Stephen R. Covey: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Free Press 1989) – The Circle of Influence stems from Habit 1, "Be Proactive".
• Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan) – Research on autonomy, competence and relatedness as the basis of intrinsic motivation.
• My book Peter mag keinen Frosch zum Frühstück (Amazon) – This article builds on chapters from it.