Dual Career Ladder

A dual ladder career system is essentially the practice of offering two separate career paths within an organization – one for managers, the other for people with technical aptitude - that offer equitable pay scales at each "rung" of the career ladder. The whole idea behind this system is to provide an alternative method of career progression to technical workers such as engineers, programmers, and scientists who often feel "forced" to move into management to progress their careers and take home a larger paycheck. As a result, many skilled technical workers end up in management positions that are highly administrative in nature and much of their technical knowledge and expertise is not fully leveraged. The technical ladder is seen as a way to retain highly skilled technical workers who are interested in technical lines and a desirable option for them to advance through the excellence of their technical work.

A dual career ladder is a mechanism to stimulate employee career progress without compromising their research or professional interests. The dual career ladder stimulates innovation by enabling professionals and technically sound employees to progress without having to switch to a managerial stream. It is a way of establishing two distinct "career paths": one for an individual contributor and the other as a part of the management.

So early in an employee's career, a branching point is reached, and a person is provided with a choice of (or is chosen for) either the managerial ladder or the technical ladder. The titles are different in each ladder, but pay and perquisites are similar, rung for rung. Of course, the managerial ladder extends into the executive ranks (GM and CXO), while the technical ladder stops far short of this. This makes the managerial ladder appear more desirable to ambitious young employees. In theory, people can switch back and forth between the managerial and technical ladders. Unfortunately, switching between ladders is considered difficult and not pursued by many employees.

Both the technical and management roles offer equal opportunities to experiment and try something new, but the cost of failure is much higher in a management role. So if you are a Maverick, pick a technical career path :). The Technical Dual Career Ladder is usually expanded even above the Senior Management Level to appreciate the value of individual contributors to reach levels up to that of a Vice President, and in the process, allowing the company to continue to attract and retain the crème de la creme - and retain our world-class product and technology status.

Three things are important for any role “TOP” -Talent, Opportunity, and Passion. Management is tightly coupled with the “O” part of it. With passion, you can generate talent and create opportunities, so it’s very important to have passion. Managers can offer the environment around TOP.

“Technical people are the influencers of change rather than the controller of change vis-à-vis the management ladder”

At many companies, people have switched back and forth between the managerial and technical ladders. This is actually quite a good career strategy because it gives an opportunity to the employee to experience managerial responsibilities while allowing him to remain technically competent. Identifying one’s strengths becomes the key ingredient for success in both the technical and management career paths.

Cost of an incorrect choice:

The number one problem that organizations have while implementing a dual ladder system is the failure to properly identify the right individuals for each career path. For many organizations deciding which path a worker should follow boils down to little more than an educated guess. Even worse, some organizations rely on their team members to determine which career path is best for them. While it's great to get an employee's input about their career aspirations, the employee has a tendency to choose the wrong career path for the wrong reasons and their employers are usually the ones who end up paying for it.

One reason for this is that despite equitable pay scales, the management ladder is often preferable to the technical ladder as one's status, prestige, and power within an organization are often measured by the number of individuals one has underneath them as direct or indirect reports. Given the choice of which ladder to pursue, many individuals will choose the management ladder in an effort to gain greater respect and prestige within one's organization even though an "equitable" position exists on the technical ladder.

This can pose some serious problems for an organization as employees often pursue the management ladder when they are a better fit for a technical career. The reason is that as it becomes clear that an individual is not fit for a career in management he or she will often be sent to the technical ladder to see if they fare any better there. While this seems like the natural thing to do, the technical ladder becomes a sort of "consolation prize" to the individual removed from the management ladder, and many times he or she will choose to find employment elsewhere as a result of being "demoted" to the technical ladder. This goes contrary to the purpose of establishing the dual ladder in the first place: retaining highly skilled technical workers.

The only way to ensure that a dual ladder career path is successful is to put into place systems for determining which career path is the best fit for each individual. This?not only involves asking an employee which path they would like to pursue but following up their interest with an objective method of determining which path is really best for them and for the company.

Identify your strengths:

More people know intuitively what they’re not good at than take the time to analyze where their strengths lie. Yet it is only by performing in areas of strength that good performance can be built. People tended to go into the same line of work as their parents or close associates. In the future, however, there are far more choices, and people will be far more likely to go into professions that match their strengths.

To find your strengths, use a feedback analysis: Whenever you face an important decision, write down what you expect to happen as a consequence of your choice. Then review it 12 months later. Within two or three years, your strengths will become apparent, as will your weaknesses.

You can use a feedback analysis to:

• Concentrate on your strengths - to produce more
• Work on improving skills and acquiring knowledge
• ?Avoid the arrogance of ignorance in specific areas.
• ?Remedy bad habits
• Avoid areas where failure is more likely
• Identify high competence areas that should be built on

The feedback analysis is also useful to evaluate:

• How do you like to get things done
• ?How your personality traits are reflected in your work habits
• ?How you absorb new ideas and information – readers absorb information most effectively in writing, while listeners take in most from audible presentations
• How you learn -- by reading, writing things down, by speaking in front of a group, etc
• Whether you work best in a group or by yourself.
• Whether you work best as a leader or a subordinate

Edgar Schein at MIT has identified eight themes and has shown that people will have prioritized preferences for these. For example, a person with a primary theme of Security/Stability will seek secure and stable employment over, say, employment that is challenging and riskier. People tend to stay anchored in one area and their careers will echo this in many ways. It is important to stimulate one's thoughts about own areas of competence, motivation, and values. This will reveal the career anchors. Here are the eight career anchors:

1. Technical/Functional competence: This kind of person likes being good at something and will work to become a guru or expert. They like to be challenged and then use their skill to meet the challenge, doing the job properly and better than almost anyone else.
2. General Managerial competence: Unlike technical/functional people, these employees want to be managers (and not just to get more money, although this may be used as a metric of success). They like problem-solving and dealing with other people. They thrive on responsibilities. To be successful, they also need emotional competence.?
3. ?Autonomy/Independence: These people have a primary need to work under their own rules and steam. They avoid standards and prefer to work alone.??
4. Security/Stability: Security-focused people seek stability and continuity as a primary factor in their lives. They avoid risks and are generally 'lifers' in their job.
5. ?Entrepreneurial Creativity: These folks like to invent things, be creative and, most of all, run their own businesses. They differ from those who seek autonomy in that they will share the workload. They find ownership very important. They easily get bored. Wealth, for them, is a sign of success.
6. ?Service/Dedication to a cause: Service-oriented people are driven by how they can help other people more than using their talents (which may fall in other areas). They may well work in public services?such as in HR.
7. Pure Challenge: People driven by challenge seek constant stimulation and difficult problems that they can tackle. Such people will change jobs when the current one gets boring and their careers can be very varied.
8. ?Lifestyle: Those who are focused first on lifestyle look at their whole pattern of living. They do not balance work and life. They may even take long periods off work in which to indulge in passions such as sailing or traveling.

Aspirations and career anchors should not be mutually exclusive. Understanding one's career anchors help to negotiate better when one is to make a decision around his/her dominating conflicting career anchors. Life planning and financial planning automatically address career planning most of the time. With less experience, it’s natural to have more career anchors but as we gain more experience, the dominant career anchor becomes obvious. During the initial years, when there are 3-5 career anchors, trade-offs are always within this circle of anchors.

Applying your strengths.

The most successful people put themselves in situations that match their personalities as closely as possible. This also extends to personal value systems – high achievers gravitate to organizations that share similar value systems and ethics. Each of us has our own operating style and “Fix-it” formula, identifying and applying is the key to success. For example:

Perceptions to be aware of in the management ladder:?Anyone who opts for the management ladder might have to manage common perceptions that may not always be true. The more common perceptions are:

• People who opt for management are not inclined toward technology.
• Technical work is something they want to get out of as quickly as possible. It's difficult and not as satisfying for them as working with people. They go into management and work hard to get larger and more prestigious projects to manage since this is their entree into the higher echelons of management.
• Overwhelmed by their managerial duties, it becomes impossible for them to maintain, never mind develop, technical competence, which they are mostly not interested in anyway.
• These people go up the managerial ladder and are expected to intelligently guide a high-tech company, but the higher up they go, the dimmer their knowledge of the technologies they are supposed to manage.
• What they actually do is "acronym technology," the juggling of three letter acronyms for projects and products that they really don't understand.

Perceptions to be aware of in the technical ladder: People who opt for the technical ladder too have to manage perceptions and expectations. Techies are encouraged to focus deeply on technologies and become experts, and take on leadership roles in developing emerging technologies. Many people do this well but have a tough time communicating ideas and concepts to the management. The problem is that the techies have a hard time navigating the maze of business and communication - they haven't been trained. And the higher up the technical ladder they are, the worse it gets. If not managed effectively, they might be put into advanced technology or advanced design departments where they might be used as occasional consultants or safely ignored.

On either ladder, the best method is to manage one’s career oneself. To be truly successful in either career path, one has to be involved in the other aspect of their job.

Journey:?

Both the ladders offer a smooth journey in their respective growth ladders as long as the individual is willing to invest time and energy. One needs to understand not the difference in the titles at different levels but the job description and responsibilities at every level. Competency enhancement means executing tasks more productively. Whenever one moves up a notch in the respective ladder, it implies that the organization recognizes an individual’s capabilities to impact business qualitatively and has confidence in one’s future ability.?Expectations include:

• Sustained levels of performance
• Greater responsibility and accountability
• Role-modeling the attributes outlined in the Leadership Competency Framework
• Demonstration of a rise in competencies around job size/scope, problem-solving, independence, internal and external interaction, ability to influence, domain expertise, planning, and goal-setting

With a promotion, the employee is being recognized for the confidence in their future ability. This cannot be achieved without sustained contribution and demonstration of key competencies. From an organization standpoint, promoted employees represent credible talent who are future bets. The organization will invest in them as these talents are scarce and extremely valuable.

Career development is no longer only about gaining the skills and knowledge you need to move up within one company. Career development today is about achieving flexibility and continuously evaluating and developing your skills in order to remain employable and fulfilled over the long term, regardless of who you are working for, and what industry you are working in.

To achieve this level of flexibility, you need to have a very strong sense of who you are and what you want from your work. Not everyone is motivated by the same thing, and our ambitions vary greatly. Some people thrive on being creative and innovative whereas others prefer stability and continuity. Challenge and constant simulation may be important to one person while creating a work/life balance is paramount to another.

Expanding responsibilities in a Technical Path:

?All engineers start with Language expertise like C/C++. So they start with debugging others’ code or writing their own code. Slowly with time, they move to implement the solution defined by the project lead. Once they master this art, they move on to finding solutions for the problems identified. Finally, the senior R&D engineers graduate to identify problems for other junior engineers to solve. With every technology or domain change, this circle of innovation and learning starts all over again.

Expanding responsibilities in a Management Path

Key components of leadership are setting a direction, aligning, and motivating people. Leadership is about dealing with change. Leadership produces vision and strategies that have a greater impact on a business over the long term. The growth path in the management path can be categorized into five levels:

1. Project Leader: Primarily achieves results through personal proficiency although may manage projects and teams
2. People Leader (Entry Level Manager): Shift from results through personal proficiency to results through individual
3. Operational Leader (Manager of Managers): Shift to holding line managers accountable for managerial work; develop a mindset that values more than one function
4. Cross-Functional Leader: Shift to thinking systematically, integrating multiple perspectives occurring in the organization. Achieve results through organizational influence and cross-boundary relationships.
5. Strategic Leader (Business Manager): Shift from valuing one’s organization to valuing all functions; be able to deal with the magnitude of complexity in the business. Achieve results through functional interplay and balance. One defines and communicates vision and direction

Encouraging the Right Choice: Initial argument from engineers was that the dual ladder encourages mediocrity by rewarding employees for loyalty instead of performance and serves as a dumping ground for those not fit for management. But after listening to the speakers, some insight into the dual ladder career path highlighted that it mainly encourages the retention of highly skilled technical people as they see a path of success in their line of interest.

Moving from an individual contributor, engineer, consultant, technical or sales representative, etc. to a management position is not just a step up the corporate ladder, but a jump to an entirely new area in terms of skills, motivations, perspectives, responsibilities, and impact to the organization. It is also important that hiring managers think ahead when interviewing candidates for individual contributor jobs; they should identify people with management potential and position them for future growth within the company. If the training and mentoring process begins early, then both the supervisor and the new manager will have a greater chance for success. Norman Augustine, former CEO and Chairman of Lockheed Martin, Inc. was once asked about the best way to manage. He said to follow three steps:

1. Hire people smarter than you
2. Tell them what you want
3. Get out of their way

Good managers know that employee satisfaction is essential to healthy teamwork, initiative, and productivity.?Based on an in-depth study of the most innovative ideas for creating a culture where employees thrive, the company's recruiting & retention tools will have all the ingredients that one needs to find and keep the best employees.

“I can go far alone but I can go further with a coach”

Still, have doubts? Talk to leaders who have taken either of the paths with these questions.

Key questions to ask someone who is on the technical ladder

1. Choosing a technical career path – Was it by choice or by chance?
2. What are the main challenges you faced/face choosing this path? How did you overcome them? --Having chosen the technical path, do you see any roadblocks in this path?
3. What are the pros and cons of a technical career path?
4. What are your tips for someone at the crossroads of making a decision to choose either the technical or management path?
5. Who is your role model and why?
6. What are the key competencies an EE should work on after having made a choice?
7. Have you considered moving to management anytime and why? If No, why not? If moved earlier, why did you move back to the technical career path?
8. Please share one inspirational instance which made you proud of being “Technical.”
9. When do you think you would call your technical career path as successful?

Key questions to ask someone who is on the management ladder

1. What does a manager's typical day look like?
2. In your transition from an individual contributor to a manager did you ever feel the need for a mentor? Do you still need one?
3. What kind of people issues do you face? What proportion of your time is spent on them?
4. ?"People leave managers, not companies." Your comments, please.
5. What kind of background (professional/academic/social) do you think would help you groom to be a better manager?
6. ?In your opinion, what qualities were you evaluated on while being considered for the manager's post?
7. What kind of uncertainties do you face in your job?
8. Where do you see yourself 5 years down the line?
9. ?Are there times when you feel that the lack of hands-on programming/debugging is a handicap?
10. What is your perception of the technical ladder? Are there times when you look back and say "I loved being technical and I miss it" or do you feel "leading teams and managing people is equally exciting"?
11. What according to you makes a successful manager? Is it all about his/her ability to lead a team, to deal with different personalities, problems, and delays, or more? What's most rewarding about the role?
12. How did you adapt to being responsible for others’ deliverables/ (non-deliverables!!) instead of only yours
13. How easy was it to manage a charter different from what you were working on?
14. How do you manage to come up with initiatives consistently?
15. Why do you think the manager role is better than the technical role?
16. You as a manager, define achievement?
17. How will you keep yourself updated on technology changes? Did you have to completely give up the hands-on technical role?
18. When do you think you would call your management career path as successful?