The Problem Of "The Stretch Assignment"

If there is one thing companies love beyond all else, it is probably getting you to take on more responsibility (do more tasks) without paying you any additional money. This is framed up in fancy, positive-sounding ways, such as “the stretch assignment,” “the growth mindset,” or “informal leadership.” It makes some sense on face, because it appears to you, as the chosen one, that you are on some kind of fast track to something — you don’t know what, exactly, but it’s something. There’s maybe another ladder you can get on. That seems promising, as more income is good for you and your family, no?

So it seems like it could be good, but we ignore a lot of things about this ecosystem. First of all, power is addictive to a lot of people. It changes their brain. People don’t want to give it up. Look at Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, who is 89 and running for another term in the Senate. Look at RBG not leaving when Obama was President, or Breyer not leaving now. I live in Fort Worth at present; the Mayor was 71, retired to “spend more time with her grandkids,” and now she’s running for County Judge. People love power. So just because you got a stretch assignment doesn’t mean there’s any room for you at the top. It’s just a strategy to placate you for a period of time.

Plus: at a time when we supposedly care about burnout so much (we do not, in actuality), these “informal leadership” slots might burn you out:

However, while taking on informal leadership duties can help employees feel more valued and support their growth, our recent research suggests it can also significantly reduce their energy levels and job satisfaction, often making them reluctant to take on these additional roles despite the long-term benefits.

Makes total sense. And executives don’t care about burnout. They look at it and they see “hustle,” which they like. They don’t even care that hustle isn’t sustainable long-term, because they just figure you’ll leave for more money somewhere else at some point, and fuck if they’re going to pay you that additional money. That’s why they just gave you an informal promotion — so they could gaslight your ass without having to spend an additional dime on your 28% marginal output.

It’s also worth going back one or two steps on this whole discussion. In graduate school, a truly disappointing experience at University of Minnesota , I did a “high potentials” project with, of all places, Microsoft. We got all this arbitrary data on “performance,” which was honestly usually just salaries figures or some guy in supply chain and how he was doing, and we were supposed to help them identify “High Potential Employees.” A lot of people in my graduate program went nuts for this assignment, hoping to be seen as “high potential” themselves by Microsoft and land a job there. I just thought the whole thing was a sloppy train wreck — we supposedly live in this “data-driven” time, and we have almost no clean data on employee performance outside of sales bros and Operations folks. It’s comical.

As a result, without true data, most bosses just contextualize someone as a “Hi-Po” or “A-Player” because they’re ass-kissers or they’re good at keeping the boss out of the weeds and keeping big projects off the boss’ plate. So, we call someone good at block-and-tackling a “High Potential,” just hoping no one will ask for data on how we got there.

Then there’s the issue of morally bankrupt decision-making, which can be thought of like this: if you have a fancy gym with good equipment and great trainers, shouldn’t people who need to get in shape use that gym? Not elite athletes, per se? The way companies structure these “Hi-Po” programs is, they give all the resources to the people already doing well in the job. Um. What? How about turning B-Players into A-Players? The way we set up is confusing and morally vague.

I’ve written literally thousands of articles for people in the leadership and management space, and they always want you to mention that a way to motivate employees is “stretch assignments” or “growth mindset,” or something similar to that. In reality, most are motivated by additional money, or their manager not being a total asshole and complimenting them on specific work they did. I don’t want more tasks for no money. Fuck you for even suggesting that. I want resources, I want to hit numbers for my family, and if I’m good, I want to get more of the pie. Keep your “stretch assignments” for the interns, Bonus Bobby.