Professional Growth Cycle

A lot of my team members and friends in tech seek career guidance from me, which I share with the experience I have had.

Some very common questions that I get are:

• What are the pros and cons of staying in one company vs. switching jobs?
• Does switching jobs for financial benefits damage the career in the long term?
• Does staying long ( > 5 Years) in a single company limit learning & growth?
• ?How do you know you are getting stagnant in your current job?
• How do you decide between role & compensation while switching jobs?

I have been thinking about why some individuals have very successful careers while others get stagnated even being very competent and capable. I created a model, using which we can explain success based on the right career decision-making. I call this model the “Professional Growth Cycle”.

Professional Growth Cycle Model

This model divides any career into cycles of competence with each cycle having 3 distinct steps.

The steps are:

1.???Competence - Any person in professional life brings a level of competence including technical & behavioral skills, knowledge, and experience. Some are explicit due to educational degrees, experience profile & accomplishments, while others are tacit like interpersonal & soft skills. This first step is where a person shows his competence.

2.???Opportunity - The opportunity a person gets primarily a factor of his competence perceived by decision-makers. The opportunity can be a role, project, or task given to a person. In the second step, a person is given the opportunity based on his competence.

3.???Delivery - When a person delivers the opportunity provided successfully in the 3rd step, it has the following outcomes:

• He increases his competency by the way of experiential learning
• The stakeholders gets confidence to give him bigger opportunities.

Every time a person goes through this cycle he grows professionally. It can be as fast as 12 months for a high-growth individual, while in stagnated careers this cycle comes to a stop.

Putting the model to test

Now, let me answer the question I posed above using this model.

What are the pros and cons of staying in one company vs. switching jobs?

A job switch is typically resetting this cycle. A new organization typically intakes a professional on a perceived competency and hence conservative in opportunities leading to the first cycle being slow.

Therefore, a job switch makes sense when the cycle is slow or paused in the current role.

Does switching jobs for financial benefits damage the career in the long term?

For a high-growth individual who is moving rapidly in this cycle, a job switch (typically for financial gains) will pause this cycle. For a professional whose cycle is halted, a switch can give fresh momentum.

Does staying long ( > 5 Years) in a single company limit learning & growth?

The answer to this question is both yes and no. If your next opportunity within the same company gives you bigger or different challenges then the cycle of growth continues to drive growth. In fact, for most high-performing individuals the cycle is much faster in a single company. However, many people do not regularly get higher or different opportunities within the same company halting the cycle.

How do you know you are getting stagnant in your current job?

Opportunity step of the competency cycle is an indicator of growth in an organization. If in the last 18 months you have not gotten an opportunity that gives you a bigger or different role then it is an indicator that your cycle has stalled. Without bigger or different opportunities the learning stops and even with perfect delivery there is very little growth.

How do you decide between role & compensation while switching jobs?

If you are on a high-growth path your cycle of growth will move very fast. In most organizations, each cycle is recognized by professional and financial growth.

However, in some cases, financial growth does not keep pace with professional growth. In these cases switching jobs can monetize professional expertise into financial gains but one has to be careful it does not stall the competency cycle. To ensure this one has to ensure the next opportunity that delivers financial growth is at least at the same level if not higher than the current one.

Conclusion

Career choices are hard decisions and are often made gut-driven by more emotional influences or gut. The "Professional Growth Cycle" gives us a model to objectively analyze situations and current decisions and can be a helpful tool to make the right career choices.