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The portfolio is the new career path
Organizations waste talent when people are locked into rigid roles and teams. Hidden capabilities remain undiscovered, while emerging needs go unmet. People’s careers stagnate in silos, and the organization’s potential for dynamic adaptation diminishes.
Most organizations believe they know who can do what, but this knowledge is trapped in manager’s minds, outdated performance reviews, or systems so cumbersome that finding the right person for a specific need feels like archaeology. The system privileges stability over adaptability, resulting in widespread disengagement as people’s unique strengths remain underutilized.
Traditional models assume career progression means moving linearly up a ladder, but modern work is complex. People are multifaceted, and our complexity is what makes us special! A software engineer might also excel at facilitation, a finance analyst might have untapped design skills, a marketer might solve complex operational problems. These capacities remain invisible when we force people into narrow role definitions and dedicated assignments.
In the absence of internal mobility, talent leaves. If it weren’t so tragic, it’d be funny: Organizations spend enormous resources recruiting externally while neglecting to discover and deploy the wealth of capabilities already present internally. This is worse than inefficient, as it drives profound disengagement through a nearly explicit acknowledgement that folks’ full potential will go unseen and undervalued.
The gap between aspiration and reality drives contradictory organizational behaviors. Executives say they value growth and agility while they maintain rigid job descriptions and approval processes that discourage internal movement. HR leaders track skills in systems that quickly become outdated and aren’t connected to real-time needs. Resource allocation committees carefully guard and steward talent that isn’t anywhere close to fully utilized. Managers hoard their best performers while simultaneously failing to develop them.