Make Your Move

Old rules need not apply: Lateral moves, even downward steps, are OK on today's career ladder

Written by Sal Caputo

Many people in today’s business world grew up at a time when career management meant finding the right company out of college and climbing up the ladder within it until retirement. The slow climb was expected to be steady and not like a game of Chutes and Ladders. Well, as Bob Dylan put it, “Things have changed.”

“The average job in this country is being held for just under four years,” says George Fleming, a Phoenix-based career and business coach who founded Momentum Coaching Resources three and a half years ago.

This shift in job patterns is happening because companies in today’s fast-paced economy downsize and reorganize far more often than they did decades ago, he says. A college graduate today will have 11 different employers during his or her career and three distinctly different careers during that period, Fleming says.

As a result, he says, “Your first responsibility is to manage your career.” This means thinking strategically about career moves. “The whole notion of career management is more than just job title and salary,” Fleming says. It has to do with moves, whether lateral, upward or downward, that “strategically make good sense for your career.”

For instance, moving from vice president of one company to a director at another company might look like a loss of title, but if in the process you’re moving from a $2 million company to a $2 billion company, responsibilities and compensation are probably similar while the opportunities ahead of you have increased, he says.

That’s why lateral or sideways moves—those that keep you at the same rung on the career ladder, whether in your current company or at another one, and once considered a waste of time—are considered a valuable tool by mentors and coaches today. “There are times when you may switch companies, and while the salary might be slightly lower, there are other benefits,” Fleming says.

For instance, he says, such benefits could range from stock options to working with new technology that presents you with a challenge your old job couldn’t. Another big reason for a lateral move is to get around a roadblock: Perhaps too many solid people are ahead of you in line for a promotion you want in your current office.

“If you’re not open to lateral moves, I think you could find yourself quite gridlocked,” says Kay Nichols, executive vice president of strategy, marketing and product development at Scottsdale-based eFunds. In fact, Nichols adds, there are cases when taking a step down might be well-advised.

“I look upon managing my career a bit like a chess game. You don’t win the game by just trying to get from one side of the board to the other as quickly as you can,” Nichols says. “Numerous times, I find that you’ve got to move sideways and, in some instances, even backward in order to position yourself to make the strategic win.”

While Stella Saindon, a senior manager at Grant Thornton LLP’s accounting practice in Phoenix, wasn’t exactly gridlocked, she made a lateral move just months ago because it could accelerate her career. “The basic carrot was I have a better opportunity to make partner with our firm (in Phoenix) than if I stayed in Albuquerque,” Saindon says.

After about 13 years in public accounting in New Mexico, Saindon joined Grant Thornton in Albuquerque as a manager two years ago, hoping to be accepted into its partner candidate program—and she was. At the same time, the company was enjoying huge growth in its Phoenix practice. Started two years ago by three partners, the office now numbers more than 50 employees.

Her mentor in the candidate program suggested she consider a move to the Phoenix office at the same pay and title because it would provide a chance to make partner sooner. “We have been told you don’t do that,” Saindon says. “You don’t move to … the same exact position without a benefit.”

To make the move, she would have to uproot both her career and social life, leaving behind her extensive professional network in Albuquerque, where she had worked her entire professional career, and moving away from her family and social circle. In addition, Phoenix’s cost of living (housing prices were about three times those in Albuquerque, Saindon says) would cut her buying power significantly.

“The biggest risk is what if you come out here and fall flat on your face?” she says of making the transition from a small market where she was well-known to a large market where she was unknown.

On the plus side, she says, was the opportunity to work with a boss with whom she had good rapport, the chance to improve her skills exponentially and the opportunity to mentor women in the company’s initiative to develop and retain women executives. However, when she did the career math, she says, the decision made itself. “I do have aspirations of making partner with our firm, and where am I going to do it? (In Phoenix,) where I’m growing at x-hundred percent, or an (Albuquerque) office where I’m growing maybe 5 percent?”

But besides the career math, she urges those weighing a lateral move to do personal math, as well. “If you’re going to lose you in the process, to me it’s a bad decision,” Saindon says. “Quantitatively and qualitatively, I think you’ve got to look at that total package. Who are you going to be in five years if you make this move? So if you make partner and you’re miserable, how could that be the right move?”

That type of clarity is important whenever a lateral move means a big geographic move, Nichols says. “I think I’d want to be very clear on what the upside of that (lateral move) was going to be in the longer term before I made any substantial changes to my personal circumstances,” Nichols says.

Nichols has used such moves herself to advance her career and says she uses them as a tool in developing and managing her own team of employees. “I think that people, especially early on in their careers, should be using these sideways moves much more aggressively than I think that many people do,” she says. Making a number of lateral moves exposes an employee to “a broad set of roles and responsibilities in different functional areas of the company.” That experience can be extremely valuable in making long-term decisions about your career, she says, adding that if you aren’t open to such experience, “you could find yourself pigeonholed in an area which later in your career you may find isn’t as rewarding as maybe another area of the business might have been.”

However, she says that you shouldn’t consider a lateral move if you’re looking at it as an escape from problems in your current job. “Businesses are much more alike than they are different,” she says. “So if you think you’re going to escape, you’re going to find yourself struggling with similar issues or exactly the same kind of issues in a new organization as you are in the old one.”

She also thinks a lateral move to an organization that “isn’t positively esteemed or is viewed as a losing team” is a bad idea.” Nichols agrees with Fleming that if you’re gridlocked and stuck behind other talented people you might want to consider a lateral move either within your company or to another one. She adds you might also want to consider a lateral move if you feel the move is going to develop your skills and thus increase your value. Also, “if you feel that you’re in a part of the business or a part of the industry that’s stagnating or that’s experiencing lower growth,” a lateral move might be rewarding.

Fleming says that if someone, especially a peer, gets promoted ahead of you, it’s a sign you’re not well-valued and it’s time to consider a lateral move to another company, where you’ll “start off with a clean slate.”

Another scenario that Fleming says causes people to think about lateral moves is “if you get to the point with your current company where you frankly don’t respect the way they’re conducting themselves.” You also might want to consider a lateral move if you feel stale or become bored or start to hate what you do, he says.

Nichols points out that looking for fun is another, albeit untraditional, reason for making a lateral move. “You’re always going to be much more effective and make much more progress in something that you’re really, really enjoying and that you’re passionate about and where you’re surrounded with people who you like and who you’re having fun with,” she says.

“I’ve recently seen a number of people make moves for that reason because life’s too short.”