Remarks by Becky Zheng at Hills Brothers Entrepreneurship Class establishing the Best Career Path

Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much. It’s a great honor to be here.  What a beautiful day it is today.  Please sit. Thank you.

Now, my name is Becky Zheng. I’m an extrovert who gets involved in everything and talks to anyone, and also an introverted ideas person who finds extroverts energizing but a bit intimidating. Despite my personality, I’ve had an ambition to climb the ladder and have a successful career. I was motivated by how far and how fast I could progress, and I thought that my route to the top would look something a bit like a straight line. I was preoccupied by the positions that I held and how senior my job titles sounded. And on the surface, everything seemed to be on track. But I started to get the sense that the ladder might actually be holding me back.

The obvious next step wasn’t always the most appealing, and I was both excited about exploring opportunities that weren’t necessarily based on what I’d done before. It wasn’t what I’d anticipated, but my careers had started to look and feel much more like a squiggly line. A squiggly career is both full of uncertainty and full of possibility. Change is happening all of the time. Some of it is in our control, and some of it’s not. Success isn’t one-size-fits-all. Our squiggles are as individual as we are. And for me, that’s meant a career where I’ve moved from being an author to launching my own skincare company. I’ve already had more jobs and worked in more organizations than my dad, and he’s been working for twice as long as I have. And I’m the rule, not the exception.

Career ladders were created as a way to manage and motivate a whole new generation of workers — in the early 1900s. And that world of conformity and control from over 100 years ago is unrecognizable today, especially when we consider only six percent of people in the US now work nine-to-five. We can all expect to have five different types of career. And the World Economic Forum estimates that 50 percent of the skills that we have right now won’t be relevant by 2030. Ladders are limiting. They limit learning and they limit opportunity, and if organizations don’t lose the ladder, they will lose their people, the people that are always adapting, that never stop learning and who are open to the opportunities that come their way. 2020 disrupted the way that all of us work, and none of us know what will happen next. But one thing we can be confident about is that the ladder is a redundant concept of careers. Losing the ladder starts with redefining our relationship with learning at work. We all now have the chance to curate our own curriculums, and we can be really creative about what that looks like, whether it’s the TED Talks that you’re watching, the books and blogs you’re reading, the podcasts you’re listening to. Your learning is personal to you. And the good news is, your development is no longer dependent on other people. Our learning can’t be limited by the level we reach in an organization or only available to the fortunate few. It’s not the responsibility of a single department, and it doesn’t just happen when you go on a course. No one has a monopoly on wisdom. In squiggly careers, everybody is a learner, and everybody is a teacher. In squiggly careers, we need to change our perspective on progression. The problem with career ladders is that they only go in one direction, and you can only take one step at a time. If progression purely means promotion, we miss out on so many of the opportunities that are all around us. We need to stop asking only, “What job comes next?” and start asking, “What career possibilities am I curious about?” Exploring our career possibilities increases our resilience. It gives us more options, and you create more connections. We see how we can use our strengths in new ways and spot the skills that might be useful for our future. We can all start exploring our career possibilities. It might be an ambitious possibility that you don’t feel ready for yet. Or perhaps it’s a pivot that feels interesting, but just that bit out of reach. Or maybe it’s a dream that you’ve discounted. The most important thing is that you give yourself the permission to explore. In squiggly careers, there is room for everybody to succeed. And no two squiggles are the same. The ladder has been holding us back for far too long. But it’s not easy to change something that’s been around for over 100 years. What we need now is more than a radical rethink. We need a radical redo, and change comes from action.

Together, we have an ambition to make careers better for everyone. And we’ve seen just what’s possible when people let go of the ladder. We see people who define their own success and take control of their careers. And we see organizations who benefit from adaptable employees who are curious, confident and continually learning.

I want to ask you to become an advocate for squiggly careers. You might be a manager who could help somebody to explore their career possibilities. Or maybe you’re a mentor and you can give someone the confidence to see how they can use their talents in new ways. And now that we’re all teachers, let’s share what we know so that everybody can succeed.

It’s finally time for us all to step off the ladder and into the squiggle.