A career is not a ladder: how to represent real mobility paths

According to research by Adam Kleinbaum, certain career paths helped create connections among previously separate groups within a technology company. His study examines the origin of brokerage positions in networks; it does not design career maps. Even so, it offers a useful idea: moving also changes the relationships through which someone contributes. Kleinbaum, 2012 (opens in a new tab).

Nodes describe contributions, not rewards

Each node can be a role, a temporary experience, or a configuration of responsibility. Its value does not depend on being placed higher. It depends on explaining the work it concentrates, the decisions it includes, and the evidence that would show readiness.

A cross-functional project, for example, provides exposure to another context without promising a permanent move. Expert progression increases depth and consequences. A management position adds authority over people and resources. Drawing all three as promotions erases differences that reappear during the transition.

The map should allow someone to compare forms of contribution. It should also prevent a title from becoming a conclusion about transferable capability.

The decisive information lies in the connections

A line between two nodes needs meaning. It should indicate which capabilities transfer directly, which require adaptation, what remains to be observed, and which entry conditions reduce risk.

Organizational distance provides little information on its own. Two adjacent positions may share a hierarchy and require very different decisions. Roles in separate areas may use transferable reasoning, relationships, or methods. The connection is supported by the work, not by proximity in the organizational chart.

Distinguish at least three states. A proven path has enough transitions and evidence. A plausible path has clear correspondences but still needs adaptation to be tested. An exploratory path arises from new demand or a small number of cases. Showing uncertainty prevents the map from becoming a promise of access.

Progress has more than one dimension

A career can expand scope, deepen mastery, increase autonomy, integrate contexts, or multiply capability in others. Those dimensions do not always grow together.

A specialist can take on more uncertain problems without changing hierarchical level. A generalist can connect decisions across areas without mastering every specialty. Someone who leads a practice and multiplies capability can raise the collective standard before managing people.

The map also reveals paths that do not yet exist

If a transition seems valuable but always requires leaving the area, an intermediate experience may be missing. If several people have transferable capability and none can move, the problem may lie in release, incentives, or entry conditions.

The OECD notes that skills-first approaches need a shared language, recognition of learning, and guidance to connect capabilities with work. The report addresses the labor market broadly; here it serves as a reference for not reducing mobility to credentials or titles. OECD, A Skills-First Labour Market, 2026 (opens in a new tab).

The map can prompt decisions about internal projects, support, coverage, and new lateral paths. It can also show that an attractive connection lacks enough demand or evidence. Both conclusions are valuable.

A path needs conditions for entry and return

Showing that a move is possible is not enough. The person needs to know which prior experience reduces uncertainty, who enables access, and how continuity in the originating area is protected. Without those conditions, the path exists in the diagram but not in operations.

Define a proportionate entry gate for each transition: a conversation with the receiving area, a work sample, a short assignment, or a supported period. The evidence should correspond to the actual risk of the move. Requiring full mastery before allowing practice reproduces the barrier mobility was meant to resolve.

Finally, observe who manages to cross each connection. If a path works only for people who already have sponsorship, available time, or visibility, the map describes an unequal possibility. The career architecture must distinguish required capability from the organizational conditions that make it easier to demonstrate.

Governing a network means learning from every transition

Record what was expected to transfer, which adaptation proved necessary, and what happened during entry. That information makes it possible to strengthen, restrict, or remove a connection. Keeping every path open out of optimism makes the map harder to interpret.

A career stops looking like a ladder when the organization recognizes several forms of progress and explains the real cost of moving among them. The network does not promise that everything connects to everything else. The organization must review its connections based on the work it manages to sustain and what it still needs to build.

To extend this reading, see What evidence an internal transition needs to stop being a gamble, which develops a complementary dimension of the problem.