I have been blogging and sharing thoughts since 2011 on (trying to have) a career in development and simultaneously raising (initially three, now four) children. A more active blog that I stopped writing on this topic is still out there in cyberspace somewhere, as are pieces from a project that I ran for a year, targeted at young professionals in Germany (KarriereFamilie).
Thanks to a lot of support from family, friends, and a few mentors (as well as relatively easygoing and supportive kids, and the right financial means), I have muddled my way through the career world as a working mom for a number of years. I have had the luxury to a) know what I want to do, b) know what I am good at doing, and c) getting jobs where I can combine the two. At times, I have also experienced the luxury joker card of careers, which is d) to be able to work with people I love working with.
I have done my fair share of reflecting on how young women, and working moms in particular, can be better empowered and encouraged to crack some career ceilings. A lot has boiled down to “where there’s a will, there’s a way”, combined with having the financial means to be able to make things work (put simply, can one afford it?), and institutions that are supportive (daycare, tax systems, and crudely put, the right kind of boss).
Fifteen years into my career, feeling that I have cracked what I need to crack for my own path, and trying my best to pave the way for the next generation, I increasingly realize that I am thinking less about the mom angle of making things work, and more about what a career actually means. Perhaps this is the big job question, the “why?”
A career can be many things. It can be i) a job that provides increasing status, power, and financial means. It can be ii) a job where one manages increasing numbers of staff and budgets. It can be iii) a means to shape an organization (internally), or aspects of the world (externally). From the above, i) and ii) are for me, personally, not interesting on their own. They may be the standard definition of a career, but to me, it could involve any job. iii) starts getting interesting, because it triggers the question “what for?”. What I’d argue, and have tried to tell younger staff (and in particular women) over the past few years, is that things get really interesting when you start defining a career somewhat differently, as iv) a set of functions. This links what can be a job with increasing status and financial means, sometime also increasing staff numbers and budgets, with the points I listed previously under a) a job you want to do, and b) a job you know you are good at.
I would define a “function” as what you actually do at work. This can include things such as building networks, developing a strategy and tactics and a workplan to achieve this, seeing connections in various teams and building common areas work. It can include providing in-depth content expertise to inform strategic decisions, or creating a process toolkit to optimize how a team works. In short, the sky is the limit to functions.
Many – too many – people in the workforce are fixated on a traditional career ladder. In particular in the phase I am in, the air is very thin and competition fierce for the next career step on this traditional ladder. And it never ends, because even when you reach the top, another employer has a higher step. Not everyone can make it to the top, because the pyramid gets narrower. There are a lot of frustrated employees, who cannot answer the question “why?” – why do I go to the office day-in, day-out, provide effort and get stressed, spend time away from my children? Because it pays the bills? Because it could be worse elsewhere?
My view is that most of us are defining “careers” in the wrong way. We’re setting ourselves up to be frustrated and (most of us) to fail. If we would spend less time thinking about i) (status, income), ii) (staff numbers, budget), and more time on iii) (shaping an organization or external environment), and iv) (functions), and basing iv) (functions) on trying to maximize a, b, c, and d (what you want to do, what you are good at doing, combining the two in a job, and ideally spending your days, months, and years doing this with people you like), we’d all make our work more meaningful, and probably be happier in the process.
This involves a bit more complexity with all the “i, ii, iii, a, b, c, d”, but especially for those young women who are thinking about having a child (or another one) and whether it’s worth trying to climb the career ladder at the same time, I think this is the only way forward. Why spend time trying to crack a ceiling you actually don’t need to or want to crack?
Katri Bertram 