Essay 07

Your Career Is Not Linear. Neither Is Value.

One sentence comes up in my conversations with executives more often than almost any other. "My career doesn't really make sense." Sometimes they've changed industries. Sometimes they've moved across countries. Sometimes they've gone from consulting to industry, from start-ups to multinationals, from finance to operations. They assume they have a problem. I usually disagree.

For years, we've been taught that the best careers are linear. Climb one ladder. Stay in one industry. Become increasingly specialised. There is nothing wrong with that path. But it isn't the only one. And increasingly, it isn't the one many organisations need.

Think about the leaders companies admire. Many have crossed industries. Changed functions. Lived in different countries. Built businesses. Scaled businesses. Fixed businesses. Started again. Their careers don't look linear. They look adaptable.

The problem isn't having a diverse career. The problem is not knowing what connects it. Most executives describe their career chronologically. I think they should describe it strategically. Not through job titles. Through patterns.

Every career leaves clues. Perhaps you've repeatedly been trusted to build something from scratch. Perhaps organisations consistently called you when growth stalled. Perhaps you've spent twenty years turning complexity into simplicity. Perhaps you've been the person who restores trust after difficult periods. Those patterns matter far more than the sequence of your job titles. Because patterns predict future performance.

This is one of the ideas behind the Business Archetype Framework. Instead of asking: "How do I explain all these different jobs?" It asks: "What kind of change have people repeatedly trusted me to create?" That question changes everything. Suddenly your career stops looking random. It starts looking intentional. The individual jobs become evidence. The recurring pattern becomes your positioning.

Companies don't need your career to be perfectly linear. They need it to make sense. Not to you. To them. Because hiring isn't about reconstructing your past. It's about deciding whether you can help create their future. And that's why I believe positioning isn't about organising your CV. It's about revealing the thread that has always been there.