What you do early in your career compared to what you do later in your career has some strong overlap. The output will change, but the core building and designing activities will not. Let's dive into this.

In my earlier video on career growth, I shared a view of the organizational or career pyramid where you had your typical levels mapped from early in your career to much later in your career:

Career growth was climbing up this pyramid until you reached the very top, which is the role of CEO. I received a lot of great questions around this, and a common theme was this: What skills do I need to get to the top of the pyramid?

If I had to generalize across disciplines and industries, it would be something like this. Early in your career, you are focusing on building or designing things. What you are building or designing could be software. Could be hardware. Could be a plan for sales or marketing. Could be any deliverable that a customer would eventually see and interact with.

As you progress through your career, as you go up the career pyramid, you will still be building and designing...even as a CEO. Let me explain.

What will happen is that what you build and design will be less tangible things your customers will interact with. Instead, you’ll be building and designing teams and organizations. Some of the questions you’ll be answering are: Are the right people in the right spots? Are the core priorities staffed correctly? What is the culture you want to encourage. Is everyone clear on the vision?

For example, the following organizational structures didn't just happen - they were designed and built:

So to answer the question on what skills do I need to get to the top of the pyramid? Be very good at building and designing. Early on, you will be building and designing core deliverables for your customers. As you grow in your career, you will slowly transition from there to building and designing the best structure to help teams and organizations thrive.

Conclusion

The main takeaway is that, no matter where you fall in the career pyramid, you’ll always be building and designing, so...get used to enjoying the process, the ups-and-downs, and the various surprises you’ll encounter along the way.

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