The #1 Career Mistake Capable People Make

Greg McKeown

I recently reviewed a resume from a talented individual. She had terrific experience. And yet, there was a problem: she had done so many good things in so many different fields it was hard to know what was distinctive about her. I know her pretty well and am determined to be useful to her. Yet, based only on her resume it was unclear who in my network to recommend her to.

We talked through this and developed a strategy based more closely with her Highest Point of Contribution (where I flesh this idea out a bit more fully in Harvard Business Review). I see this problem frequently: people who are overworked and underutilized. Much of the responsibility for this lies with out of touch managers but I think we also need to be more deliberate and discerning in navigating our careers.

It is easy to see how this happens:

Step 1: Capable people like to achieve.

Step 2: Other people see they are capable and give them assignments.

Step 3: Capable people gain a reputation as "go to" people. They become "good old [insert name] who is always there when you need her."

Step 4: Capable people end up doing lots of projects successfully but they don't break through to their highest point of contribution.

Using a camping metaphor, it is as if people keep adding additional poles of the same height to the tent. We end up with 10, 20 or 30 poles of the same height, somehow hoping the tent will go higher.

The slightly painful truth is, at any one time there is only one piece of real estate you can "own" in another person’s mind. People can't think of you as a project manager, professor, attorney, insurance agent, editor and entrepreneur all at the same time. They may all be true about you but people can only think of you as one thing first. At any one time there is only one phrase that can follow your name. Might we be better served by asking, at least occasionally, whether the various commitments and projects we have add up to a longer pole?

I saw this illustrated recently in one of the most distinctive resumes I had seen in a while. It belonged to a Stanford Law School Professor [there it is: the single phrase that follows his name, the longest pole in his career tent]. His resume was clean and concise. For each entry there was one, impressive title/role/company and a single line description of what he had achieved. Each one sentence said more than ten bullet points in many resumes I have seen. When he was at university his single line described how he had been the student body president, under "teaching" he was teacher of the year and so on.

The point here is not primarily about resumes, although it applies there as well. The point is we can benefit from evaluating career opportunities through the lens of the question, "Will this become the longest pole in the tent?" If the answer is no we may well still choose to do it. But at least we do it with greater awareness.

There is always a tension between specialization and generalization and I am not suggesting we should shift entirely to one side or the other. Being able to do many things is important in many jobs today. 

Broad understanding also is a must. But developing greater discernment about what is distinctive about us can be a great advantage. Instead of simply doing more things we need to find our highest point of contribution. Failure to be conscientious about this represents the #1 mistake, in frequency, I see capable people make in their careers.