You Might Not Need

When I was looking to make a move, earlier in my career, I had learned of a technique and a question.

The technique is to find someone within the organization you’re interested in joining and to call them. The purpose of the call is to find out what it’s like to work at this organization, the culture, the people, and most importantly, to find out the way to get in.

The question to pose comes when this person from within the organization inevitably tells you: “Oh, you need to meet these conditions before you can get in.” The question to pose is “Do you know someone who didn’t have to do that, but still got in?”

When trying to get progress, you can choose the normal path, the one everyone takes. You can also, just this time, read the situation a little differently.

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You might not need to go through the usual gatekeepers to get into the prized circle. You might not need to hustle, play games, or put up a front.
You might not need to protect what you’ve worked so hard to gain.
You might not need to go further down the path you’ve put so much time and effort in. You might not need to progress in a linear fashion.

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You could be taking a step backward.
You could be taking a bit of a risk this one time.
You could be re-writing the thought “but I got so far, I’ll never get this far again” with “this is the new normal, I got this.”
You could be asking yourself “since I’ve decided I was going to try hard, what else, with the same time and money investment, can I do instead?”
You could become comfortable improvising.

Not all progress is linear.