There comes a point in some careers when you look up and wonder how you got here.
You’re successful on paper. You know your job inside out. Colleagues value your experience. Yet something feels off. The role that once energised you now leaves you feeling flat. The work no longer reflects your interests, strengths, or ambitions.
You may not dislike your job. You may simply no longer recognise yourself in it. If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
Career dissatisfaction doesn’t always arrive dramatically. More often, it creeps in quietly. You stop feeling challenged. Your role changes. Organisational restructures alter your responsibilities. The work that once felt meaningful becomes routine.
You may recognise yourself in one of these situations:
- You’re no longer energised or motivated by your work.
- Your role has changed and no longer feels like a good fit.
- You’re facing redeployment and need to consider alternative options.
- You find yourself wondering, “What else could I do?”
- You envy aspects of a colleague’s role and want to know more about it.
- You’re considering whether management might be the right next step.
When this happens, it’s tempting to assume you need a complete career change. Sometimes that’s true. Often, however, the answer lies closer to home.
Before You Leave, Look Sideways
Many of us have grown up with the idea that careers should follow a straight line. We start at the bottom and work our way up.
In reality, most careers are far less linear.
An approach that has gained popularity is the concept of the lattice career. Rather than moving exclusively upwards, a lattice career allows for movement in different directions: vertically, horizontally, and occasionally diagonally.
This opens possibilities that may not have occurred to you when thinking about your next move.
Horizontal Moves
A horizontal move involves taking on a similar role in a different team or department.
At first glance, it may not feel like career progression. However, these moves can provide something many people are missing: renewed interest and fresh challenge.
Moving sideways can help you:
- Develop new skills and knowledge.
- Gain a broader understanding of your organisation.
- Build relationships with different colleagues.
- Increase your visibility across the organisation.
- Prepare yourself for future leadership opportunities.
As a known and trusted employee, you’re often a lower-risk appointment than an external candidate. Your organisation already understands what you’re capable of.
Sometimes a change of environment is enough to help you reconnect with the aspects of work you enjoy most.
The Benefits of a Secondment
If a permanent opportunity isn’t available, a secondment can be an excellent alternative.
Covering a maternity leave position or joining a temporary project team allows you to test-drive a different role without making a permanent commitment.
Before approaching your line manager, think carefully about the benefits for your organisation as well as yourself. What problems could you help solve? How might your experience benefit another team?
People returning from secondments often bring back fresh ideas, new perspectives, and a greater understanding of how the organisation works as a whole.
And if the role later becomes permanent, you’ll already have valuable experience to draw on.
When Promotion Is the Right Move
Sometimes the issue isn’t that you’ve outgrown your organisation. You’ve simply outgrown your current role. Perhaps you’ve become so competent that the work no longer stretches you. Tasks that once required concentration now feel automatic. In these circumstances, promotion may provide the challenge you’re seeking.
A move into management offers opportunities to think more strategically and influence decisions more broadly. However, it’s important to recognise that leadership requires a different skill set. Managing former peers can be challenging. Relationships need to be reset. The expertise that made you successful in your role won’t automatically make you an effective manager. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider leadership. It simply means going into it with realistic expectations and a willingness to learn.
Diagonal moves
While less common, these moves do sometimes happen. To secure both a promotion and a move into a different department or sector, you’ll need to demonstrate your transferable skills and experiences. Researching the role you’re contemplating is key, along with conversations with those working in the area you’re interested in. You’ll need to be prepared for some cynicism from the team you manage when you start a new role, who may be suspicious of your lack of sector credentials while you get to grips in a new environment and settle in.
Give Yourself Permission to Explore
One of the biggest obstacles to career development is the belief that every move must make perfect sense. Careers are often built through experimentation.
The move to hybrid and flexible working has already encouraged many people to collaborate across teams and departments. You may have discovered interests and strengths you didn’t know you had simply by helping colleagues with a project outside your usual responsibilities.
Every new experience teaches you something about yourself. Sometimes the most valuable outcome isn’t the role itself. It’s the clarity that comes from discovering what you enjoy, what you value, and what you want more or less of in your working life.
What Are Your Options?
If you no longer recognise yourself in your career, resist the urge to panic or make a rushed decision. Instead, get curious. Explore opportunities. Have conversations. Volunteer for projects. Consider secondments. Look sideways as well as upwards. Most importantly, stop thinking about your career as a fixed route with a predetermined destination.
Think of it as something you create as you go. Be a magpie. Collect experiences, skills, and opportunities. Follow your curiosity. Some choices won’t lead where you expected. Others may open doors you never knew existed.
You don’t need to have your entire career mapped out. You simply need to take the next step towards becoming more yourself again.