Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Wherever you are. Welcome to my session. I'm very excited to be here with all of you. And uh I, I'm really thankful for joining my session. So the topic for today's session is lateral career move, smart or stupid.And the agenda is we'll just see what uh is a ladder versus a lattice. Some pros and cons on the lateral career move. I would like to share my experiences when I took a lateral position, some key takeaways and an action plan if you are contemplating a lateral move, let me introduce myself. I'm Rija Shankar. I work at GE as a technical product manager. I've been in the it industry for more than a decade now. I'm settled in Bangalore with my husband and my daughter. I love traveling. Uh not able to do so from past two years, but eagerly waiting for it. I also enjoy reading, baking and drawing. So that's me in a nutshell. Let's uh deep dive into the topic, Lader versus lattice. Most of you will be aware of the term corporate ladder. So a corporate ladder is where your carrier moves in a linear fashion. So that's what you see on the left hand side, that's your ladder progression. Now, what we are talking about in this session is the lattice pathways or carrier lattice. You can see here that the arrows are moving in all directions.

So uh carrier lattice is just a varied path for growth and development. So you can move upwards downwards sideways, diagonally wherever you want and then you reach your destination. This word carrier lattice, it became very popular after a book which was written by Joanne Cleaver.

In that book, she mentions how a lateral move can be beneficial to the organization and to the employees. And there is a line from her which says over is the new up. So all of us want to be on the right road to success. Traditionally, we have been told and many of us believe that this road always travels in one direction which is up. Professional career growth can be in any direction. You can deviate from the quintessential path and still taste success. So here I'm trying to throw some light on the list of lateral career move and open up a conversation with yourself and decide whether a lateral position is right for you or not. So imagine the situation that you have worked really hard for your promotion. You have checked all the boxes, you have showcased your achievements. But when that crucial time comes, your manager is offering you a lateral position and you're left wondering what you should do next or another scenario where you know that there is no promotion in the nearby future because the higher up the ladder you go, there are fewer positions above you and that there are not many opportunities for promotion, but you like the organization, you don't want to leave the organization and you're thinking what should be your next step.

So the reasons might vary from person to person. But before you take that crucial decision, let's weigh on some of the pros and cons of lateral career move. So I have a list of pros and cons which I would like to share with you. But before that, I would like you to uh tell me that what you think are some of the disadvantages of lateral career move. So there is a Slido and this is the code on your screen. If you can, please uh go into Slido and submit your responses, it would be great. So you can submit as many responses as you want. We'll just go ahead after the responses. Let me know in the chat. If there is an issue with Slido, we'll just keep 30 seconds. OK? We're getting some responses may lose promotion. That's true. Any, any other things which you can think about if you feel uh comfortable in putting it in the chat, that's also fine. Yeah, you have to start new. That's a very nice point. Less angry. Yes, you may think you are stuck. That's true. Ok, so we have some responses here. Like you see here, there are varied responses, right? So a disadvantage for me might not be a disadvantage for you. It depends on person to person. So let's look at some of the disadvantages of lateral career move. Like somebody mentioned, there is uh no salary hike. Usually lateral position comes with the same title and same salary.

There are very rare scenarios where you get a salary hike and there are scenarios where you get a salary drop as well. So if you're looking for a promote uh like a pay hike, what are the reasons uh you have for that? Then this position is not for you. Now, you're taking up a new role, there is always a risk associated with it. If you're getting promoted in your current team, that risk is comparatively lesser because you're getting additional responsibilities. But you know, the team, you know, that kind of work, you know, the people, so that risk is comparatively lesser. But in a new role in the same organization that risk is there, which is high and you have to prove yourself again, that team doesn't know you or your work. So if you're going to a new team, you have to prove yourself again. So somebody mentioned you have to start from the scratch again. And there are some companies who still believe in vertical advancement. They do not respect lateral career moves. So if you are in such a company, then people may think that you are incapable of getting a promotion.

And that is the reason you opted for a lateral position. And if you're choosing a lateral uh position, then you have to wait for a longer period of time to reach that dream title. So these are some of the cons. Now, let's look at some of the pros you're going to a new team. So there are a lot of new faces and there are a lot of new challenges. So these challenges will help you to sharpen your skills and you have to start building your network from the scratch there and it will take some time. It will take a lot of effort, but it's worth it because once you have that network, it will be bigger and it will be diverse in nature. Now that new role, it might be very close to your home. So the commute time is very less or the new role may offer you more flexibility in terms of uh work from home or time management or that new role will help you to relocate to a place where you always wanted to be. But in the previous job, you couldn't do that or the previous role, you couldn't do that. So these are some of the good things, better work life balance. Now, if you ask me for me, the priority is personal or job satisfaction.

So you are in the current role for a longer period of time, that role may no longer excites you. So this move might be the remedy for all your Monday blues lateral moves may not come with a fancy title or a bigger paycheck, but it will always motivate you to do what you like. So when you decide on that role, you should keep in mind that this is something that you want to do and that's the reason you're taking it up again. If you are doing the same work for quite some time, then there is a possibility that your knowledge base have become stagnant. So taking up this new role will help you to flex your learning muscles. So lateral moves will help you to increase your knowledge base and also to increase your confidence level. When you're doing really well in your new job, you're actually proving to yourself and to others that you are good at taking up new responsibilities and you can adapt to changes very quickly. So that will enhance your value as well as your marketability.

So these are some of the pros and cons which like very generally. But when you start putting your pros and cons on why you should take it or not, then be sure that you add all your personal details in that because right, like I mentioned before, something which I feel is a disadvantage, might not be a disadvantage for you and vice versa. OK. Now I would like to share my story. The first time I took a lateral position was in my previous organization. So there I was offered a lateral position and I didn't think much at that time, not on these uh pros and cons or what will happen because in the current role, nothing new was happening. So I just went ahead and I took that role later, I realized that I made a good decision because uh that role gave me a lot of like uh visibility and I was able to showcase my skills directly to the client. We did that project for over a year. And once that was completed, client offered me a lead role for another project. And I realized that this happened only because I took that lateral position because that put me in the spotlight.

And that's the reason I got the new role. So that was some years back now, fast forwarding to many years recently, I took up a lateral position in my current organization. Unlike last time when it was offered to me this time, I went ahead and I looked for opportunities. I got a role and then people started asking me, why are you leaving this role? If you stay a little bit longer, you might get a promotion or the the this new role is a different domain. It's a different technology. How will you manage all these things that got me thinking and I started writing my own pros and cons list and what I found out that even if I did a promotion in this current role, I won't be satisfied because I've reached that saturation in the current role. So uh continuing in this role won't give me that personal satisfaction. And the new role is very interesting and it's very exciting, the new technology, new domain, which has a lot of things which I can learn from. So that's the reason why I took up that role. And a matter of fact, I'm starting it next week. So that's my experience. And I have seen that most of the women leaders, they have taken a lateral position at some time in their career. As you see here, the path to promotion is not always an immediate promotion.

Sometimes it's gathering the right experiences in different areas. And then ultimately, you will reach that role where you want to be. And this is a very nice analogy from Cheryl Palmer. If you're stuck in traffic, sitting in the traffic jam and fuming about it won't get you anywhere.

You can take an alternate path and you can reach your destination. So think about lateral career moves as an alternate path to reach your career destination. That was an interesting survey which was conducted by CIA back in 2019 among female senior business leaders. And what they found was that almost all of them have made a nontraditional change. They have made a lateral move they work outside their skill set. They have changed industries at some point of time. And most of them believe that work experience across industries is important to career progression because that will give you a well-rounded perspective when you are higher up in that role. OK. So we talked about a lot of good things about lateral moves. So before you march into the boss's office, asking for a lateral position, I want you to think about these questions and I want you to answer them as honest as you can be without a strategy, lateral moves can be just merry go rounds. You really should think what you are leaving versus what you are gaining because the lateral moves, it should not be a dead end each and every step you take in your should be a step forward in your career even if you're taking it to the sideways. So these are some of the questions which you should ask yourself if you're thinking about taking up a lateral position. And finally the last one right do the cons outweigh pros. If your answer is yes, then that move is not for you.

There is an action plan which you can do for this. That is start with self assessment. What will come under self assessment? You should figure out where are you right now in your personal, as well as professional career? Are you in a space where you can take responsibilities where you can start learning a new skill. Do you have that amount of time with you? Can you stretch yourself? And what is the skill which you want to be in? Are you OK with whatever you are in right now? Do you want to try something else? So all of that will come under self assessment. So once you dig that assessment, you have to plot your career map, you can take references from everywhere, right? Maybe you know, OK, you aspire to be like somebody else and follow their career path. That's OK. But before you decide, you should know that it's very much individualized, you should think about your situation and your strengths, your weaknesses and see are you OK to follow that career path? So you should plot your own career map and see where it will uh take you. Now, once you have done this, you should start exploring opportunities like we saw before. Do not restrict yourself to a particular area. When you're looking out for opportunities, it should be wide open.

You should try in a different industry, try in a different skill, try in a different domain, then you are searching. So once you have all these opportunities with you, then you decide which one is right for you based on whatever we talked so far. So with that, I would like to conclude the session and I hope this helped you to at least some extent in deciding what should you do as a next step in your career. And I wish all of you a very rewarding and exciting uh career going forward. I can be reached uh in linkedin or email. The links are on the screen. Uh Thank you so much for attending this session. I hope you enjoy the rest of the sessions. Uh Thank you and stay safe.