A different way to think about careers

Mar 14, 2026

Careers rarely go to plan

When people talk about careers, they often talk about plans. Five year plans, career ladders, strategic moves. It all sounds very orderly and deliberate.

But when you look at real careers, very few of them actually unfold that way. Mine certainly did not.

I often joke that I was “the girl who could not say no”. Every time someone offered me a job that looked difficult, or one where I was not entirely sure I had the experience, I said yes. I did not have a grand career plan. I simply kept stepping forward.

Looking back now, after a lifetime in business and technology, I suspect that is how most careers actually happen. Not through careful design, but through a series of decisions taken in the moment.

The myth of the perfectly planned career

The idea that successful people always have a clear career plan is comforting, but it is mostly fiction. Most careers are reactive.

Opportunities appear, organisations change, leaders move on, markets shift. A role becomes available and someone says, “Would you consider doing this?” At that point the real question is rarely about the plan. It is about the response.

Do you step forward, or do you hesitate because it does not fit a carefully designed path?

Many of the most interesting careers I have seen were built not through planning but through curiosity and courage. People accepted roles they were not quite ready for, learned quickly, adapted and moved on.

The additional complexity for women

For women, careers have always had another layer of complexity. Maternity, childcare and family responsibilities often disrupt the tidy career timelines that organisations quietly assume.

A linear career path becomes difficult, sometimes impossible. There are pauses, detours and unexpected changes of pace. For many women, this means career progression becomes less about following a straight ladder and more about navigating opportunities as they arise.

In other words, even more reactive.

Yet what is often described as a disadvantage can also become a source of strength. People who navigate interrupted or non linear careers develop resilience, adaptability and judgement. Those qualities matter enormously in leadership.

Saying yes before you feel ready

Some of the most important roles I ever held were ones I initially felt under prepared for. If I had waited until I was completely ready, I would probably never have taken them.

Experience does not arrive neatly packaged in advance. It is acquired through doing difficult things.

When someone offers you a stretch role, what they are often really offering is trust. They believe you can grow into the job. The question is whether you believe it too.

So is having a plan a good idea?

Of course it is sensible to have direction. Knowing what matters to you, what you are good at and what kind of work energises you is extremely valuable.

But there is a difference between direction and rigidity. A plan can easily become a constraint if it blinds you to opportunities that do not fit neatly within it.

The world of work today changes far too quickly for rigid career blueprints. Entire industries evolve within a decade. Technologies appear that redefine jobs. Organisations restructure constantly.

The people who thrive are rarely those who followed a perfect map. They are the ones who learned how to navigate uncertainty.