27. The Career Climbing Wall

Email: bidemiologunde@gmail.com

In this episode, host Bidemi Ologunde explores The Career Climbing Wall, a practical framework for navigating non-linear careers with clarity, dignity, and sustainable excellence. What happens when your career no longer follows a ladder? How can pivots, lateral moves, proof-of-work, and reinvention become strengths rather than sources of shame? This episode is for career switchers, immigrants, mid-career professionals, laid-off workers, builders, operators, students, and anyone trying to build a meaningful life through changing seasons.

Listeners will also receive this week's challenge, the Seven-Day Career Climbing Wall Audit, and are invited to share reflections, progress, and feedback inside the show's private WhatsApp Community.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Welcome to the Work Ethic Podcast, hosted by me, P. DM Logende, where I examine sustainable excellence in work, leadership, and life. This episode is called the Career Climbing Wall, and it's about building a career when life no longer moves in one clean upward line. So recently, Business Insider told the story of Douglas Craig, a 58-year-old former senior vice president in media who helped build and launch Paramount Plus internationally. After more than three decades across companies like Discovery, Roku, Comcast, and Paramount, his role was eliminated during a corporate transition. For many professionals, that kind of moment can feel like a public verdict, especially when your title has carried your identity for years. Craig first considered another media role because that was the obvious continuation of the story. Then he and his wife asked a different question, which was less about status and more about the life they actually wanted next. They had already bought a townhouse in Colorado, their children were grown up, and the pace of media work no longer matched their definition of enough. So Craig became a ski instructor at Arapaho Basin, then worked with a science school, then prepared to spend the summer as a ranger at an aerial adventure park. The pay was dramatically lower, about one-tenth of his former compensation, but it described the new rhythm as freer, healthier, and more aligned with purpose. That story is important because many people still treat a career pivot as a confession of defeat. They imagine the old ladder where every move must look higher, cleaner, and easier to explain. A climbing wall gives us a better image for the world we are actually living in. On a climbing wall, progress can move upward, sideways, diagonally, and occasionally toward a lower hold that gives you better leverage. The route still demands strength, judgment, and courage, but the climber succeeds by reading the wall instead of pretending that there is only one acceptable direction. LinkedIn's recent workforce research makes this episode especially relevant. Professionals entering the workforce today are on pace to hold about twice as many jobs over their careers as people who enter the workforce 15 years ago. LinkedIn also reports that more than 10% of professionals hired today have job titles that did not exist in the year 2000. That includes roles now considered normal, such as AI engineer, sustainability manager, customer success manager, social media manager, and data scientist. The World Economic Forum also expects major skill disruption by 2030, and employers increasingly assess work experience, skills assessments, and practical achievements alongside traditional credentials. The meaning is practical for career switchers, immigrants, mid-career professionals, laid-off workers, founders, freelancers, students launching careers, leaders, managers, athletes, performers, and diaspora communities. Many people are trying to explain a life that contains movement, pressure, migration, caregiving, layoffs, visas, family expectations, injuries, side projects, unpaid learning, and seasons of rebuilding. A career climbing wall gives that life a structure without requiring shame. So the first principle of the career climbing wall is that your skills function as holds that you can grip when conditions change. Some holds are technical, like financial modeling, welding, JavaScript, logistics planning, clinical knowledge, video editing, compliance, fundraising, sales, or data analysis. Some holds are human, like conflict resolution, customer empathy, team leadership, teaching, listening, negotiation, persuasion, and cross-cultural communication. Some holds are contextual, like understanding a regulated industry, navigating a family business, serving a diaspora market, translating between technical and non-technical teams, or operating in a high pressure performance environment. Many people understate their holds because they confuse title with capability. An immigrant who has rebuilt a life across systems has practiced adaptation, translation, documentation, patience, and risk management. A parent returning to work after caregiving has practiced prioritization, emotional regulation, scheduling, crisis response, and negotiation. An athlete leaving competition has practiced repetition, feedback, recovery, discipline, and performance under pressure. A laid-off operator has practiced delivery inside uncertainty, especially when the market changed faster than the plan. The second principle is that lateral moves can create vertical leverage. A sideways move into customer success can make a future product leader more credible. A move from engineering into sales engineering can reveal how buyers actually make decisions. A move from corporate strategy into operations can convert slide deck intelligence into executional judgment. A move from journalism into communications, from teaching into learning design, from athletics into coaching, or from banking into climate finance can all become leverage when the move deepens problem understanding. Bozoma St. John's career is a useful example of portable skill across different areas. Her path moved through Spike Lee's advertising agency, PepsiCo, Beats, Apple Music, Uber, Endeavor, Netflix, Entrepreneurship, Media, and public-facing storytelling. The industries changed, but the deeper hold stayed consistent. She understood culture, attention, narrative, and emotional resonance. Her example matters because many ambitious professionals assume reinvention requires abandoning their previous identity. In reality, reinvention often requires naming the strongest transferable pattern underneath the old identity. The third principle is that proof of work reduces the burden of explanation. A resume tells people where you've been, while proof of work shows people what you can do now. For a founder, proof of work might be a landing page, a customer interview memo, a demo, a pricing test, or a small community that already trusts you. For an operator, proof of work might be a process map, a turnaround plan, a dashboard, a hiring scorecard, or a 30-day improvement proposal. For a creator, proof of work might be a body of published ideas, a portfolio, a showreel, a newsletter, or a live event. For a student or early career professional, proof of work might be a research brief, a GitHub contribution, a case study, a volunteer project, or a thoughtful teardown of an existing product. Ashna Doshi's recent career move shows why proof of work matters for builders. While working as a Google software engineer, she started a podcast called Zero to One with a co-host interviewing founders, engineers, executives, and creators about their career journeys. The podcast became more than a hobby because it helped them build a network, a point of view, and a distribution channel. Within the first year, it crossed 100,000 YouTube views, and the project eventually helped give her the confidence to leave Google and build an AI startup. The lesson is practical. A side project can become a signal when it compounds relationships, learning, and public evidence. The fourth principle is to ask for problems instead of asking only for permission. Lori Gola's career story from Facebook illustrates this beautifully. She had been working in marketing at eBay when she reached out to Cheryl Sandberg after Sandberg joined Facebook as chief operating officer. Instead of opening with a long pitch about herself, Gola asked what Sandberg's biggest problem was and whether she could help solve it. The problem was recruiting. So Gowler moved into that problem and eventually became a senior people leader as Facebook scaled. That is the climbing wall in action. She did not wait for a perfect title match because she found a serious business problem and attached herself to it with courage and usefulness. For anyone navigating a career switch, the problem first question is powerful. Ask a manager, founder, mentor, recruiter, customer, or community leader this question. What important problem are you trying to solve this quarter and what would make progress easier? Then listen for patterns across five conversations. When the same problem appears repeatedly, you have found a possible route on the climbing wall. Your next move is to build a small proof that you understand the problem deeply enough to help. The fifth principle is that reinvention needs sustainable excellence because exhaustion is a weak climbing strategy. The World Health Organization describes burnout as an occupational phenomenon caused by chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. The US Surgeon General's workplace well-being framework centers worker voice, equity, protection from harm, connection, work-life harmony, mattering, and opportunity for growth. That is important because the career climbing wall should never become a disguised version of Hospital culture. A healthy climb includes effort, recovery, skill development, community, boundaries, and a definition of ambition that leaves room for a human life. Sustainable excellence begins with an energy budget. Before you add a certification, a side project, a networking plan, or a job search sprint, ask how much capacity your current season can honestly support. A laid-off worker with urgent financial pressure needs a different plan from a manager with stable income and limited evenings. A student with exams needs a different plan from a founder with customer deadlines. A new immigrant balancing documentation, remittances, and family adaptation needs a different plan from someone with local networks and savings. The standard is serious progress that can survive your actual life. Use the red, yellow, and green week system. In a green week, when your energy and obligations are manageable, you can schedule three focused career building sessions of 90 minutes each. In a yellow week, when work, caregiving, health, or finances are heavier, you choose one session and one small outreach message. In a red week, when life is genuinely overloaded, you maintain only the smallest useful action, such as saving one job description, writing three lines in your skills ledger, or resting without turning recovery into guilt. This system protects momentum without pretending that every week has the same capacity. So now let's define the actual climbing wall system that listeners can use. The wall has five parts the holds, the route, the billet, the chalk, and the ledge. The holds are your transferable skills and lived experiences. Write them as cross-context capabilities with job titles in the background. Instead of writing teacher, write explains complex ideas, manages groups, designs learning experiences, and measures progress. Instead of writing athlete, write performs under pressure, responds to coaching, manages recovery, and competes within constraints. Instead of writing immigrant, Wright navigates on familiar systems, translates across contexts, builds trust, and adapts quickly under pressure. Instead of writing laid off worker, Wright has delivered value in a changing market, understands organizational risk, and can rebuild with urgency. The route is the next direction you're testing. A route should be specific enough to guide action for 30 days. I want a better career, it's too vague for a climber. So what is better is I am testing operation roles in health technology where my logistics background and customer empathy can transfer. Another example is I am testing freelance brand strategy for immigrant-owned service businesses. Another one is I am testing product marketing roles that value my sales background and writing ability. The belay is your support system during uncertainties. Climbers use belay partners because courage should not require isolation. Your belay can include peers in a WhatsApp community, former colleagues, mentors, alumni groups, faith communities, diaspora networks, coaches, managers, teachers, clients, or friends who understand the stakes. A strong belay does not do the climb for you. A strong belay keeps you from confusing one slip with the end of the route. The chalk is your proof of work in visible form. Chalk improves grip and proof of work improves credibility. For the next 30 days, create one small artifact each week that proves your direction. Make it specific, useful, and shareable without violating confidentiality. Create a two-page market memo, a redesigned process, a customer interview summary, a sample dashboard, a short explainer video, a product teardown, a coaching plan, a content calendar, or a before and after case study. The artifact can be valuable without going viral because the real goal is making your capability easier to trust. The ledge is your recovery protocol for sustainable movement. Every serious climb needs rest point because fatigue changes judgment. Decide in advance what recovery looks like during career change. That may include two screen-free evenings, a financial review on Sunday, a walk after interviews, a sleep target, a family conversation about boundaries, or a weekly review that separates self-worth from outcomes. Recovery protects consistency, and consistency protects reinvention. There is also an emotional system underneath all of this. Reinvention without shame requires a better story. Many people narrate a pivot as a punishment, especially after a layoff, a stalled promotion, a visa setback, a failed business, a public loss, or a long caregiving season. The career climbing wall asks for a more precise story. You're not hiding the hard part. You are placing the hard part inside a larger pattern of learning, evidence, and direction. Zarna Garg's second act gives that idea a human face. She was born in India, built a life in the United States, trained as a lawyer, spent many years as a stay-at-home mother, and eventually entered stand-up comedy in her 40s after encouragement from her children. Her comedy career later expanded into specials, books, touring, acting, and a family business around her work. Her story resonates because the second act did not erase the first act. The mother, immigrant, lawyer, storyteller, and entrepreneur all became part of the voice that audiences wanted to hear. So for leaders and managers, the career climbing world changes how talent should be developed. A team member who wants a lateral move may be seeking growth as a primary goal. A high performer who wants a smaller role after burnout may be protecting long-term contribution. A returning parent, veteran, immigrant, athletes, or career switcher may bring valuable capabilities that are hidden by conventional resume filters. Manager should ask more precise questions about problems solved, constraints handled, environments navigated, and proofs created. That approach supports both performance and inclusion because talent often appears in forms that the career ladder overlooks. For ambitious professionals, the climbing wall gives permission to pursue excellence without worshipping exhaustion. Ambition can mean becoming more useful, more skillful, more trusted, more courageous, more financially stable, more creative, and more aligned with your values. Ambition can also mean choosing a healthier rhythm before your body forces the decision. Sustainable excellence does not require everyone to want the same summit. It requires each person to climb with clarity, evidence, support, and enough recovery to keep choosing well. For builders, the climbing wall is especially relevant because a founder, creator, freelancer, or student really has a clean XNL path. Builders often move through experiments, pivots, failed launches, unpaid learning, small audiences, awkward first versions, and messy proof. The point is to reduce fantasy and increase feedback. Your next route should produce evidence from the markets, the audience, the customer, the user, the coach, the hiring manager, or the community you want to serve. For diaspora communities, the career climbing wall is also a language of dignity. Many immigrants and children of immigrants carry intense pressure to choose respectable titles, minimize risk, and justify every move to family members who sacrificed deeply. That pressure is understandable. Because stability can be a form of protection. The climbing wall does not dismiss stability. It expands stability beyond one employer, one title, one industry, or one version of success. Portable skills, trusted relationships, proof of work, financial discipline, and emotional recovery can become a broader stability system. So here is a weekly challenge for our private WhatsApp community. This week, take part in the seven-day career climbing wall audit and share your reflections within the community by the end of the week. On day one, name your current wall in one sentence. Describe the career environment you are actually climbing right now, including your industry, constraints, responsibilities, and pressure points. On day two, list 12 holds that you already have, including technical skills, human skills, lived experiences, relationships, credentials, and proof. On day three, choose one possible route for the next 30 days and make it specific enough that someone else can understand what you're testing. On day four, create one small proof-of-work artifact in two focused hours, even if it remains private for now. On day five, send three problem first messages to people who understand the field, market, community, or customer you want to serve. On day six, define your ledge by choosing one recovery boundary that will protect your judgment this week. On day seven, post a short update in the WhatsApp community using this template. My current wall is the career environment where I am navigating these constraints and opportunities. My strongest transferable hold is the capability I can use across more than one role or industry. My next route is a 30-day direction I am testing through action. My proof of work is the artifact or evidence I created this week. My ledge is a recovery boundary I will protect while I keep climbing. So the goal of the challenge is simple. We want to make nonlinear careers visible, structured, and less lonely. We want people to share credible evidence, useful context, and honest support. We want the laid-off worker to see options, the immigrant professional to see transferable strength, the founder to see feedback, the student to see agency, the manager to see hidden talent, and the mid-career professional to see that reinvention can be disciplined without being shame-driven. The old career story rewarded people who could make every move look obvious in hindsight. The new career reality rewards people who can learn, explain, recover, and keep building proof while the world changes. Your career may include pivots, lateral moves, restarts, side projects, caregiving seasons, experiments, and unexpected turns. Those moves can still form a serious body of work. So this week, ask a better question than whether your path looks perfectly straight from the outside. Ask whether your next hold is real, whether your route is clear enough for action, whether your proof is getting stronger, whether your belay is honest, and whether your ledge is protected. That is how sustainable excellence works on the career climbing wall.