Role breadth
Every time you take on a very different role, you start again as a beginner. You learn new methods, a new vocabulary and a new idea of what good work looks like. Some careers do that often and build a wide range of know-how. Others hardly ever do it, and build a narrow range that goes deep.
| End | Letter | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Focused | F | The roles you take on are similar to each other |
| Varied | V | The roles you take on are very different from each other |
Two roles are similar when the know-how carries across from one to the other, and different when it does not. Making staircases and making cabinets are similar, while practising medicine and running a hospital are different. So what counts is how far apart the roles are, not how many of them there are. For example, three similar roles still make a Focused career, and two very different ones make a Varied career.
| Where each case sits, from Focused to Varied | ||
|---|---|---|
| A GP doing paediatrics, geriatrics, minor surgery and palliative care | Mostly Focused. Four specialisms, one body of know-how | |
| An accountant who did audit, then tax, then reporting | Focused. Three branches of one profession | |
| A carpenter who moved from staircases to cabinets | Focused. Same tools, same know-how | |
| A self-employed carpenter | In between. Carpentry, with a small business to run around it | |
| A restaurant manager who becomes a fashion-store manager | In between. Same trade, different subject | |
| A nurse who becomes a nurse educator | In between. Teaching is its own know-how, on the same subject | |
| A practitioner who becomes a manager of practitioners | In between, and the most common role change there is | |
| A doctor who also runs the hospital | Varied. Clinical work and running an institution are two trades | |
| A professional gamer who also teaches university classes | Varied. Two trades that share no know-how |
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What a Focused career gains, a Varied career gives up, and the reverse.
Focused
Gains
Useful almost from the start. Each new role builds on what a Focused career already knows, so it carries its weight, and its seniority, from early on.
Time on familiar ground. The work stays familiar, so more of a working life goes on doing it well rather than working it out.
Has met most versions of the problem. A Focused career has seen much of what its trade can throw at it, so few problems in it are new.
Few surprises in the work. Each move is to work already known, so there are few surprises.
Costs
No habit of starting over. A Focused career seldom begins from nothing, so a forced change of trade finds it without the practice.
Work that can grow stale. The same kind of work, year after year, can lose its interest.
One trade's view of every problem. A Focused career sees a problem as its own trade sees it, and can miss how it looks to the others.
Stuck with the work as it is. If the work loses its meaning, its conditions worsen or its pay falls behind, there is little else to move to.
Varied
Gains
Quick to learn something new. Having started over before, a Varied career knows how to get up to speed in unfamiliar work.
Work that stays new. Each very different role brings problems not met before, which keeps the work demanding.
Problems seen from more than one side. Having done several kinds of work, a Varied career sees what a problem looks like to each trade involved.
A way out of sour work. If the work loses its meaning, its conditions worsen or its pay falls behind, a Varied career can move to another kind.
Costs
A reset with every switch. Each new role starts from little already known, so it takes a while to carry its weight, and pay and title can lag behind.
Less time on familiar ground. More of a working life is spent working things out, and less doing what is already done well.
Someone who stayed knows more. In most of the trades a Varied career has worked in, a colleague who never left knows it more deeply.
Surprised by the work. Each new kind of work is one not done before, so its downsides show only once inside it.
For example, many large companies run trainee programmes in which young managers lead very different parts of the business for a year or two at a time. That builds role breadth quickly, inside one organisation, and each manager is expected to become competent in every part. The owner of a small company becomes broad another way. Rather than moving through roles one after another, she learns finance, marketing, sales and hiring all at once, because nobody else will do them.
