Reality Check: Non-Attachment to Career Outcomes
“Ok Yael”, you may be thinking, “you talk about all these ideal concepts of not attaching to outcomes and finding inner peace and happiness, but I live in reality, not woo-woo-land.” Right. Let’s start exploring what all these ideas mean in real life.
In my time at Facebook (now Meta), I was a senior individual contributor (IC) and really wanted to become a manager. I did everything I could to get the role - took on a ton of responsibility, worked crazy hours and generally tried to be indispensable. At some point I applied for an open management position but didn’t get it - and neither did anyone else at the company: The executive team wanted to bring in an external person with more management experience than the internal candidates. For a while I felt all the feelings - disappointment, frustration… But then I started getting curious: That wasn’t the first time an external person was hired for a management role in my organization - in fact it was a pattern. How do other experienced ICs in the organization feel about their growth opportunities under the circumstances?
I interviewed 8-10 senior ICs and ended up creating a report that I sent to executives about the state of career development in the organization, highlighting several major issues and making suggestions. I wanted to make management realize that continuously bringing supposedly better external talent has a cost they were ignoring. To my utter shock, almost immediately I was invited to participate in management meetings and run some initiatives in the organization - the only IC to do so. A month or so later I was asked to take on a management position that opened up.
“Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it. Success is shy - it won’t come out while you’re watching.”
I did everything to get to a management position in the “traditional” way, but ended up getting it completely unintentionally, by pursuing my curiosity and highlighting issues that were important to me and to the organization. This path had nothing to do with my day-to-day job or the path to management I thought I had to follow. Imagine if I had followed my interest in how the organization was run earlier rather than obsessing over becoming a manager: How many more opportunities will we see if we pursued our curiosity and not just the path we think will lead us to our goal? We can work for an outcome, want it but also let the chips fall as they may. Even if we fail, something better may emerge and new opportunities could open up. That is non-attachment in real life.
What opportunities and ideas are you missing out on because you’re too focused on your goal and the way you think you’ll achieve it? What could be a blind spot for others that you’re in a unique position to see? What could be amazing about your current plan not working?
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