At the start of a new year, many people are thinking about how they might grow in their careers in 2023. Employers need to stay ahead of those aspirations, even with the prospect of a more significant economic downturn. Employers must also adapt to employees’ changing expectations about career growth, resulting from the shift to remote work, social justice movements, and the talent shortage.

I’m reflecting back on frameworks that used to be the gold standard for managing career growth:

* Annual promotion cycles

* The path to promotion requiring individual contributors to become managers

* Forced ranking of employees

None of these make sense anymore…and maybe they never did! So where does that leave us?

In this conversation, Barbra Gago, Founder & CEO at Pando, shared with me her new paradigm for career growth: “just-in-time” career progression. We covered topics such as:

* Why is continuous management of career growth important?

* Why does a downturn make it more important to invest in employees’ career growth?

* Is it unreasonable for founders to expect employees to be intrinsically motivated, as opposed to driven by extrinsic factors like compensation or seniority?

You can listen to our conversation or read the lightly edited transcript below. Let’s dive in!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit allisonpickens.substack.com