Latest / The Marketing Career Podcast with Fexingo: Marketing Jobs, Skills, and Career Growth / How Marketers Use Career Lattice Thinking to Grow
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this idea that keeps showing up in career conversations, and I think it's worth pushing back on: the career ladder. You know, the vertical climb from associate to manager to director, rung by rung. Luna: Right, and for marketers it feels especially baked in. You're supposed to climb from coordinator to specialist to manager, and if you're not moving up every two years, something's wrong. Lucas: Exactly. But the alternative I've been digging into is the career lattice. Instead of just up, you move sideways, diagonally, sometimes even down a step—but with a purpose. The metaphor is a climbing wall, not a ladder. Luna: And the key is that it's not just about variety. It's about building a portfolio of skills that compound over time. Lucas: Yeah. And I've got a concrete example from the marketing world. A friend of mine—let's call her Priya—was a brand manager at a mid-size consumer goods company. She was good at her job, but she kept hitting the same wall in meetings: she'd propose a campaign, and the analytics lead would shoot it down with data she didn't fully grasp. Luna: Oof, that's a classic. You're making decisions based on intuition, and someone else holds the numbers. Lucas: Right. So instead of fighting for a promotion to senior brand manager, she asked her manager for an eighteen-month rotation into the data analytics team. Same pay, same level, but completely different day-to-day. She wanted to learn how to build a regression model, how to segment a customer base, how to actually test a hypothesis. Luna: And that's a lateral move, but it's clearly not a step back. She's investing in a skill that makes her more valuable in her next brand role. Lucas: Exactly. And when she came back to brand, she wasn't just a brand manager with a nice to have. She was the person who could look at the analytics team's output, challenge it intelligently, and translate it into a campaign brief that actually moved the needle. Her next promotion came faster than it would have if she'd stayed put. Luna: So what made that work? Was it the skill itself, or the way she framed it? Lucas: I think it was both. And that's exactly what we're going to unpack today. How to use the career lattice deliberately, so it doesn't look like you're drifting, but investing. Luna: Let's start with the first question you should ask before any lateral move. What is it? Lucas: The first question is: does this move give me a skill that's transferable across at least two future roles I actually want? Not just something that's interesting, but something that opens doors. For Priya, data literacy was that skill. It applies to brand, product, growth, even sales. Luna: So the skill has to be portable. Like, learning the company's internal project management tool is not a lattice move—that's just a task. Lucas: Right. The second question is: does this move put me in a position to solve a problem the business cares about? Not just a problem my team cares about. Priya's rotation was timed when the company was investing heavily in customer segmentation, so she was working on something with high visibility. Luna: And that visibility matters when you come back. People remember that you were part of that big initiative. Lucas: Exactly. And the third question is the one people forget: what am I giving up, and am I okay with it? A lateral move might mean a longer path to a specific title, or you might miss out on a big bonus cycle, or you lose some of your network in your current function. You need to be honest about the trade-off. Luna: And that's where a lot of people get stuck. They see the upside of the skill but they don't want to give up the momentum they've built. Lucas: Right. So the lattice isn't about avoiding hard trade-offs. It's about making them deliberately. And I think that's the core difference from just job-hopping or taking a random sideways role because you're bored. Luna: Let's talk about the risk of perception. If you're on a hiring committee and you see someone who moved from brand to analytics and back, that's one thing. But what if you see someone who's made three lateral moves in five years, none of them obviously connected? Lucas: That's a fair challenge, and I think the answer is in how you frame it. A lattice move without a narrative looks like you can't commit. But if each move builds on a theme—say, 'I'm deepening my customer understanding through data, then through product, then through content'—that's a story, not a random walk. Luna: So it's not just about the moves themselves, but the throughline you create. Lucas: Exactly. And that's where the career lattice and the career portfolio overlap. You're building a portfolio of capabilities, and each move is a deliberate investment. On your résumé, you don't list them as a series of jobs. You group them under a theme, like 'Customer Insight & Growth' with bullet points showing the progression. Luna: Let's get practical. How do you actually spot a lattice opportunity in your current organization? Lucas: First, look for pain points that overlap with your curiosity. Is there a team that's struggling with something you keep thinking about? For example, maybe the content team can't get their messaging to convert, and you've been obsessed with copywriting. That's a potential rotation. Luna: And then you have to make the ask. But how do you pitch a lateral move to your manager without sounding like you're leaving? Lucas: You frame it as a return on investment for the company. You're not leaving; you're coming back with a new capability that makes their team better. You can say something like, 'I want to spend a year on the analytics team to learn how to use data to sharpen our campaigns. When I come back, I'll be able to bring that lens to everything we do.' Luna: And if your manager says no? Then what? Lucas: Then you've still gained something. You've signaled your ambition and your strategic thinking. And you can look for opportunities outside the company, or even in a volunteer capacity. The lattice doesn't have to be within one employer. Luna: Good point. Sometimes the best lattice move is to a smaller company where you get to wear multiple hats, even if it's a step down in title. Lucas: Yeah, and that's a real trade-off that a lot of marketers make. They go from a big brand to a startup as a 'growth manager' when they were a 'senior brand manager.' But they get to own the entire funnel, which is a massive skill accelerator. Luna: And a year at a startup can teach you more than three years in a big org, at least in certain areas. Lucas: Right. So the lattice isn't just about lateral moves inside one company. It's a mindset for evaluating any career move: not 'is this a step up?' but 'does this add a brick to my portfolio?' Luna: And that's such a useful reframe for marketers, because our field changes so fast. The skills that got you here might not be the ones you need in five years. Lucas: Exactly. And that's actually a good segue to something I've been thinking about. If these conversations have sparked something you've actually used—whether it's a new way to think about your career or a concrete step you took—that's what keeps us going. And honestly, a couple of dollars a month is what keeps these episodes ad-free and coming out every day. If you've gotten value, consider supporting us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, even a small amount genuinely makes a difference. We're a tiny team, and it lets us keep doing this without sponsors. Lucas: So, back to that portfolio idea. I want to give you a concrete framework for deciding when a lattice move beats a promotion. Here's a simple test: if the promotion would keep you in the same function with a bigger title, but a lateral move would give you a new skill that increases your value across three different future roles, the lateral move might be the smarter long-term play. Luna: That's a high bar, though. A lot of promotions do come with new responsibilities, even if the function stays the same. Lucas: True. So you have to look at the content of the promotion, not just the title. A promotion that puts you on a new product line or gives you budget responsibility might also give you transferable skills. The point is to evaluate both moves with the same lattice lens. Luna: So it's not anti-promotion, it's pro-strategy. Lucas: Exactly. And one more thing: the lattice works best when you're early to mid-career, when your skills are still forming. Later, when you're a senior leader, the moves are more about scope and influence, and the ladder metaphor becomes more apt. But that doesn't mean you stop learning—you just learn differently. Luna: That makes sense. For a director, a lateral move to a different function might be less about skill-building and more about broadening your perspective to be a better generalist. Lucas: Right. So the lattice isn't a one-size-fits-all answer, but it's a powerful counterweight to the default assumption that up is always the best direction. Next time you're thinking about your next move, ask yourself: what am I trying to build, and what's the most direct path to that capability? It might not be up. Luna: And if you're a listener who's made a lattice move, we'd love to hear how it worked for you. Maybe we'll feature your story in a future episode. Lucas: That's a great idea. Until next time, keep climbing—just not always straight up.