Latest / The Internal Move Podcast with Fexingo: Lateral Roles, Internal Transfers, and Staying at Your Company / The Internal Network Tax of Lateral Moves
Transcript
- Lucas: We spend a lot of time talking about the skills gap in lateral moves — the idea that you need to learn new hard skills when you shift departments. But I think we are overlooking the much heavier, invisible tax: the social capital reset. Luna: Right, because your reputation travels with you on paper, but not in the room. You walk into a new team, and suddenly you are just another headcount until you prove yourself again. Lucas: Exactly. And this isn't just about being liked. It is about access to information. When you stay in your role, you have accumulated what I call 'political memory' — you know who holds informal influence, which project is actually greenlit versus which one is just budgeted, and where the bottlenecks really are. A lateral move wipes that cache clean. Luna: So you are essentially paying a tax on your own competence. You bring the skills, but you lose the shortcut to getting things done. Lucas: Precisely. Let me give you a concrete example from a mid-market software company I was consulting with last quarter. They had a senior product manager named Elena who moved from the core platform team to the emerging AI division. On paper, it was a perfect lateral step up in prestige. She had the domain expertise, she knew the engineering culture, and she had a strong track record. Luna: And yet? Lucas: And yet, within six months, her promotion cycle stalled. Not because her work was bad — it was excellent. But because she couldn't get the necessary sponsorships from leadership in the new division. The VPs there had been working together for five years. They trusted each other implicitly. Elena had to build that trust from zero, while her peers in the old division were already halfway through their next promotion path. Luna: That is brutal. So the tax isn't just time; it is opportunity cost over an entire performance cycle. Lucas: It is exactly that. We usually measure career progress in titles or salary bumps. But if we measure it in decision-making power, a lateral move can actually cause a temporary regression. You are no longer a key player; you are a newcomer trying to earn your seat at the table. Luna: I see this all the time in finance. People move from sales to risk management, and suddenly they have to relearn who the actual decision-makers are in the underwriting committee. Lucas: And they underestimate how long that takes. Most people assume it is three months. In reality, it is closer to eighteen months to regain full political velocity. Luna: Eighteen months is a huge window. That is nearly two full review cycles lost. Lucas: So the question becomes: when is this tax worth paying? Because clearly, some people do it successfully. The ones who succeed treat the first ninety days not as a learning period for skills, but as a fundraising round for relationships. Luna: Fundraising. I like that. They aren't asking for favors; they are investing in goodwill before they need anything. Lucas: Exactly. The successful lateral movers schedule what I call 'curiosity coffees' with every stakeholder in their new org chart. They don't talk about their past wins. They ask about the current pains. They listen more than they speak. They are buying into the new narrative, not selling their old resume. Luna: It sounds like they are deliberately slowing down to speed up later. Is that counterintuitive enough for most professionals? Lucas: Mostly yes. People are terrified of looking slow. They want to hit the ground running with solutions. But if you run in too fast without the social map, you trip over invisible cables. You propose solutions that conflict with unwritten norms or alienate key influencers. Luna: So the mistake is assuming that meritocracy works the same way inside a company as it does outside. You can't just show up and let the work speak for itself immediately. Lucas: Correct. Inside the house, the work speaks for everyone else. Your job is to translate your work into their language. That requires listening. It requires humility. It requires accepting that your previous status doesn't automatically transfer. Luna: This feels like a massive ego check for high performers. Who wants to come in as a junior again? Lucas: Nobody. Which is why so many lateral moves fail. People drag their old identity into the new room. They act like veterans when they are effectively rookies. And the new team senses that dissonance immediately. It creates friction. Luna: Friction slows down projects. And in a competitive market, slow projects get cut. So the network tax has real financial consequences beyond just career stagnation. Lucas: Absolutely. If you are blocking decisions because you lack the trust to unblock them, you are costing the company money. And leadership notices that. They notice when someone is technically brilliant but politically opaque. Luna: Okay, quick honest thing — a handful of listeners chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that's literally what funds making this many of these episodes without ads. That is F. E. X. I. N. G. O. Thanks for keeping the lights on. Lucas: Yeah, it really does help. And back to the point — so how do we quantify this? Is there a way to predict if a lateral move will be too expensive for your career trajectory? Luna: I think it depends on the size of the cultural distance between the two teams. Moving from marketing to sales is a bigger jump than moving from regional marketing to national marketing. Lucas: Right. Cultural distance is the multiplier. If you are moving across a major functional boundary — say from finance to operations — the network tax is higher because the languages are different. Finance talks about risk and margin. Operations talks about throughput and latency. You have to learn a new dialect. Luna: So the smaller the dialect shift, the lower the tax. That makes sense. But sometimes you have to make the big jump for the right strategic reason. Lucas: Which brings us to the second part of the equation: the upside. You have to calculate whether the potential reward outweighs the eighteen-month delay. For Elena, the AI division was the future of the company. Even if she lagged behind for a year, being positioned in that high-growth area meant her ceiling was higher once she caught up. Luna: So it is a trade-off between velocity and altitude. Do you want to move faster in your current lane, or climb higher even if it takes longer to start climbing? Lucas: Exactly. And most people ignore the altitude benefit because it is distant. They focus on the immediate loss of momentum. But if you stay in a stagnant department, your velocity might be high, but your altitude is flat. You are running fast on a treadmill. Luna: That is a vivid image. Running fast on a treadmill vs. climbing slowly up a mountain. I would take the mountain. Lucas: Most smart professionals should. But they need to plan for the initial struggle. They need to budget for that eighteen-month period of reduced influence. And they need to protect their mental health during that time because it feels weird to be less powerful than you were before. Luna: It feels like a step backward. How do you stay motivated when you are building relationships instead of shipping products? Lucas: You change your metrics. Instead of measuring output, you measure connection quality. How many deep conversations did I have? How many stakeholders now understand my value? You are building infrastructure, not just delivering features. Infrastructure doesn't show up on a weekly dashboard, but it supports everything that comes later. Luna: So you are treating your career like a long-term asset allocation. You are rebalancing away from short-term yield toward long-term growth. Lucas: Perfect analogy. And just like any investment, you have to hold through the volatility. The early months of a lateral move are volatile. You don't know if you fit. You don't know if you are valued. But if you stick with the relationship-building strategy, the compounding effect kicks in around month twelve. Luna: Compounding relationships. I haven't heard that phrase used quite like that before. It makes the abstract feel mathematical. Lucas: It is mathematical. Every conversation is a deposit. Every shared victory is interest. By month eighteen, you have a portfolio of trust that pays dividends in autonomy, budget, and influence. That is when you realize the tax was just an entry fee. Luna: An entry fee for a better game. So the advice isn't 'don't move laterally.' It's 'move laterally, but pay the tax intentionally.' Lucas: Yes. Don't go in blind. Go in with a plan to rebuild your network from scratch, knowing it will take time. Accept the temporary dip in status as the price of admission for a higher ceiling. Luna: It changes the whole framing. Instead of complaining about the slow start, you view it as strategic patience. Lucas: Strategic patience. I like that. It turns frustration into purpose. And that mindset shift probably helps you navigate the awkwardness better anyway. Luna: Definitely. Feeling like you are playing chess instead of checkers makes the waiting easier. Lucas: Right. Chess requires foresight. Checkers is just immediate capture. Lateral moves are chess games. You sacrifice a pawn or two in the opening to control the center later. Luna: So, if you are thinking about making that internal jump, ask yourself: am I ready to play the long game, or do I just want the quick win? Lucas: If you want the quick win, stay put. If you want the long game, pack your boxes, leave your ego at the door, and start those curiosity coffees tomorrow. Luna: Start the coffees, build the capital, and wait for the compounding to kick in. Lucas: Exactly. The network tax is real, but the return on investment is usually worth the delay. Luna: And that is something worth remembering when the new role feels harder than the old one. Lucas: It always does at first. But that friction is just the sound of you grinding out the rust and building something stronger.