Latest / The Internal Move Podcast with Fexingo: Lateral Roles, Internal Transfers, and Staying at Your Company / How to Use an Internal Transfer to Break a Career Plateau
Transcript
- Lucas: So I want to start with a number I came across last week from LinkedIn's workforce data: the average employee's learning velocity—that's the rate at which they acquire new, job-relevant skills—peaks around month 18 in a role, and by month 36 it drops by nearly 40 percent. Luna: Forty percent? That's a brutal cliff. And I bet most people don't even feel it happening—they just start checking out. Lucas: Exactly. And that's our topic today: the career plateau. Specifically, how an internal transfer can break it. Because a lot of people assume that if they're bored or stalled, the answer is to leave the company. But there's a case I want to walk through that suggests otherwise. Luna: Who's the case? Lucas: A senior marketing manager at a Fortune 500 consumer goods company. Let's call her Rachel. Three and a half years in the same role. She was getting solid performance reviews, but she told me her feedback had become eerily repetitive—'great execution, keep doing what you're doing.' No stretch projects, no exposure to new parts of the business. Her network had basically frozen. Luna: That's the classic plateau signal: when your feedback stops teaching you anything new. It's not bad feedback—it's empty feedback. Lucas: Right. And the trap is that external recruiters still want her. She could jump to a competitor for a 15 percent raise and a shinier title. But she realized that would just reset the clock on the same pattern—she'd be the new person learning the same marketing playbook at a different company. Luna: So what did she do instead? Lucas: She started doing informational interviews inside her own company. Not for a specific job—just to map where the interesting work was. And she discovered that the analytics team, which sat two floors down, was building a new customer prediction model. The team lead told her they needed someone who understood the marketing side but could also translate data into strategy. Luna: That's a lateral move—not a promotion. She'd be leaving a senior role for what? Same level, probably similar pay. Lucas: Same level, same pay band. But the learning curve was effectively vertical again. She went from being the expert in marketing to being a novice in analytics. And that's exactly the point. When you've mastered your current role, the fastest way to grow is to put yourself back at the bottom of a new stack. Luna: I love that framing. A lot of people treat lateral moves as a step back, but you're describing it as a deliberate restart of the learning clock. Lucas: Exactly. And here's the concrete benefit: within six months of that transfer, Rachel was leading a cross-functional project that touched marketing, analytics, and IT. She had visibility with three VPs who had never heard of her before. Her internal network doubled. And when the next round of promotions came, she was on the slate because she had become the person who could bridge two functions. Luna: So the plateau wasn't about her ability—it was about her context. She needed a different environment, not a different employer. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the core insight I want listeners to take away: an internal transfer can be the most efficient way to break a plateau because you keep your institutional knowledge, your relationships, and your tenure—but you reset the challenge level. Luna: But I think a lot of people struggle to even recognize they're on a plateau. How do you know? What are the concrete signs? Lucas: I'd say three signals. First, your feedback becomes generic. Second, you haven't been asked to lead a new initiative in the last six months. Third, your calendar is full of the same people—your team, your direct stakeholders, no new faces. If those three things are true, you're likely past month 18 and coasting. Luna: And the fix isn't necessarily a promotion? Because a lot of people would hear 'plateau' and think 'I need a title bump.' Lucas: A promotion can actually reinforce the plateau if it's just more of the same work with a fancier title. Rachel's promotion would have meant managing a bigger marketing budget—still marketing. The lateral move forced her to learn new tools, new metrics, new stakeholders. That's what unstuck her career. Luna: Before we go deeper, I want to pause on something. We've talked about this before, but episodes like this—where we get into real cases and specific strategies—they take a lot of research and prep. And we keep the show ad-free because a handful of listeners chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's literally what funds making this many of these. Lucas: Yeah, and we mean it. If the show has helped you think about your career differently, that's the reason we keep doing it. No pressure ever—just wanted to say thanks to those who do support it. Luna: Alright, back to Rachel. So she makes the move to analytics. What was the hardest part of that transition? Lucas: The hardest part was the identity shift. She told me she went from being the person who had answers to being the person who had questions. In her first month, she didn't know the tools, she didn't know the data sources, she didn't know the jargon. And she had to be okay with looking like a beginner in front of people who knew she was a senior leader. Luna: That's uncomfortable. Most of us avoid that feeling. But it's also the signal that you're actually growing again. Luna: I like that. It's a structured way to make the learning visible. And it probably made her manager more invested in her success. Lucas: Absolutely. And within a year, she had moved from being a consumer of analytics to being a contributor. She was building models herself. She had a new skill set that made her more valuable to the company and to any future employer. Luna: So the lateral move actually made her more marketable externally too, even though she stayed. Lucas: That's the paradox. When you plateau, the temptation is to leave. But often the fastest way to grow is to find a new challenge inside the same building. Because you skip the onboarding curve of a new company—you already know the culture, the systems, the politics. You can start learning the new function on day one. Luna: What about people who are in smaller companies where there aren't as many lateral options? Is the advice different? Lucas: It's harder, but not impossible. At a smaller company, you can sometimes create a lateral move by proposing a new initiative that spans functions. Offer to run a pilot project in a different department. Ask to attend their stand-ups. Volunteer for a cross-functional task force. The goal is the same—expose yourself to new work without leaving the organization. Luna: So the principle is universal: break the plateau by changing your context, not your employer. Lucas: Exactly. And Rachel's story is a good reminder that sometimes the best move is sideways, not up. If you're feeling that two-year-cliff, start with an informational interview in a department you know nothing about. You might find your next growth opportunity two floors down. Luna: I'm going to try that myself. I've been in my current beat for about two and a half years, and I can feel the feedback getting repetitive. Lucas: There you go. Start with the analytics team. They always need people who can ask good questions. Luna: Fair point. Thanks, Lucas. Lucas: Thanks, Luna.