Growth Isn’t Always Up

For most of our careers, growth has meant one thing: up.

Up in title.
Up in scope.
Up the ladder.

That definition worked when organizations were built like pyramids — wide at the bottom, narrow at the top, with predictable rungs in between. But that world is disappearing. AI is flattening structures, automating layers, and shrinking the distance between “entry” and “executive.”

According to a recent Deloitte study, 63 percent of companies anticipate that their organizations will become flatter within the next five years. Not because of cost-cutting, but because the work itself no longer requires as many layers.

Therefore, if the structure is changing, the definition of growth must change with it. Growth is no longer a straight climb. It’s a widening field.

Today, growth can look like expanding your skills across functions, not just climbing above them. It can mean becoming the person people seek out for judgment, creativity, pattern recognition, or cross-department influence, even if your title stays the same. It can manifest itself as adaptability, range, decision-making maturity, or being the one who makes others better.

That’s still growth. It just doesn’t fit inside a ladder. The leaders who struggle most right now are those still chasing a model that the future is already discarding. The leaders who thrive will be the ones who stop asking, “How do I move up?” and start asking, “How do I expand my value?” Because in a flatter world, titles narrow, but impact doesn’t.

And this isn’t just about individual careers. It’s about how leaders build teams. If you only reward vertical movement, you will overlook, and eventually lose, the people who are growing in ways the org chart doesn’t yet measure. The future belongs to leaders who develop range, not rank.

So, if growth feels stalled, it may not be because you’ve stopped progressing. It may be because you’re using an outdated ruler. The question is no longer, “What’s the next rung?” It’s, “What’s the next dimension?”