Are you getting better at the wrong thing?

Last week, we wrote about how work is being re-bundled, one of the core concepts we explore in Open to Work. Roles don’t disappear neatly. The tasks inside them evolve, sometimes gradually and then all at once.

This week, I want to talk about something more subtle. It’s a pattern I’ve seen in high performers during moments of structural change.

For decades, many of us were taught to think about our careers as ladders. You pick a lane. You work hard. You move up. One rung at a time.

That model made sense in stable systems. But what happens when the structure itself starts shifting?

When uncertainty rises, high performers tend to respond the way they always have. They work harder. They take on more responsibility. They make themselves indispensable inside the current system. That instinct has likely fueled their success. It’s built on ownership and a bias toward execution.

But during a platform shift, doubling down on the current version of your role can quietly increase your exposure.

Not because you’re falling short, but because you may be perfecting a rung that’s being redesigned. 

Across LinkedIn’s data and inside the tools people use every day, the individuals gaining leverage right now aren’t simply producing more output. They’re questioning the shape of the work itself. They’re redesigning workflows instead of just mastering them. They’re using technology to remove friction so they can focus on judgment, synthesis, and direction.

It’s easy to confuse performance with trajectory.

Performance is about how well you operate inside the system as it exists today. Trajectory is about whether you’re building capabilities that will matter as that system evolves. In stable periods, those two tend to align. In platform shifts, they can drift apart.

The ladder rewards performance within a fixed structure.

But today’s careers look less like ladders and more like climbing walls.

The uncomfortable question is this: are you optimizing for the present structure and that next rung, or are you investing in the capabilities that open entirely new routes?

It probably means getting comfortable using AI as a core part of how you work rather than trying to outperform it at the tasks it’s already good at. It may mean leaning into areas where judgment, taste, and decision-making matter more than raw execution. And it likely means spending more time thinking about what should exist in the world and less time proving you can personally produce every piece of it.

The people who navigate platform shifts well rarely wait until they have to change. They move early. They reshape their role before the market reshapes it for them.

That requires discipline. It also requires imagination…

If you want a deeper framework for thinking about how to build real career optionality in the age of AI, you can pre-order Open to Work here.

Next week, we’ll write about how to build real signal in a noisy labor market.