Pacing yourself becomes the central challenge of a sustained, successful career: increasingly senior roles require that you accomplish more and more, and do it in less and less time. The ledge between these two constraints gets narrower the further you go, but it remains walkable if you take a deliberate approach.

During the “scale” stage, the original owner may be able to scale with the effort, or it may need to be owned by a more senior person.

If you’re taking a short-term look at career growth, then optimizing for your current organization’s pathologies in evaluating impact is the optimal path: go forth and preen gloriously. However, if you’re thinking about developing yourself to succeed as your current role grows in complexity or across multiple organizations, then it’s far more... See more