A lot of jobs don’t come with a neat competency framework that outlines exactly what you need to do to progress. And sometimes, your job does come with one, but it’s a bit vague.

Growth and progression are things that you need to own. This can be really scary, because you don’t often have a clear picture of what that next level looks like. We’ve gone through a couple of ways to help you define your roadmap – the rockstar shift and cheating with job ads – but those are both about defining what great looks like and working backwards. Today, I want to talk about doing the total opposite.

😬 What does bad look like?

Let’s say you’re a designer looking to progress, but you’re struggling to define what senior looks like in your field. Try this reframe: if I wanted to be worse at designing, what would I do?

Off the top of my head, if I wanted to get worse at designing, I would…

• Not look at any inspiration

• Not experiment or try new things

• Ignore any customer feedback and just do what I want

Since that list is a one-way ticket to becoming a worse designer, you could flip it to give yourself a list of how to get better:

• Seek inspiration

• Experiment with new designs

• Seek out customer feedback

It’s pretty basic, but sometimes it can be enough to give you direction.

An alternative: the incompetent coworker.

This option is a little more specific to your company. Imagine you got a new coworker – with the exact same title and job as you – and they absolutely suck at their job. They’re truly incompetent. (Is this exercise hypothetical? Maybe for some of you.)

What are they doing that makes them so awful?

Now do the opposite of that.

These two exercises are very same same but different. If you’re struggling to figure out how to develop in your role, I recommend giving them both a go! They shouldn’t take you too long and might give you a different perspective on how you’re currently doing.