Career

May 20, 2024

Unbuild the Wall: A Revolutionary Approach to Career Building

a pile of bricks sitting in the grass
a pile of bricks sitting in the grass
a pile of bricks sitting in the grass

What is the shape of a career? For most of us, the image that comes to mind is a ladder. A linear, hierarchical ascent, with clearly defined rungs of progression. We are taught to climb, to compete for the next rung, and to measure our success by how high and how fast we go. This model is so ingrained in our thinking that we rarely stop to question it. But what if the ladder is a flawed metaphor? What if it leads not to a panoramic view, but to a narrow, isolated peak?

In The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin offers us a radical alternative. The protagonist, Shevek, is not a climber. He is a connector. His life's work is not about ascending a hierarchy, but about tearing down the walls that separate people and ideas. His career philosophy is not about climbing, but about opening. When asked why he is sharing his revolutionary scientific theory with the world, he essentially argues that the purpose of knowledge is to unbuild walls.

This powerful idea can transform how we approach building our own careers. It suggests that a truly impactful and resilient career is not built by climbing higher, but by connecting wider.

The Career as a Fortress

The ladder model of career building encourages us to think defensively. We are in competition with our peers for a limited number of spots on the rungs above us. This incentivizes us to build walls around our careers.

  • Walls of Knowledge: We hoard information, skills, and contacts, seeing them as our personal competitive advantage.

  • Walls of Specialization: We retreat into our niche of expertise, becoming the undisputed king or queen of a tiny castle, but losing our connection to the broader landscape.

  • Walls of Status: We use our titles and credentials to create distance, to signal our position on the ladder, and to enforce the hierarchy.

A career built like a fortress might feel safe, but it is also a prison. It is rigid, isolating, and vulnerable to disruption. When your industry changes, your fortress can become obsolete overnight. When you need help from another department, you realize you've built no bridges. The ladder leads to a lonely place.

The Career as a Bridge

Shevek's approach is the opposite. He sees his work—his career—as a tool for connection. He wants his physics to be a bridge between his anarchist world and the capitalist one, a common language they can both share. This suggests a different model for career building, one based on principles of connection, generosity, and flow.

Building a career like a bridge means focusing on:

  1. Connecting Ideas: Instead of just deepening your own expertise, actively seek out connections between different fields. How can an idea from marketing apply to human resources? What can software development teach us about project management in construction? The most valuable professionals are often those who can synthesize disparate ideas and see the whole system.


  2. Connecting People: Your network is not a list of contacts to be exploited; it is a community to be nurtured. A bridge-builder's primary networking goal is to connect other people who could benefit from knowing each other. They make introductions, share resources, and facilitate collaboration. In doing so, they become a vital, trusted hub in their professional ecosystem. Their value is not in what they know, but in the connections they enable.


  3. Connecting Your Skills to a Greater Purpose: A ladder is about personal advancement. A bridge is about serving a larger purpose—connecting a problem to a solution, a need to a resource. This means constantly asking, "How can my unique skills and experiences be of service here? What walls can I help to unbuild?" This shifts the focus from "What's in it for me?" to "How can I contribute?" which is a far more sustainable and fulfilling motivator.

A career built on the principle of "unbuilding walls" is dynamic, resilient, and deeply impactful. Your security comes not from the height of your position on a ladder, but from the strength and breadth of your connections. You become known not for your title, but for your value as a collaborator and a connector. You are not climbing away from others, but building pathways toward them. That is a career worth building.

Take a few minutes to be mindful

How does this theme present itself in your life?

Visualize your career as a structure. Is the first image that comes to mind a ladder? A fortress? A bridge? Something else? Sketch it out. What does this instinctive metaphor tell you about your underlying assumptions about how a career should be built?

What does the idea of "unbuilding walls" bring up for you?

Identify one 'wall' in your current professional life. It could be a lack of communication between your team and another, a piece of knowledge you tend to hoard, or a rigid definition of your own job role. What is the fear that keeps this wall standing?

How can you think differently about this?

This week, your goal is to perform one small act of 'unbuilding.' It could be as simple as taking a colleague from another department out for coffee, sharing a helpful article with your whole team instead of just your boss, or asking someone, 'What are you working on, and how can I help?' The goal is to consciously choose connection over isolation.