What Happens When the Next Rung is Management?

As a young professional I often ponder where my career is going. Can I guide it? If so, where should I attempt to guide it to? Is management the only real path in climbing the corporate ladder? There are always questions and uncertainty, and sometimes it feels like I'm trapped on a path. In the last year or so I have found other paths that I didn't think were available to me, and in following these new paths I have found ways t climb the ladder without having to become the dreaded middle manager.

Years ago I was in retail banking. Like now, my main goal was to climb up the ladder. My reasons then mostly centered around money. The things I wanted to do costed more than I could afford at the time (mostly travel). Over the years I worked up from a front line teller to a lead sales person, and then I jumped into management. Eventually I found myself one step away from being the head manager of a branch, and that's when my self-reflections began. That kind of leadership role was not something for me. Using my experience I was able to jump-ship and get a corporate operations job with the same salary.

The new job was something more akin to my early days as a teller. The field users would call in, and I would process their requests. It was mind numbing on the best days, but it afforded me the mental bandwidth to learn a lot about my employer and quickly make myself far more useful than my job description would suggest. Within a year I had earned a promotion into my first individual contributor role.

Unlike every job I had ever occupied up to this point, there was no customer service aspect. days would go by without even a phone call or e-mail, I just produced results. I earned a reputation as a producer, but found my satisfaction with the job lacking. Total freedom sounded interesting, but I felt disconnected from the world. After a year I took a Business Analyst position at the same company.

This is where I found my sweet spot. While still an individual contributor in some aspects of my job, there was now a new large social aspect of my position. On any given day I would spend several hours in analysis mode, then switch into social mode as meetings were held to discuss the project. I had found a path that didn't require management, and a lucrative one at that.

Once more I stand at the edge of the career path cliff. I can no longer see the path to the next rung that doesn't involve management, and I'm still as uncertain about it today as I was all those years ago. While I enjoy business analysis, I have no intention of doing this for the rest of my career. Is there something more interesting out there? I hope so.