1. When you stay in the same organization, you gradually lose touch with the outside world. Your field of vision constricts and you begin to focus on internal priorities (who’s up and who’s down politically, your next position, and your current goals) rather than focusing on the larger world outside your company’s walls. One of the biggest dangers of staying a job too long is that you fall behind what is happening in your industry and the wide world beyond it.
2. Unless your company is growing very fast — experiencing thirty percent annual growth or more — it is difficult or impossible to give yourself the new experiences, new challenges and range of muscle-building activities you will naturally encounter by changing jobs. We have to work much harder to learn as much as fast in a company we are familiar with as we will learn by entering new organizations frequently. 3. It can feel uncomfortable to be incompetent. It is easy to forget that we learn the most when we are least competent. As soon as we know a job, part of our brain goes to sleep. We don’t have to stay open and curious. When you change jobs often, you never get out of open-and-curious mode. |