In many ways, the recession was a wakeup call for corporate America. As companies cut back their workforces, those remaining were asked to do more with less. Now, we’re all expected to be generalists, not only willing, but capable of learning across the organization. We have to ease effortlessly into new roles and responsibilities while expanding on our already-existing skill sets, regardless of our official job description or title. And according to Joanne Cleaver, titles aren’t even really relevant anymore; they fall short in conveying the full spectrum of a person’s skills and experience.

In other words, the economy has changed the meaning of career growth: the ladder is gone and the emerging model is the lattice.

Cleaver’s new book, The Career Lattice: Combat Brain Drain, Improve Company Culture, and Attract Top Talent is her guide to strategic lateral moves, compiled after conducting dozens of interviews and case studies on how individuals and employers can grow and thrive in a slow-growth economy. The book couldn’t have been possible without Cleaver’s research partner, The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL), a national nonprofit that collaborates with major employers and thousands of colleges to introduce new career pathways for working adults. CAEL was actually credited with popularizing the term “career lattice” back in 2002. (And the idea of latticing was also bolstered by Cathy Benko and Anne C. Weisberg, in their book Mass Career Customization.)

According to Cleaver’s book, a career lattice is a diagonal framework that braids lateral experiences, adjacent skill acquisition, and peer networking to move employees to any of a variety of positions for which they have become qualified. Cleaver writes that the lattice is about evolution. It’s about adding new skills, experience, abilities, and networks to those that already exist. It’s about letting go of the bits that are no longer relevant in the workforce while blending in new elements that anticipate and encourage the growth of individuals and organizations.

Cleaver says there are two crucial elements that need to be in place to make latticing work: the willingness to celebrate growth no matter how it looks, and the ability to recognize a wide spectrum of professional development. The look of success is changing and employers need to be able to not just recognize, but rally around these newly emerging paths to growth.

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By Robin Madell (San Francisco)

The failed start-up. The lost job. The botched client pitch. The college rejection letter. Most missteps along our career path make us cringe and want to put the experience out of sight and out of mind as quickly as possible. In our efforts to move on and put our best foot forward, we may omit setbacks from our professional stories that we tell others, and even from what we tell ourselves.

Yet there may be more value in owning our failures than running from them. “Failure is an inescapable part of life as an executive,” says corporate psychologist Patricia Thompson, PhD. “While some people are more likely to make errors of commission, in which they jump in and make a mistake, others may be more likely to make errors of omission, in which they are not aggressive enough and miss out on opportunities.”

Thompson suggests that the best leaders are those who are able to maintain perspective: when you recognize that making mistakes is inevitable, you can use them as growth opportunities rather than trying to pretend that the mistake never happened.

This sounds good, but how can you really flip failures into your favor? One way is to consider constructing an “anti-bio.”

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By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

According to a new report by The National Law Journal, despite years of hard work on behalf of some law firms to attract and retain female lawyers through networking and mentoring initiatives, the percentage of female partners at the US’s largest law firms is still only 18.8%. When it comes to equity partnerships, women are an even smaller minority: 15.1%.

But, even considering the small numbers, as Vivia Chen points out for the Journal, that’s still an improvement. She writes:

“That’s progress since 2003, when NLJ affiliate The American Lawyer compiled similar data, though the pace of change has been slow and tenuous. The overall percentage of women in equity and nonequity partner positions then was 16 percent. As for equity partners, the National Association of Women Lawyers said in a 2011 report that women have been ‘fixed’ at 15 percent of the equity slots for the past 20 years.”

Nevertheless, an increase of two or three percentage points for women in partnership roles hardly yields a number even close to representative of the number of women in the profession – and that’s not just true today, but has been true for many years.

In fact, Catalyst data published this month shows that for over two decades, the percentage of women enrolled in law school has hovered between 40% and 50%, a significantly higher percentage than that of women in any partnership role, let alone equity partnership roles. Why do we see such a striking disparity? The answers aren’t easy – and point to a vicious cycle keeping women out of leadership.

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By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

According to McKinsey’s latest report on advancing women in US companies, “Unlocking the Full Potential of Women at Work,” one of the most impactful career moves women can make is to move into a line role. You don’t have to stay there forever, but getting profit and loss experience throughout your career helps you showcase your competence and appetite for leadership – characteristics that will propel you to the top.

Based on a review of 60 large US corporations, hundreds of interviews, and thousands of surveys, the consulting firm sought to determine the top practices by which companies can retain women and promote them to the c-suite. Much of the work that will enable women to advance in greater numbers is institutional – gender supportive leadership, managerial accountability, carefully monitored metrics at every level. But there is room for individual strategy and growth as well.

Lareina Yee, co-author of the report with Joanna Barsh, explained, “One of the things we did was to interview 200 successful individual women, and distill their shared characteristics of success. One of them was line experience.”

How successful? According to Yee, “79% of women who were very successful and reached the upper echelons had line experience as a big part of her portfolio.”

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By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

The idea of career negotiation – for a raise, promotion, or special project – can seem scary, especially if you’ve never done it before. But active career management is so important for advancement. And, in fact, many of us negotiate every day as part of our jobs.

“I tell our younger team members that we spend so much time being strong advocates for our clients, but you really have to step back and remember how important it is to be advocates for your own self and your own career,” says Lori Cohen, a shareholder at Greenberg Traurig who holds a record of 55 straight trial wins. She also chairs the firm’s Pharmaceutical, Medical Device & Health Care Litigation Group as well as co-Chairs the Atlanta Litigation Practice.

“It’s hard to get into that mindset as women. We’re so used to watching out for other people, we may not spend as much time as we should, advocating for ourselves.”

By tapping into the negotiation skills you use in business, says Cohen, you can also advance your career. Here’s how.

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