Deepening Versus Widening

Marketing is my passion. I have an Honours degree in marketing. It’s something I love to do. I have a lot of accolades to show for my marketing expertise. Before I realised it I had been in the same position in the same company  for seven years!

This is a problem common with many women. They stay too long in positions. This is detrimental to career progress. Men on the other hand will dare to venture into something new every so often.

When it comes to the corporate world, you can either ‘deepen’ or ‘widen’. I will explain this.

Deepening is all about specialisation and becoming a guru in one area. If I have to give an example, one could chose to specialise in brand management and know all there is to know about the field of brand management. It would also mean in terms of career advancement, options are limited to the area of specialisation.

Widening on the other hand involves broadening and being involved in other areas of the business. So instead of specialising in brand management only, one could broaden their scope and also work in supply chain management, sales or even finance. The advantage of broadening is that one also widens the pool of opportunities available to them.

In order to get to the top and stay there, women should seriously consider broadening versus deepening. After all at the top you need a helicopter view of the whole organization and it would be much better if one has practical experience with as many areas of the business as possible.

So after seven years in marketing, I got out of my comfort zone. The opportunities this move opened for me made me wish I had made the move earlier and I had to share this with others in order for them to avoid the same pitfalls.

So get out of your comfort zone and widen your scope. It’s necessary for where we are going,  the top.