Jarrod Myers: The Climb Is Not the Point

The leadership literature, and the organisations that consume it, share an unexamined assumption about direction. Progress means ascent. One begins as an individual contributor, demonstrates competence, and is rewarded with the management of others; from there the ladder continues upward through seniority into the executive, and the person who has climbed furthest is presumed to have succeeded most. The model is so pervasive that its alternatives are barely legible. To decline the next rung, or to take it and step back, is filed under a small and unflattering set of headings—a failure of nerve, a shortfall of ambition, burnout, a ceiling reached. What the filing rarely admits is a further possibility: that the rung was simply the wrong shape for the person standing on it, and that recognising as much is an act of judgement rather than a confession of defeat.Jarrod Myers now runs his own venture. When we spoke he was a strategic accounts director at a Salesforce partner and AI…