Rethinking success: challenging archaic career advice in academia

Alberta School of Business associate professor Emily Block was shocked when one of her PhD students returned from a major conference and relayed the advice she’d heard there.  

During a speech, a world-renowned academic, highly respected in the field of organization science — which looks at how organizations work and evolve — stated that to succeed, scholars would need to move every seven years and prioritize their careers above all else, including their family lives. 

“I can’t believe that this is the advice given to people. Where are we stuck? The 1930s? Not only is it demoralizing, but it’s gendered and there’s no space for diversity. It’s awful,” says Block. 

She ended up posting a thread on a Facebook page for women in organization science, warning others to be more conscious of their advice. Many people replied with stories and comments, prompting Block and a group of scholars to explore the topic further.  

Block and several other authors spoke with 19 top scholars — including fellows and editors of leading journals of different ages, genders and ethnicities — to hear about their past advice and whether it had helped them achieve success. While the focus of the paper was on those in the field of management, Block believes the results could be applied in nearly any field.

"What we found is that not only is this advice archaic, but it’s not the advice that successful people really followed,” says Block.  

The majority of the participants had mentors who had said it was important to leave their personalities at the door and to focus on publishing in one specific area within elite journals. 

While similar narrow advice was common, the featured scholars often chose very different paths from those suggested. Many prioritized their families, some chose work locations based on what was best for their families and others focused on pursuing areas of passion rather than prioritizing publishing in top-tier journals. 

But the surprise came when many of the participants said while they did not follow the advice they thought they were simply an anomaly. They still believed in that advice and did not think others should follow their career path. Block says those ingrained perceptions of success are troubling because not only was the advice often unhelpful, but it could be harmful for many people.  

The individuals in the paper were able to succeed despite unhelpful advice, but Block worries countless others were deterred from even starting a career in the first place. 

"When advice like this is given to brand new PhD students, they may walk out of these places thinking there’s not a place for them in this profession,” says Block.

There is evidence of it happening. Many universities have trouble recruiting women or individuals who identify as minorities, says Block. Many students may start the process by feeling alienated as they do not have the resources for childcare or to move to a new city every few years, for example.

And when students are consistently told success only looks a certain way — obtaining tenure, getting published in high profile journals, for example — that can also be highly discouraging or even just lead scholars down an unfulfilling path. 

Many participants noted that their ideas of success evolved throughout their careers and that the impact of their work — particularly on their local communities — and the importance of that was often overlooked. They told stories of mentoring students and the joy that came from that. One participant spoke of coaching their kid’s soccer team and how the experience actually helped them prioritize their time and talents at work rather than taking something away from it. 

“It’s not just about whether you can get someone to publish your research — but what does it mean, why does it matter and what’s the impact?” says Block. 

Block herself heard similar advice early in her career. She was told she should focus on one research area to gain success in her field. But she sees being a scholar as a chance to “follow the bread crumbs” and her research (or as she calls it “me-search” aka opportunities to learn more about herself alongside the topic) is varied and broad. She’s explored everything from corporate crime to environmentalism. In the summer, she released a book called Business on the Edge: How to Turn a Profit and Improve Lives in the World’s Toughest Places, which explores how business can enable reconciliation in areas of conflict or disaster. She describes the whole world as her laboratory. 

“It’s about broadening the conversation around the whole person. Those people who were most successful weren’t reproducing this narrow success, outcome-driven view of the world where they only prioritized publishing in a small number of journals just to be in there,” says Block. “They were pursuing really fundamental questions and prioritizing other parts of their work life and non-work life. People who are most successful are those willing to spend time in the world.” 

After doing this research, Block says it’s pretty clear mentors need to be cognizant of the impact of their words. For PhD students, she believes it’s also important to look at a diversity of influences rather than the advice from a single mentor. 

“It takes a village to raise a scholar like it takes a village to raise a child. You should see a lot of different models of success because there are so many different pathways and so many things you can become in your career. Even if what you want to become is famous, there are many different ways to get there,” says Block. 

And while ideas of success are ingrained culturally, Block is already working towards shifting the conversation. She helped run a development day for those who had recently completed a PhD. They explored overcoming challenges and had people speak on what it’s like going through cancer treatments, parenting, divorces and caring for aging parents. 

“We had these really high-status people who came in and talked and instead of saying, ‘here’s how I got famous,’ it’s like, ‘here’s how unpredictable life can be and here’s how my work was a refuge from that and how I was inspired by that,’” says Block.

As with all her research, Block feels empowered by it and hopes to eventually see more early scholars also feel empowered to pursue topics of meaning and interest to them. She says she just wants them to focus on being interesting rather than something someone else wants them to be. After all, if Block had followed the advice she’d been given earlier to narrowly focus her work, she would not have spontaneously written a post about mentorship, and she wouldn’t have started changing the conversation around how we think of success.