A year into my time at Bain, I was invited to sit on a consulting panel at Yale SOM. I wasn’t there for anything I’d accomplished. I was there because I was the only SOM alum at Bain at the time.
Low bar, cleared.
I don’t remember the exact question we were asked — but I do remember my answer. I said, a little too dryly, that the first thing to sort out is “how ambitious do you actually want to be.”
It landed like a joke. I didn’t mean it as one.
Some professions are a deal with the devil. That’s not a knock — it’s the reality. Eyes wide open.
You trade time, ego, autonomy, whole years of your calendar, for the brand, the training, the doors that open afterward. It can be a great trade. But it is a trade, and most people sign it without reading it, dazzled by the logo on the card.
If I’d looked past the brand and the obvious allure, I might have caught something earlier: I wasn’t willing to make the sacrifices the job actually asked for. Not couldn’t — I wasn’t willing to.
Did I learn a lot? Genuinely, yes. Would I do it again? Not a chance.
Here’s what took me years to see. I thought the only question was how hard to push the dial — turn it up, get further, repeat.
But ambition isn’t a dial that only turns up, and it isn’t the only dial in the room. What I needed wasn’t more or less. It was reorientation: taking work out of the center and setting it down as one part of a life, not the axis everything else spins around. Same energy, aimed differently.
The panel version of me heard “how ambitious do you want to be” as a volume question. It isn’t. It’s a direction question. Not how much, but toward what, and where it sits next to everything else you claim to care about.
So before the next promotion, pivot, or shiny offer, this is the reframe I’d put first.
This wasn’t the question I was asked, but I’ll ask you: not how ambitious do you want to be, but how do you want to be ambitious? And at what cost?
Still not the answer they wanted at the panel. Still the one I’d give.
#ambition #careercalibration #makeworkwork #careercoaching #reorientation