I hear it all the time.

“I’m bored with my job,” “There’s no challenge anymore.” “My team is so dysfunctional, I’m tired of leading them around.” “My business model is getting stale.” “My clients are slowly going away.”

I tell my clients without any sugar-coating: “It’s time for you to leave or make major changes.”

But most people don’t want to hear that. They are all comfy with their routine and you know — in a few months everything will be fine again.

Wrong.

Why? Most positions and companies have a lifecycle. You’ve seen it — it goes up, levels off, and then goes back down — a nice bell curve. My experience (20 years corporate and 10 years coaching) — the timespan of that bell curve is 2-3 years.

Now the curve may not go all the way to the top or sink all the way to the bottom, but the general shape or experience is:

Up — learning, meeting, understanding, making a stake, growing reputation. Apex — performing, interacting, growing, gaining major rep, lots of street cred. Down — delivering, accolades, awards, moving on, finding a new home/client base.

Again, your career or business might not match perfectly to this model, but it’s pretty darn accurate to the majority of professionals out there.

If you’re an executive, every 2-3 years you will need to move to get a larger jump in pay, more responsibility, more leadership, a new organization with new challenges and more people to meet. Preferably with another company — most successful executives do this.

If you’re a business owner, every 2-3 years you will need to reevaluate your business model, your client base, your marketing/operations/staff, and financial targets. Not in a minor fashion (that should happen yearly), but in a major way (wholesale analysis and scrapping, and delivery of a new direction). Most successful businesses do this.

If you stay where you are, don’t change a thing, and keep your ship pointed in the same direction, I promise you will be repeating one or more of the statements at the top of this post.

HOW do you do this? Catch tomorrow’s post.

Do you change every 2-3 years? How has this worked out for you?

This has been another installment in my ongoing series, “Are You A Catalyst?” — today’s focus is how to move frequently.