I didn’t notice when it happened. The moment I stopped trying to prove I belonged and started operating like I did.

In response to: On becoming competitive when joining a new company

Half-a-decade-ago (+ a bit more), I joined a company eager, bright-eyed, and suspiciously caffeinated. I kept a running list of who was smarter than me, who spoke more confidently in meetings, who seemed to get the game. I watched them closely, tried to pick up their language, how they sold ideas, when they chose silence over speech. Survival by osmosis.

But something shifted. Somewhere between delivering that product two sprints early and mentoring that team through a firestorm of pressure, I moved from chasing credibility to embodying it.

The shift was not marked by a title bump or a pep talk from my manager. It was subtler, even though I already had, at the time, won a Global Innovation award by the company’s (15k+ people) CIO, had big success in leading multiple projects with major impact, had created my own product inside the company (and scaled it globally after pitching it to Executive Management) and had multiple huge successes in projects with leading banks.

The subtler change was on everyday things: like an email thread where people deferred to me without asking, a strategy meeting where I realised I didn’t need to raise my voice to steer the room. That’s when it hit me: People were studying me, I wasn’t competing anymore.

Expertise Isn’t a Medal. It’s a Mirror.

The dangerous thing about becoming the expert is that the slope toward stagnation is slippery and paved with praise.

People come to you with questions. You know the system better than anyone else and the muscle memory from all these sleepless nights, escalations and sweat, is crisp. But, when you’re the answer, you stop asking questions. You start defaulting to what works and maybe not to what might work better.

I had to interrogate my own relevance not just to my role, but to the company’s future. Was I still growing or just accumulating mastery in a box that was getting smaller by the year?

So I zoomed out and started mentoring outside my team. Pitched myself for strategic initiatives that had nothing to do with my usual sandbox, and perhaps most importantly, I said “I don’t know” more often. It’s weirdly liberating to be the expert in flux.

Influence Isn’t Ownership. It’s Optionality.

As my internal capital grew, so did the offers (lead this, fix that, speak here, help this team, design that system). At first, it felt like validation but quickly started feeling like inertia. The truth about influence is that it locks you in unless you’re strategic, since, people assume you’ll stay and that you’ll always be the one who knows how to fix the mess.

Which is flattering… until you realize you’ve built a cage gilded in gratitude.

So I started thinking, what’s my market value outside these walls? Where is the next asymmetric learning curve? What room would I feel under-qualified to walk into?

The Endgame Isn’t Leaving. It’s Legacy.

Being the expert isn’t the finish line. It’s the invitation to shape culture, grow others, and maybe one day, disappear without the system collapsing.

Nothing lasts forever. Change is inevitable, and, always good. New is always better. The future is bright.

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