Nirit Cohen brings clarity and fresh thinking to how HR and organizations adapt in a fast-changing world of work. After more than 30 years in leadership roles at Intel – across HR, M&A, and business operations – she now works with companies to rethink work, people, and purpose in ways that reflect today’s shifting realities.
She writes, speaks, and podcasts about topics like hybrid work, changing employee expectations, and the role of HR in shaping the future. Her insights are practical, people-centered, and grounded in real-world implementation, earned through years of experience helping organizations make these transitions.
1. You’ve said we’re no longer climbing a ladder, but a “rock wall” in our careers. Can you explain what that means?
When I began my career, the path ahead was relatively predictable. You studied a profession, joined an organization, and could look upward to see your manager, their manager, and the likely trajectory of your own future. Training, promotions, and job changes came at expected intervals, and your career typically rose in sync with your life stage—building steadily until retirement.
But that world no longer exists. Today, careers are not linear ladders but rock climbing walls. On a ladder, there’s only one way up. On a rock wall, there are countless routes—sideways, upward, even temporarily downward. Each move is a decision point, and you can pivot based on what you’ve learned, what you want next, or where life is pulling you.
This model offers far more flexibility. You might start in one function and end up in another. You might pause, switch directions, or explore parallel tracks. And rather than climbing down to start over, you simply shift your grip and find a new foothold.
The implication is powerful: you own your path. There’s no pre-set structure telling you what’s next. But in exchange for that uncertainty, you gain the freedom to continually realign your work with your goals, your values, and your life stage. The wall teaches us to be self-aware, adaptable, and willing to keep choosing—not just climbing.
2. What are the biggest implications of this shift for HR and talent management?
This shift completely redefines the relationship between employees and organizations. When careers followed a predictable ladder, HR could design the system: structured career paths, promotion cycles, succession planning, and training programs to move people neatly up the hierarchy. It was organized, controlled—and largely one-size-fits-all.
But in the era of the rock climbing wall, employees are the ones navigating their paths. They’re no longer waiting for their managers or HR to tell them what’s next. They’re making choices based on personal goals, life stages, and evolving interests. That can mean lateral moves, career breaks, or even stepping out of management—decisions that used to be seen as red flags, but are now becoming standard.
This creates a fundamental challenge—and opportunity—for talent management. In a world where predictability is low, organizations must shift from managing roles to enabling potential. We should be hiring and developing for capabilities, not just past knowledge, because the future of work is dynamic and uncertain.
For HR, this means letting go of rigid structures and embracing more fluid, personalized career support. It’s about creating systems that help employees understand what the organization needs and matching that with what they want to learn or do next. When we make internal mobility more transparent, reduce friction, and empower people to grow within the organization, we increase the chances that their next move on the rock wall keeps them climbing—without leaving.
3. How should companies rethink career development frameworks to support non-linear growth?
Ultimately, it is in the best interest of the organization to be able to put the right people on the right tasks at the right time with the right skills. If we think of it this way, we can align people’s needs to develop careers with the organizations need for flexibility.
To do that, we need to let go of traditional frameworks built around job descriptions, hierarchies, and career paths. Instead, we need to design transparency and fluidity into how people and tasks align for the benefit of both the organization and its people. That means creating visibility into opportunities—not just open roles, but tasks, projects, and learning experiences that employees can engage with.
I call this shift "fractionalizing" work. Instead of assigning people to monolithic roles, we should be matching them with a portfolio of responsibilities that align with both their existing expertise and their growth aspirations. An employee might spend part of their time applying the skills they’ve honed over years, and another part exploring something entirely new—building toward future needs of the business and their own career goals.
To make this work, organizations need to break down the barriers that prevent this kind of internal movement. We need systems that let people signal their interests, allocate parts of their time to stretch assignments, and contribute beyond the confines of their job description. In doing so, companies not only unlock hidden potential—they also future-proof their talent pool and build more adaptive, resilient teams.
4. What’s the role of internal mobility in this new model – and how can HR enable it effectively?
In this new model of work, internal mobility isn’t just about climbing to the next role—it’s the core mechanism through which work gets done. It’s not an occasional event; it’s a continuous process. We need to move beyond thinking of mobility as applying for a new job and instead treat it as how people dynamically engage with work across the organization.
This requires a major mindset shift. Traditionally, employees stayed in roles for set periods, and movement required formal permission. But in a more flexible, fractionalized world, it’s in everyone’s interest—both the individual’s and the organization’s—to fluidly match the right people with the right work at the right time.
To enable this, organizations need systems that make priorities and opportunities transparent. Employees should be able to see what work needs doing and where they can contribute based on their skills and aspirations. And rather than waiting for a new job opening, they can sign up for projects, tasks, or stretch assignments that align with their goals.
This kind of internal mobility fosters agility. It helps the organization quickly respond to changing needs while enabling people to grow, learn, and stay engaged. For HR, the challenge is to build the infrastructure that supports this—removing structural barriers, encouraging cross-functional movement, and cultivating a culture where mobility is seen not as a disruption, but as the way we work.
5. Are employees ready for this shift? What kind of support or mindset change is needed from both sides?
In many ways, employees are more ready for this shift than organizations are.
People want more control—over what they do, how they do it, and when and where they work. Whether it’s to support career growth, manage workload preferences, make space for learning, or navigate life events, employees crave more autonomy. They’re already thinking beyond the traditional job description and looking for ways to align their work with their lives.
The real challenge is structural. Most organizations still operate with rigid hierarchies and ownership models. Managers “own” headcount, and if an employee’s best contribution lies elsewhere—even temporarily—it often conflicts with traditional ways of managing performance, resources, and success.
To truly support this shift, HR must lead the transformation toward more fluid, networked ways of working. That means building systems that bring visibility into priority work, enabling employees to contribute based on skills and interest—not just reporting lines—and designing mechanisms for people to shift portions of their time to different projects or teams.
Most importantly, we need to change what we reward. As long as success is measured by how much control a manager maintains, internal mobility, training and growth as well as adaptability will remain blocked. If we want to unleash people’s potential, we have to remove the friction—and that starts with dismantling the old metrics and mindsets that no longer serve today’s way of working.
6. How can HR tech and data help identify or encourage these rock-wall moves?
One of the greatest challenges organizations face today is that we simply don’t know enough about the skills, capabilities, and potential already within our walls. Traditional HR systems are designed around static concepts: headcount, roles, titles, and hierarchies. They’re good at tracking what someone was hired to do—but not what they’re capable of doing, what they’ve learned informally, or what they’re ready to take on next.
To truly support rock-wall career moves, we need HR tech to evolve. First, it must shift from mapping jobs to mapping work—breaking it down into projects and tasks that are transparent and dynamic. On the people side, systems should focus less on formal credentials and more on emerging skills, past experiences, and demonstrated potential. We know a lot about our employees that we don’t track—who’s naturally leading informally? Who consistently tackles new challenges? Who’s always ahead, bringing in emerging technologies? Our systems track the “hard skills” that are relatively easy to discover and not all the really important, nuanced human skills we’re not yet clear on how to assess and measure.
We also need to rethink risk and control. We’re used to assigning work top-down. But in a project-based environment, there’s less at stake in letting someone try something new than in formally changing roles. If someone believes they can contribute to a project, why not let them opt in? Their performance can be evaluated and, just as importantly, recorded— so over time, we build a richer and more accurate picture of what they can truly do.
This means HR tech must not only enable matching between people and opportunities—it must also capture and codify the learnings from those matches. What did this person excel at? What skills did they demonstrate that weren’t in their original profile? What patterns of growth and contribution are emerging?
Ultimately, in a world where careers are no longer linear and employees are actively shaping their own paths, our systems must be just as flexible. We need tools that empower people to move, try, and grow—and that help organizations see talent in a much more nuanced, dynamic, and human way.
7. Any advice for HR leaders who want to redesign career pathing in their organizations?
Start small—and start with projects.
Rather than overhauling your entire organizational structure, begin by identifying projects that can be staffed across teams or functions, outside of the traditional hierarchy, roles and other talent management criteria. These might be short-term assignments ranging from a few days to a few months. Create a low-friction system that allows employees to opt-in for these opportunities without needing to leave their current role. It could be a few hours a week, a fill-in for someone on leave, or a stretch project that builds new capabilities.
This kind of project-based mobility gives employees a safe way to explore interests and showcase skills beyond their job description. It allows leaders to discover talent they might otherwise overlook. And it helps organizations build a culture where internal movement isn’t just about job changes, it’s how people and work continuously flow together.
Once you’ve tested this new approach, it’s essential to examine the organizational systems that may be unintentionally holding you back. Too often, performance management frameworks reward managers for maintaining control rather than supporting talent development. We need to reframe what success looks like for managers, encouraging them to support their team members’ growth, even when that means letting them contribute elsewhere.
And finally, if we truly value learning, we need to stop treating it as a side activity. Too often, employees are told training matters—but only rewarded for delivering on today’s tasks. That has to change. Future-ready organizations must elevate learning to the level of performance. In a world of continuous change, developing your people isn’t separate from performance, it is performance.
If this conversation sparked ideas for your own organization—you're not alone.
I share weekly thoughtletters, insights, and conversations on how work is changing and what that means for leaders, teams, and individuals.
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