You Will Never Get Promoted If You Keep Doing This

The unspoken rules that determine who gets promoted and who gets left behind.

Bill was a consummate professional. Everyone said so.

If you needed something done, be it complicated, last minute, or taxing, he was always willing to do it and to do it well. He showed up to meetings prepared. He was inclusive and collaborative in his approach. And he was always learning, trying to improve his already robust skillset.

In short, Bill showed up every day. It’s what led to his now 7-year tenure at his current company. As the Director of Operations, he reported to the COO, and he was great at his job.

The one problem?

Over the past year, Bill had started to feel the nagging sensation of being overlooked and under-compensated. Not only were former peers now VPs and SVPs in the organization, but his MBA classmates in other companies had also surpassed him. Perhaps more importantly, Bill was starting a family and he wanted to make sure he could afford a new, larger home and still be saving for retirement.

It didn’t seem like a tall order, especially given how well he performed, but the last time Bill had been promoted was 4 years ago, and there was no sign that a promotion was going to happen this coming year.

The worst part? Bill didn’t know why it wasn’t happening.

You can’t play a game well when you don’t know the rules.

Bill had benefited from a manager earlier in his career who rewarded and recognized his great work with raises and promotions without him asking or discussing it with her.

Bill suffered from what I call “just do the work and trust the rest will come”. That might work well when you are more junior in your career, but as you rise, there are fewer senior positions to go around, which limits the number of people who can be promoted and how often that happens.

Even if you’re a high performer, that doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be the one recognized. There are many other factors at play, and your performance is only one of them.

The most successful leaders at climbing the corporate ladder are the ones who understand the process, the players, and when and how to engage themselves to influence the outcomes.

Decision makers won’t reward you unless you speak up.

Staying quiet, staying humble are beautiful qualities in high performers… for your employer.

They work well for your organization. They work less well for you.

Most organizations are in the business of maximizing profit, which means minimizing costs and maximizing revenue. You and all of your colleagues are costs, which means that the organization generally tries to minimize more investment in you. In fact, they won’t put money there unless they have to.

When executives are not aware that someone wants to be promoted, that is the same as not needing to promote them. It might feel obvious when you’ve been in a role for several years and delivering on your goals that a promotion is a foregone conclusion. It isn’t.

The days of conveyor belt career progression have long disappeared.

The only parts of a business that get increased investment are those that drive more revenue or decrease costs. This means your promotion and salary increase will only get approved if the decision-makers believe that this change will result in increased revenue or decreased costs that exceeds the cost of your promotion.

Like most humans, most senior executives resist change.

It’s much easier to stay with the status quo than to change. Only when they are enlightened with a compelling reason to change will they do so. And you shouldn’t expect someone else to advocate for you unless you have already advocated for yourself.

Understand what drives promotion decisions, and you’ll understand what you can and can’t control.

Once you’ve indicated that you’re interested in scaling the ladder, you need to understand how promotions come to be.

For most organizations, there are macro considerations:

• How is the company performing? Is it growing? Is it struggling? — This is relatively easy to understand through quarterly or monthly updates. Organizations that are growing are more likely to add additional senior-level roles to scale the organization.

• Is your function a priority investment area? — If you’re in an area where leadership is making investments, you’ll have more opportunities for advancement versus areas where they may be looking to maintain or reduce costs.

• Does a role at the next level up currently exist, and does someone occupy the role? — Unless you are being promoted into an existing position at the new level, your promotion has to make structural sense within the organization. Having you at your new level has to be a rational design choice that improves organizational design and operations. If someone occupies your target role, then you need to understand when they are likely to vacate the position, a delicate but highly important topic.

There are also individual drivers of promotions:

• What is your performance rating, and over how many cycles? — Some organizations have policies that require you to achieve a certain level rating and over a certain number of periods before you qualify.

• Do you have compensation bands, and where do you sit on them? — Are you on the upper end of your current compensation band? This might not be a reason to promote you, but if your performance is consistently stellar, it may help your case that you need to be promoted to maintain fairness in each band.

• Have you gone above and beyond in your work? — Do you take on assignments not directly under your responsibility? Are you a go-to person for strategic efforts? Your manager’s perspective matters most on this one, but the opinions of other leaders matter, too.

• Are there leadership qualities you need to exemplify? — For some organizations, you must have modeled most if not all of the leadership traits they look for at the next level to qualify for a promotion.

If you aren’t sure about any of these areas, this is your clue that you need to do some investigation and learn what matters and why.

The more you understand, the more strategic you can be in how you demonstrate why your promotion is warranted and will support the objectives of the organization.

Discover the promotion decision process to know who and when to engage.

Promotion cycles are often done annually for most organizations. But even if you know when promotions are being doled out, you might not know when the process begins.

Decisions are not formally made at the beginning, but executives generally enter the process with an informal point of view on who will secure senior posts.

Your job is to make sure your manager knows your desire to advance at least 2 years, but ideally 3-4 years before you want to achieve your promotion. Why that early? Because organizational design for senior roles is often a long-term process that takes years to realize. Without budget and operational needs aligning with a need for a higher-level role, there’s no role to promote you into.

Informal points of view are not only created through direct experience. They are formed over time by casual conversations and anecdotal stories. You can leave this process to chance. But you’ll be better served by building relationships, making your ambitions known, and demonstrating your impact and value across the organization so that the people who influence your manager and other executives are singing your praises.

Always have another option.

Some organizations simply won’t make promotions happen until their hand is forced. There may be other issues with this type of culture, but sometimes, it is simply born out of a culture of financial prudence that requires a significant, immediate risk for leaders to respond.

Even if your organization doesn’t seem to require a credible threat to consider you for a role, it’s smart to have alternative options available, even if it’s simply to leave and take time off.

There is a saying, “if you aren’t moving up, you’re moving out.” Don’t let yourself get surprised by the next restructuring or the decision of a new leader. Arm yourself with options.

Know when it’s time to move on.

Last but not least, too many leaders I know stay too long after they have gotten ample signals that they are not going to get the promotion. It’s OK to stay if the promotion isn’t what matters most to you. But if the promotion is what you want most and it’s clear you aren’t going to get it, it doesn’t make sense to stay.

One of the biggest upsides you get by speaking up and talking with your manager and other leaders about your ambitions is learning faster if your goals can or can’t be met. It’s far better to find out relatively quickly that what you want and what the organization can offer are mismatched, than to wait years hoping for an outcome that will never happen.

Once you know what is and isn’t possible, you’re much better positioned to make a more strategic move.

Key Takeways

If you’re seeking a promotion, simply doing your job well and waiting will not make it happen. Instead, take these steps to help you accelerate the process or find out that it’s time to move on:

• Share your ambition and promotion goals with your manager and other senior leaders

• Understand how your organization makes promotion decisions, including what you can control and what you can’t

• Understand the promotion decision-making process, including who is involved, their roles, and key milestones

• Create alternative options that can either force a decision from management or simply give you optionality

• Know when it’s time to move based on what you learn

Speaking up, asking questions, and taking responsibility for what you can control will help you most quickly find the best path to your next level role at your current company or somewhere else.

---

Want to receive Practice & Play each week? Join as a subscriber and don’t miss any of my mini-guides.

If you enjoyed reading this post, feel free to share it with friends! Or click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏

---

Paid Subscriber Bonus: Sample Talking Points

Share your ambition and understand your organization’s promotion game.

Here are some ways you can communicate your promotion goals: