Why Being Capable Doesn't Get You Promoted
Getting into leadership is more about positioning yourself for that next opportunity than working hard at your current role.
When I joined Instagram in 2018, it had just hit 1 billion users and shaped much of popular culture globally. I worked with many brilliant coworkers. Each of them was arguably at the top of their job, the best of the best. It was a privilege to be a part of such a high-performing team where everyone was wickedly smart, easy to work with, and ambitious.
Some people could draw brilliant insights from research and data. Some were always three steps ahead in thinking through risks and complexity. Some could get a crazy amount of work done and deliver project after project.
But they were not always the people getting promoted.
It turns out that being amazing at execution is a trap that keeps you in execution. Getting into leadership required a different set of skills entirely.
Is there a business need?
As high-performers, we tend to over-index on the amount of control and influence we have over our environment and future. Unlike early career promotions, leadership promotions only occur if there is a business need for someone to operate at the next level.
Senior manager or L6 roles are known as terminal levels. There is no mandate to promote further. It stops being like school and early career, where doing the work you’re given means you graduate to the next grade. You have to seek and create opportunities for yourself where there is a business need for your promotion.
Here are examples of business needs:
A position has just been vacated (e.g., retirement, reorg, leaders leaving)
Your area of work is growing rapidly (> 20% year over year), and your area and team are growing alongside.
The company invests in a new strategic initiative
There is an opportunity on an adjacent team
The executives want to reorg in order to realign priorities
From working with hundreds of aspiring executives and years of experience as a product executive promoting others, the environment accounts for at least 50% of whether a leadership promotion occurs. Take a look at your current setup and ask yourself the following:
Is the team size and resourcing for my skip-level manager’s scope growing?
Is there a need for a leader at my desired level in the next 6 months? Do we like to keep teams lean?
What is the culture around promoting new leaders in my organization? Do the executives prefer to hire into senior roles rather than promote from within?
Has there been a promotion from my current level to the next in the last 6 to 12 months? What was the case that was made?
Where are the areas of investment for the company, and how close is it to the work I am currently doing?
If your answer is unclear or negative for more than two of the questions, then you’re in a place where it’s an uphill battle for that promotion. Regardless of how well you’re performing, the business case isn’t there.
After a year at Instagram, I wanted to get back into managing a team. I had been given more scope after a peer left the company and was leading the work of two PMs. From a scope perspective, I was set. However, Instagram had a philosophy of keeping PM teams lean with very senior people in each role. There was little room to move into management, and very few internal promotions. Even though I was exceeding expectations for my level, there was simply no business need for the career progression I wanted. To get back into management, I need to transition to other parts of Meta where teams were larger and had more layers of management.
When you are a high performer, it is not uncommon that you outperform your organization’s ability to promote. It’s critical to notice this and make a strategy for your next steps. Some common options include:
Moving to adjacent teams with higher growth, more scope, or bigger teams
Taking on higher visibility, higher-risk projects that will get additional investment if successful
Seeking out external opportunities
Sometimes, it is better to take a step back in terms of title, compensation, or even scope if it allows you to move into a place with higher potential for growth. When we acknowledge that it’s not about working harder and then expecting a reward, we move to paths that accelerate our path towards leadership.
That’s all folks! See you next week at 3:14 pm.
Yue
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