Promotions in tech
The playbook you wish HR gave you
Think of it as a side-hustle that’s in-house.
This isn’t about playing politics, kissing up to execs, or nepotism.
It is about using smart strategies which most people haven’t considered to accelerate your career and to create more options.
Here’s the “why”
Across decades of research in companies ranging from startups to F10 companies, the smart leaders keep looking for and accelerating the careers of the same kinds of people.
They want to accelerate people who can contribute more broadly to the business. They want people who see beyond the seat they occupy today.
Leaders promote people who take responsibility for creating improvements in the business.
In a nutshell, execs want you to practice and prove your leadership skills before they give you a title.
This is a very smart approach because the cost of promoting a bad leader impacts everyone on the team, not just the individual promoted. Leaders like a bit of safety and it’s safer to promote the person who proved their skills over an unknown quantity.
Here are three key skills that showcase you for early notice by smart leaders and accelerated opportunities. Learning and practicing these skills won’t get you a promotion over night but they will set up for success much faster than just plodding through your “normal” routine.
Three skills
First up is time management.
Many of us waste time on perfectionizing or socializing at work. I’m all for doing good work and friends — but it’s very easy to waste time when we aren’t focused. I learned this lesson the hard way years ago and needed a mentor to explain where and how I was squandering valuable time.
We waste valuable time on perfectionizing. Being perfect doesn’t get you promoted. For that reason alone you should stop. Let other people comment and contribute to a better product — that’s why we collaborate. You need to realize that time is scarce — and feedback is a sign of maturity.
When you free up time, you can invest it in the second skill — curiosity.
Curiosity is my favorite career catalyst.
Curiosity lets us learn about other parts of the business, about clients, prospects, and vendors, and about how the executives think.
Curiosity is how we learn about friction in other parts of the company (or in our own team). Curiosity is how we can start to uncover problems in other parts of the company which we can solve. Leaders want to promote people who think broadly, who understand the big picture, and who learn.
The path to innovative thinking and problem solving requires that you understand the business broadly and can see the relative impact of improvements. You will need the time you freed up to achieve this understanding.
Curiosity helps us do the research, ask questions, propose hypothesis, and ultimately run small experiments to find successful solutions.
Which leads us to skill three — broader contribution.
Leader take responsibility for the success of their teams.
When you expand your contribution to the success of non-primary teams, that’s a leadership demonstration. When you are demonstrating leadership it makes those teams work better, feel happier, and reduces their headaches. It also makes you visible to multiple executives. Titles are not required to contribute.
You are now a problem solver.
The point here isn’t to be a perfect problem solver, rather it’s to contribute and learn. Do a bunch of tiny experiments. See where your efforts work the best. Accept when a hypothesis doesn’t work out and learn. Smart leaders like working with problem solvers.
And cycle back to time management
Make sure your primary team isn’t feeling left out by your in-house side hustle. Get all your work done and ask your team lead if there are more ways you can help.
Practice flow to optimize your productivity (flow makes you faster).
All this helps make you a very safe promotion.
Experiment often
The biggest reason to practice these three skills is to see if a different team/org/role would be equally or more interesting.
This helps you get out of feeling stuck in a role. People can feel powerless about their work (which can lead to depression) when they think they are stuck in a role.
These experiments may not all work out — that’s completely fine because you are learning.
The more we learn, the the more we understand about our business and ourselves. We understand the interplay between customers, tech, sales, operations, etc. This understanding makes more things easy and ultimately we become both more productive and a better catalyst for change.
Wrap
I’ve received and given a bunch of promotions.
Most of the time I gave one, it was because someone was already demonstrating the skills I wanted to see and their broader impact was apparent.
Rarely, I’ve taken a risk and promoted when the skills weren’t obvious — sometimes this works very well. Risky promotions make me nervous🙂
Send me your stories!!
Bill works with the HAERT Program to reverse the rise in stress, anxiety, depression, and their cousins.
HAERT also teaches career freedom — where leadership plays a role.