Well, it was a good run writing interesting blog posts for FOT. From today forward my work is generally going to suck. I’m sorry about this, I really am. Don’t get me wrong – I’m going to work my ass off to get better, listen to your comments and suggestions and maybe even go to a blog training course or two. But it’s already too late and there’s not much I can do about it. The reason? This week I was “promoted” from guest blogger to a permanent part of the FOT blogging crew. And I’m afraid this means I’ve triggered the Peter Principle – I’ve been promoted to my maximum level of incompetence. And, I suppose this also serves as notice to my employer of the same news. Sorry. The reality is that promotion time tends to be some of the most stressful times in an organization. But it doesn’t have to be this way and we can help our employees and ourselves do something about it. Here are the most common conversations I’ve had in my career around promotions and how to work through them:
The criteria for promotion are unclear and subjective. Yes, they are. And to be honest, I think that’s how it should be certainly at more senior levels. Okay, it shouldn’t be a secret or a guessing game but I don’t honestly think you can make criteria so clear or totally remove subjectivity from the equation. And this my friends is where HR drops the ball by trying too hard to come up with a perfect criteria based promotion system for employees. Trust me, this one almost always backfires. Don’t do it. Rather, we need to help our employees channel their frustrated energy into creating a plan that focuses on finding the right opportunities for them to showcase their skills. In my experience, those who get really hung up on criteria (or lack thereof) are misdirecting their energy and in the meantime, their colleagues are the ones getting promoted.
It’s not just about what you do; it’s about who you know. This is the one that drives me the most crazy because when I hear someone say this it’s generally with a tone of sarcasm. Think about it, what’s the first thing you do when you’re looking for a new job? You contact everyone in your network and see how they can help you land a new gig. Pretty common practice. But, when the same networking happens in an organization, it’s viewed negatively or it’s called “politics.” In my experience, those with deep and supportive networks within an organization almost always get the best assignments and opportunities. Think about it – if there’s a discussion about two people equally qualified up for promotion, one who has networked and has relationships with most of the people in the room and one who hasn’t, what do you think will be the outcome? Now, please don’t confuse what I’m saying with playing favorites or worse – that’s not what I’m saying. What we can do is help our employees map out their internal and external networks and help them build an action plan to build a base of support and awareness. (Editor’s note – And to take this a step further, scroll down or click to read Josh Letourneau’s post yesterday for a more “technical” perspective on this.)
I think I’m ready to be promoted. Why don’t you? I saved the toughest one for last. We live in a world with two different types of time. Organizational time and employee time. Organizational time is generally slow moving, has lots of parts which have to be moving together and doesn’t respond quickly to outside forces. Employee time, on the other hand, moves very fast, is super sensitive to what’s happening with peers and has fewer moving parts. These clocks are not often in synch. Achieving sustainable success in an organization requires a tremendous amount of patience and reflection. And in today’s society, many of us don’t have it. Pushing too hard for yourself without being aware of the organizational clock can actually harm your career in the long run. Trust me, I’ve been the guy who’s pushed for a promotion before the organization was ready and it can take awhile to recover. Hard as it may be, our job in HR has to be preaching patience to our employees when everything else around them is telling them to move fast.
Interesting post about levels of incompetence. I worked for myself starting in the mid 70s, so as I took on more and more responsibility, there was no one to tell me I was screwing up, until I finally burned out on what I was doing—at which point I didn’t know why I couldn’t get my work done any more.
Nice to know there are other Andy Porters out on the Web.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_I._Porter
It has a ton to do with who you know. Workplace relationships are key. It’s a political game and you need to play it. Relationships have different levels of power attached to them. You can’t just rub people the wrong way and expect to fully get away with it. Sure, hard work and results are at the top of the list, but if you can’t get the right person’s attention your efforts go unnoticed.
Great article all round. It always amazes me how people knock “it’s who you know”. We can’t operate in a bubble anymore, so networking is one of the keys to any successful delivery. You have to build and foster relationships and similarly the people “you know” depend on you to deliver what their objectives are. There are no one man shows anymore, which is why when people move, they tend to look to take their stars with them to deliver in their new environment. We can’t knock the process if time and time again it proves to be effective so rather adopt the effective strategy of networking as opposed to trying to be a hero and thinking you can do everything all by yourself. I am always intrigued at where we developed this belief system from that it is wrong to leverage off of the relationships we build in order to deliver on our own objectives.
When considering someone for a promotion we first review their previous performance reviews and appraisals. We use a program from HRDT (www.hrdt.net) that has been very effective for us as it rates and ranks job suitability and creates a custom development plan for each employee. Their efforts at copmpleting the development plan and interaction with management are strong indicators of their engagement with the company and the job. In some cases we create a benchmark for the job and compare existing staff against it. This is an impartial way to search for talent within the organization.
Thanks for a wonderful article, Andy. It’s good to see how the other half lives. I’m at a search firm. Titles can be very important to people, especially with a job change. Issues of internal equity prevail. A junior person at one company may be a senior somewhere else. People shouldn’t let a title get in the way of a better job. It’s all about the content…and of course who they report to.
Every employee wishes to get promoted in his or her tenure in the organization. Obviously it becomes difficult for the HR to review and get accurate track of employee’s performance in the organization. To solve this, there are many employee work management, time off tracking, employee scheduling. I found a very easy to use Timesheet Software product suite from Replicon, quick to implement & hassle free.