Five Years, Four Promotions, and the Pattern Most Senior Careers Skip

The trajectory and where the work breaks down when you try to do it alone.

I wrote this week about someone I managed at a SaaS company that was heading toward going public. His promotion cycle opened the same month I became his manager, before I knew his track record. Instead of hoping the work would speak for itself, he made his case explicit, handed me something I could carry into the rooms he was not in, and got promoted. A leadership role followed after the company went public.

If you read that and recognized yourself somewhere in it, the natural next thought is some version of: fine, so I do what he did. Make the work explicit. Build the case. Make sure the right people can read me.

That instinct is correct. It also has a catch. The work of being read accurately breaks in specific, predictable ways when you run it alone, and the break is almost impossible to see from inside your own career. That is why these moves take years longer than they should.

If you have been doing strong work and the next move has not happened, the Recognition Series is the free path into this.

→ Start the Recognition Series

Four pillars. Four ways the work breaks when you carry it alone. Below, each break, and how to catch yours before it costs you a year.