How to Get Promoted transcript

So I wanted to share with you how recognition actually works, okay? Like formally. So the way recognition works is like this. Recognition is a function of your scope, your outcomes, your outputs, and then there's one more variable, which is visibility. Okay? So recognition is a function of your scope, your outcomes, your outputs, and your visibility. All right. So this is how you get recognized in any situation, in any company, okay?

Now this is a simple framework, but it's super powerful to understand, right? Now some companies, you also have to understand the company culture might mean that like certain attributes are valued more than others. So there are some companies which basically weigh scope and visibility higher when they recognize you versus the outcomes and outputs. Okay? Scope and visibility is rated higher. So these are the companies where people feel frustrated that this person didn't do much, but they're still the CEO talks about them.

Right? It's because they have the right scope and they have the right visibility. Okay? So again, I'm not saying that's right. I'm just saying that this happens. Some companies, it's like this, especially startups, it's like this. You are basically recognized based on your scope and your outcomes. Outputs also, but then the outputs are directly translating to outcomes. So these are the two things that This is why some people enjoy working at startups.

This is why some people do not enjoy working at startups, right? Because some people get more energy from scope, outputs, and visibility. Or just scope and visibility. It's okay. There's no judgment. You have to decide what environment is right for you. Some companies are purely visibility based, right? And that's probably a company I wouldn't recommend joining. All right? All of this is important because if you want to get recognized for your work, you must really take the time to understand the culture of the company and what kind of performance, what kind of approach gets recognized and rewarded, okay?

That is why I'm flagging these things for you. Now, here's another thing I wanted to take a step back and share with you how major career inflections happen. So, whenever you see somebody's career and you see a major inflection point, right? So, that's this. It's usually these factors. And usually the one of these three. Career change, meaning they change function. They went from being an engineer to PM or PM to marketing or marketing to engineer, whatever.

Right? Or a new company. They joined a new rocket ship company and that's what kind of propelled their career forward. Sometimes it's new responsibility, meaning they take on took on ownership of a new team or new initiative or something like that. And very rarely it's a new manager. But like managers are rarely transformative, but it happens every once in a while. Okay? So, on this point what I wanted to share with you is it is really important for you to understand that like when you are at a given company, you have to understand that internal opportunities will come up.

So, you I want you to stay open to some of those opportunities, okay? Because there is never going to be the perfect time to take on a new opportunity, to take on additional scope, okay? Timing is never going to be ideal. So, I really want you to understand this. All right. So, here are two things. So, you know, again you're going to have new opportunities, new teams to join. Maybe you'll do an internal transfer, whatever it is, right?

Here are the two things that matter most when considering a new role within your company. So, to be clear, now you're considering a new role within your company. And basically the two things that matter most are the priority and importance of this initiative, whatever this initiative you're going to work on and lead. And your manager in that new role. That's it. There are 50 other factors, but I would say these are the two factors that matter the most.

All right. So, let me explain. All right? Here's the deal with managers. Here's the deal with managers, right? So, if I post again on Twitter or LinkedIn saying here's if I make this post, okay? Just hear my post. If I post on Twitter or LinkedIn saying, "It is not always a good idea just to pick your next role based on who your manager is going to be. It is not always a good idea just to pick your next role on who your manager is going to be." I guarantee you within 5 minutes somebody will reply saying that my previous company I had a toxic manager and that was terrible for me.

So, you are wrong and you are a terrible person, Shreyas. Within 5 minutes somebody's going to say this. But, see the problem is here the person, whoever this person is, the commenter, right? Is just falling prey to binary thinking because this is what this person thinks. This is their view of the world. That the world is split into two. The manager world is split into two. Great manager and toxic manager. Right? But, this is not how the world works.

At all. At all. Okay? Here is actually how the world works, right? Here is actually how the world works. So, if you aren't a junior IC level, you're actually good at a job at your job, you are actually going to encounter managers along this kind of continuum. Right? So, there's the great manager, of course, but then there's also a competent manager. Then there is an overwhelmed manager. Then there is a hit-or-miss manager.

Then there is the absentee manager. Then there's the counterproductive manager. And then lastly, there's the toxic manager. This is how the world really works, folks. The world doesn't work like this. And this commenter is falling prey to that bias. Because I said it's not always a good idea to pick your next role on who your manager is going to be. That doesn't mean That means that every manager is going to be a toxic manager if they're not a great manager.

That's not how the world works. Okay? So, with this framework Here's my framework for weighing the manager in my decision. Okay, when I'm joining a new company. See, remember earlier I told you about when you're joining a new company. When I'm joining a new company when I'm joining a new company, I know who my prospective manager is going to be at that new company. My range of permissible managers is going to be pretty wide.

Which is of course I want a great manager, but I won't reject an offer just because it's not a great manager. In fact, if it's an overwhelmed manager, that's fine. A hit-or-miss manager, that's also okay. Even an absentee manager, for me it's okay. In fact, that's the situation I had at Stripe. Like the manager I was going to report to, she was managing very large team engineers, PMs, etc. And like rightly, she was focused on the most important things for the company.

Right? So, I'm not going to sit here and say my manager doesn't do one hour one-on-ones with me and doesn't ask me tell me about your problems, share yours, all of that. I'm not going to say that. In fact, she's working on all the right things for the company. In fact, that is why she's hired mature, experienced, talented people like myself who can be independent. Right? So, I'm not necessarily saying this needs to be your range.

I'm simply describing when I'm joining a new company I am actually quite permissive about the range of managers I'm going to work for. Yes, of course I don't want to work for a counterproductive manager or a toxic manager, of course. Who does want to work for one? No, it's not worth it. But now when I'm considering an internal transfer what is the difference? What is the difference between when joining a new company versus an internal transfer?

The The company is fixed. That's the main difference. See, earlier I have a choice of three, four companies, whatever, two two, three, four, whatever it is. Doesn't matter. But now the company is fixed. That variable is actually constant. So now once that company is fixed, now my choice of a manager matters a lot. So I'm actually only I'm going to restrict myself to only this range. This is folks, this is so logical.

There is no mystery here. I hope you see this. There is no mystery here. It's just pure logic, 110 IQ. Your problem is you're trying to be too smart. You're trying to sound very smart. Use big words, analogies, all that stuff. That's why you can't make clear decisions. Okay. So now at this point like some of you are wondering like but okay, fine. But how do I evaluate a prospective manager? Right? So these are my core criteria for evaluating choosing a manager for top n percent PMs, like top 10, top 20% PMs, not for everyone.

Okay. So first, this is what I'm looking for. How does my manager make it easier for me to get things done? Because that's literally my job, right? Next, what don't I like that I can delegate to this manager? Okay. So you don't understand. It's not just your manager delegating things to you. You can delegate things to your manager, too. So especially as you get really good, you can do this. I did this in the latter half of my career.

Okay. Now, this is very important. Can this manager see that I'm top n percent? Right? Can this manager see that I'm top 10%? Top 5%? I'll be very clear if you're thinking how will they know? Like the degree to which they chase you means kind of attributes to the value they put in you. Right? So that's just like one proxy. What is this manager's credibility in the org? Because that's very important, especially when I'm joining like a new team within the same company, okay?

And then what is my confidence that they'll be a huge advocate for me across the company, right? So these are my criteria, okay? These are the criteria Again, these are not for everyone, but if you're like a top end percent product manager, product leader, then these criteria should work well. Okay, all right. So next, we're going to get into this topic, the fun topic of managing up and managing your manager, right? So the first step in managing your manager for your career progress and recognition is to treat him or her as an ally, a close partner and ally.

Okay, so again, I want people to understand you must play the long game here. Don't just force them into a commitment of oh, when are you going to promote me, okay? So an important aspect of this is again, create a working backwards view of what it will take to get a certain performance rating or get your next promotion in quarters from now. And the key is to make this a joint work product with your manager. Okay? So, let me share with you the messaging.

This is my script for managing my manager. So this is at the end of some career conversation we've had say at some point like just 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes, whatever. This is what I would say. I would say, "I want to thank you for agreeing to be a close partner in helping me navigate to the next level. I find it helpful to keep myself accountable towards achieving what it will take to get there. So you are clearly saying it's on me.

I'm not holding you accountable, I'm holding myself accountable. You're also clearly acknowledging there are some gaps, okay? So you're not ignoring whatever it is, okay? Next, so I was thinking of creating a quick, very approximate view of what needs to happen between now and the next perf cycle to increase my odds of getting promoted. Every word here has been chosen very carefully. I did not Notice I did not say to get promoted.

To increase my odds of getting promoted. So, can I create a brief working backwards plan and get your input on it in our next one-on-one? Simple words. Those of you who are managers, if one of your team members says this to you, and assume you're very busy, uninterested, whatever. How you going to respond? What are you going to What are you going to say to this? Managers, my managers, please. If somebody says this to you in a one-on-one, what are you going to say?

Of course, you're going to say yes. Are you going to say no? Who's going to say no? Be honest. Tell me, are you going to say no to this? You can't get those words out. You cannot get the word no out. It's impossible. You already seen the future and written the future through your words. So, this is how it works, folks. All your problems are messaging problems. Now, your manager has no idea what the this working backwards plan is.

They don't know. So, let me show you what the working backwards plan is. All right. So, how do we go about resolving this ambiguity and creating structure and following up on the script I shared with you of talking to your manager about this working backwards plan? So, for that, I'm going to share a template with you next. But before we see the template, here's a reminder of how recognition works. So, again, remember, recognition is a function of your scope, outcomes, outputs, and visibility.

So, that's what shows up in this template of ours. It is called I call it the promotion drivers template. Don't say this to your manager. Don't name it that way to your manager. But I like to name things as they are. So, this is the promo promotion drivers template. This is the promotion drivers template. Okay? And I've used variants of this with people on my team. But for most people, your manager is either not advanced enough in his or her own journey or does not have the time to proactively bring this up with every member of the team.

So, that is why I suggest you take the initiative to fill this out and create a draft and partner with your manager to hone it further. Now, I promise you doing this with your manager, especially after using the script I just shared with you two slides ago, will be an eye-opening exercise for both of you. Okay? And so, what are the main goals of doing this? The main goals are to resolve ambiguities together now to avoid surprises in the future.

You see, how many of you had a situation where you were up for promotion, and then afterwards the promo committee met and you were declined the promotion, and the manager said some reason the team thought the promotion committee thought your scope wasn't big enough. Or the promotion committee thought the impact wasn't there. Or people weren't aware of visibility. The Like people didn't have you Like they didn't have visibility into your work.

Now, this is a common situation. The point is it sucks to hear it after the promotion committee meets, right? It's better to figure this out up front so you can plan and preemptive preempt it, basically. Okay? So, this is why like I'm sure doing this with your manager will feel daunting, but it is smarter to be surprised right now than be surprised after the promo committee meets. Right? And then you're told the committee thought your scope wasn't big enough.

It's whoa, like my scope was the same 6 months ago. Why didn't you tell me this 6 months ago? So, we could have done something about it. Right? And by the way, this works well even if you are not aiming for a promotion. Say you weren't just aiming for a higher rating so you can get better comp. Right? Like instead of exceeds, you want greatly exceeds. Instead of greatly exceeds Oh, instead of meets, you want exceeds.

Oh, whatever, right? It's the same deal. So, now let's look at the four sections, the four main sections. There are eight sections, but the four main sections are scope managed, right? So, again, these questions in there are very important questions and prompts. Output shipped, outcomes driven, and visibility provided. Okay? So, these are the four sections.