- take over your boss’s job when they retire/get fired. (One can slowly go from individual contributor to vice president this way!)
- fit non-competence based corporate goals and have the polish to visibly demonstrate such (industry track record not required!). More about fluff than stuff…
- have strong corporate political alliances with higher leaders
None of this has anything to do with vision, ability, or merit.
If promotions are based on metrics (and they always are, even if the metric is "how much do I like this guy"), then you can either try to increase your score in that metric as much as possible, or you can game the metric as much as possible to make it look like your score in the metric is high. Most of the people at the executive level have been doing the latter so long that the former just isn't really considered at that level
More likely the other way round; if there are more options at lower levels - as you imply - then there are more ways for the principle to be countered or defeated.
None of this has anything to do with vision, ability, or merit.
Unfortunately, if you take the principle seriously, that's pretty much exactly what it has to do with.
For executives, there are only a few paths:
- take over your boss’s job when they retire/get fired. (One can slowly go from individual contributor to vice president this way!)
- fit non-competence based corporate goals and have the polish to visibly demonstrate such (industry track record not required!). More about fluff than stuff…
- have strong corporate political alliances with higher leaders
None of this has anything to do with vision, ability, or merit.