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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Manager Tools.
- [00:03]
B
This is Sarah and I'm Mark.
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A
Today's podcast company Change with Remotion is unlikely for managers.
- [00:10]
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Part 1 of 2 as always, folks, our content has been crafted by humans and we are now certified by Proudly Human. The questions this cast answers are, can I change companies for a higher level job? How could I get a promotion while moving to a new company? Why do companies not often offer promotions to new hires?
- [00:33]
A
If you want answers to these questions and more, keep listening.
- [00:40]
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Unconstructed interviews lead to inconsistent decisions and costly mistakes. When every panelist asks different questions with no shared standard, you're not evaluating candidates, you're comparing gut reactions. The Effective Hiring Manager conference teaches every member of your hiring team a proven process, behavioral questions, structured notes, and calibrated evaluation from first screen to final offer. Bring it to your organization@manager-tools.com ehmc or join us in Washington, D.C. on June 16th.
- [01:20]
A
Today we are talking about career progression and this idea that. This false idea, something we're going to talk about today. Yes, that you can keep your career moving upward if you just change companies, which unfortunately is a very rare occurrence. And we're going to talk about that today.
- [01:37]
B
Yeah, but first we want to make a point that three years ago we did a Career Tools podcast that we know many Manager Tools listeners don't listen to, although we know executives who listen to Career Tools, which we love to hear. But if you don't listen to Career Tools, you miss that cast. And that cast is similar to this one, but it was for individual contributors largely. And we go into more detail here, particularly about the executive exception to the rule. We also talk about big to small companies and so on with a little bit more detail. And we just flesh out the idea really fully. And we're focusing on you managers who are managers, senior managers, directors, senior directors, maybe assistant vice presidents, even vice presidents. But the exception really is at the very, very top of your organization. And we just thought in light of the economy and the fact that a lot of careers have stalled, you know, I just read today about who was it Cloudflare laying off 20,000 people. And he, the CEO laid out in a Wall Street Journal opinion article about who he laid off. And he actually referred to Peter Drucker and his three types of people in the company, I think leaders, builders, and measurers. And he suggested that they were going to get rid of measurers and they laid off 20,000 people. But they have many, many, many openings just in different areas. And one of the things he said was we believe with AI, managers can have a massively bigger span of control, which he implies that managers are only measurers as opposed to motivators and so on. And the idea that AI bots are going to magically keep people on track, I think is an idea yet to be tested.
- [03:24]
A
Yeah, exactly. It's not yet proven.
- [03:26]
B
Yeah. So we just, we're hearing from people talking about, you know, I'm not getting where I want to go. And in many cases we have to tell them, you know, other companies. We're hearing similar things from companies. Yeah, we are going to go to.
- [03:38]
A
It's a thing.
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B
Right. And in fact, we have a podcast about the downturn rite of passage, that when your company is going through a downturn and your company may not be, because right now, thanks to AI and Covid and so on, companies are the standard way of thinking about profitability and recessions and layoffs, that connection is somewhat broken. And so companies are posting profit while they're laying people off. I think we've reached peak layoff theory, but because of that, people's careers are stalling. And so we're hearing from people and at the same time we're hearing from people about, hey, I want to go from company A to company B. Somebody at company B is calling me and saying, there's no movement here either, how can I get promoted? And so we thought we'd revisit this subject with a little bit more detail, especially for managers. Yeah, I love it.
- [04:28]
A
Okay, so let me lay out the circumstance, the situation that we're covering today. Your career has essentially plateaued within your company, and there could be a host of reasons. Folks, your boss doesn't support a move upwards is one reason. There are all kinds of reasons for that, including your relationship with your boss, or your boss's ineptitude, or your boss's complete and total lack of political skills giving you no ability to influence people at a higher level. Or alternately, your boss could be supportive, but your company's performance is flat and promotions are few and far between. Or of course your performance doesn't warrant a promotion. I mean, there are multiple reasons that this could be happening for you.
- [05:07]
B
Yeah, I often have to tell people if you're within a year of just getting a promotion, asking for another promotion is a bad political move. It may in fact be okay in some very fast moving companies, but even at the fastest company moving companies I can think of, you know, a year after promotion without astounding results, or one that is very particularly, yes, it could be likely. It's very Particularly measured in the form of sales or some other thing that led to an enormous success. It's just not likely. And so sometimes the timing is right. And if your boss hasn't delegated any part of his job or her job to you, you may not want to get a promotion and then get swallowed up by a lot different and bigger and tougher responsibilities at a higher level. Now look, it's normal for people in this situation to think that maybe the solution, although I will say this is a relatively modern thing, 40 years ago people never thought of this because everybody stayed with the same company. But it's normal for people to think that maybe the solution is to interview other companies for a higher level position. Unfortunately, in case you didn't hear the original Career Tools cast, the rule is usually that you cannot make a move to a new company for a position higher than the one you are presently in. That's the general rule. And in this guidance we're going to talk about why you usually can't get promotion within a. With a company change and, and what those exceptions are.
- [06:38]
A
Yeah, exactly. Okay, so today we've got a four part outline, folks. First we're going to talk about why promotions with company change are rare. Then the fact that individual contributor to manager is a hard. No, it's different for senior executives. And you can maybe get a promotion by going to a smaller company.
- [06:58]
B
Exactly. So why promotions with company changes are rare. There are good reasons for why companies don't hire someone into a higher level role than they were working at with their previous employer. We're not saying it doesn't happen, but it is for the vast majority of managers, quite rare. And the primary one is simple. You haven't yet proven yourself at the level you're applying for. You don't have any proof.
- [07:27]
A
Exactly. Now Mark, there are listeners out there and the moment you say that, the response that they want to give.
- [07:34]
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I've actually heard this came directly from a conversation.
- [07:37]
A
Exactly. But wait a minute, wait a minute. They promote people internally and those people haven't necessarily proven themselves at a higher level either. So I mean, yeah, you can say that and you'd be right by saying that, but those people also then say but I know someone who did it. Yeah, but those are, as we say, rare exceptions and might even be covered by the exceptions that we're going to get into in a bit. So it's not impossible. I mean it could happen. But yeah, it's maybe a good way
- [08:10]
B
to say it is when you say it's not impossible. But it could happen. And that should make you think it's
- [08:15]
A
not a career strategy sort of strategy. Exactly.
- [08:18]
B
Yeah. It may be a very unique opportunity and you might make it happen. You get the whole shot. But actually you shouldn't plan on that as part of your career. Look, think of it this way, folks. Both you and the internal candidates vying for that job you want at another company haven't proven themselves at the higher level role. Agreed. Okay. But in the internal candidate's case, they are a known quantity at their existing level, which is of course similar to yours. We assume in your case you are not a known quantity, at least to the acquiring company. And look, you might say, well, I'm very good in interview. But look, folks, there's likely no amount of persuasive interviewing skills that would make an acquiring company bet on you versus an internal candidate whom they have perhaps years of knowledge about.
- [09:10]
A
Absolutely. And folks, another reason that hiring companies greatly prefer internal candidates for a promotion is that the hiring of an external candidate rather than an apparently ready internal candidate has a chilling effect on their employees beliefs about their own likelihood of progression at that employer.
- [09:35]
B
Yeah. And what's really important about that concern is that it has the greatest depressing effect on the high performers of the organization. The ones who want to grow. Right. Losing high performers because they no longer believe there's an upward path is the worst possible retention failure. Our friend Melinda Kerrigan, who's the chief administrative officer and having been promoted from chief people officer at Norley Group, where I'm on the board and the way she talks about losses is regrettable and non regrettable. Right. We may lose somebody, but we would be okay with losing that person or an average to a subpar performer or whatever. What they worry about is regrettable losses. Somebody who was doing well that we wanted to develop that would potentially become part of the succession plan and so on. Not all companies use that nomenclature or that breakdown, but I think it's a useful one along with the others to talk about who are we retaining?
- [10:35]
A
Agreed. Not all retention is the kind of retention we necessarily want, but some of the turnover is some is a kind of turnover we definitely do not want.
- [10:45]
B
I also had a conversation recently with somebody and they said, Mark, the results from retention thing doesn't really apply to me and I'm not going to tell you what kind of organization they work for. Our retention rates are very, very high. In fact, that's a problem.
- [11:00]
A
Okay, I've heard people say that before.
- [11:02]
B
Yeah, right. Well, that's only a problem if your Organization is not growing. Now, this team still tends to happen most frequently in academic organizations, academia, universities. Right. And also government. Right. But in both of those cases, we have a. Usually we have a fundamental misalignment of organizational goals versus individual, departmental, and divisional goals. And in the government's case, they hardly have any goals at all. And in many cases, unfortunately, some of those goals are unenforceable as a performance issue just because of unions and various other factors that go into how governmental organizations are running. It all basically boils down to, in most cases, not all, but in most cases, governmental organizations don't have a compelling external metric. They just don't. Whereas even though people complain about profit all the time, and of course, as we've said before, your organization does not exist to make a profit. It exists to serve society. And profit happens to be one measure that is very important to companies because profit allows you to fund things, future growth. If you're already serving customers, some section of customers successfully, why wouldn't you want to try to serve more successfully? If you truly believe that your organization is a service to society, why wouldn't you want to do more of that service to more of society? Maybe not everybody knows about you. Maybe they know about you, but only one product line and not the other product line. And you have to pay for marketing and you pay for that with profits. That's how you fund next year's budget, is whether you're profitable or not. If you don't have any profit, then you probably have the same or less budget than did this year. So in this particular case, he was saying, well, retention's actually a negative for us. We want to lose people. Now, he wasn't in academia or government, and I said, well, okay, that's actually something that you can do something about depending upon how high you are in the organization. Yeah, you can start measuring people more strictly.
- [13:06]
A
Yeah. And increase expectations, right? Yeah, that's how you do it.
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Increase expectations and increase accountability and so on. Now, most people would have expected for you and I to say layoffs, right?
- [13:14]
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Oh, sure.
- [13:15]
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Well, okay, yeah, you could do a layoff, but companies don't necessarily want to do a layoff if in fact they're in the middle of the pack of their industry relative to their performance, but not growing fast enough. Maybe they're in a commoditized industry, as this person was. And I said, well, you simply need to change the internal standards and hold people to higher standards and lose your lower performers. He says, well, people don't really want to do that. And I said, well, that's okay. But if you want to get to the other side of the river and there's no boat or bridge and you have to walk or wade, if you're not willing to get wet, you're not getting out of the side of the river. You can whine all you want about not getting to the other side of the river, but it's your responsibility to wait in the river and risk the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in order to take the risk to get across. And if you're not willing to do it, that's okay. But it's like sour grapes.
- [14:08]
A
Yeah, yeah. You can't say you have a retention problem because people stay too long, but we're also unwilling to do anything about it.
- [14:14]
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Right. We have a leadership and a management problem and a performance management problem, which
- [14:18]
A
I probably wouldn't disagree to, but yeah, yeah, no, you're exactly right. Now look, folks, you've probably heard it yourself, I'm looking elsewhere. There are no paths upward here. There are always people that they're bringing in from the outside. And this happens in well managed companies as much as it does in poorly managed companies. There will always be a hard look at the managers at and above the level of where people are leaving. Because individuals will, over time lose their faith in their chances for growth. And organizations don't want that. Organizations want to retain those people who want to grow, who want more, those are their top performers. And giving away all of those coveted jobs that next level, because I mean, remember, it's a game of numbers. There are fewer people at each level. You move up in the organization, we'll
- [15:11]
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talk about that even more.
- [15:12]
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Yeah, it's shaped like a triangle. I mean, there are fewer and fewer as you move up. So if you're giving some of those to people on the outside, it doesn't sit well with your most productive, most coveted talent internally. So that's why organizations in large part want to hire from inside.
- [15:29]
B
Yeah. Now folks, in case you missed it, Sarah said there, there will be a hard look at the managers at and above the level where people are leaving. Okay, what we mean by that is HR and senior leaders will say, why aren't these managers, senior managers, directors doing their job?
- [15:46]
A
Why aren't there people ready?
- [15:48]
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Right. Yes, exactly. In fact, many of the best known companies for developing talent, Alphabet, Texas Instruments, Goldman Sachs, Proctor and Gamble, have rules that significantly limit the ability of managers at all levels from bringing in people outside the firm. Some actually have a hard and fast rule that they only hire for Entry level positions. They make incredibly rare exceptions for very unusual jobs and so on. When they need a new sort of specialty that they don't have, they don't have internally. And when this is the case, if that's the way your company is run, a premium is put on hiring. Hiring is much harder, and managers who can't develop people are quickly shown the door. Because, you know, actually if you're in a company where managers don't hold people accountable, well, guess what, you're probably in a company that hires people at middle, middle levels from the outside. Right, because we don't have enough talent at the lower levels to step up. Yeah, right. And if you think about it, you talked about having there are less number of people at every succeeding higher level. There's always more people at the lower level than there as at the next level. So just the law of numbers would suggest that surely some of them are ready, but if they're not, then their managers and their manager's manager are not doing their job in developing. That's why one of the themes I had in my head when I was writing this cast is the importance of a number two. Gosh, okay, maybe you can't develop all of your folks, right? Maybe you can't. But you can sure as heck pick one and devote a specific amount of time. And if anybody writes me and says I'm worried that other people on the team will think that I'm playing favorites when somebody asks you that in a staff meeting, well, you know, maybe you're playing favorites with choosing Joanna over here as your number two. You say, I'm not playing favorites. I'm doing my job. My job is to make sure somebody is here in case I get hit by a bus so that somebody will be able to step in so that I can go on vacation. I would love to develop more people. And in fact, I'd encourage you to come talk to me about being developed more. You will have to continue to do your job at an excellent level in order to earn it. And your reward for doing it at an excellent level will not be a promotion. It'll be more responsibilities at this level where responsibilities that I normally own so you can start learning about what happens at higher levels and it won't overwhelm you when you get there. So I know there are a lot of managers listening to this who aren't developing their people. Start small. Choose a number two. I bet you most of you, 80% of you could just like that, go, yeah, I know who it is. Yeah, right. And Start developing your number two. And delegation is the way to do that. And by the way, we have guidance. We probably have 30 casts on delegation.
- [18:37]
A
Absolutely.
- [18:39]
C
Most leadership conferences give you a keynote speaker, a notebook, and a LinkedIn connection you will never follow up with. The mConference is different. It's a focused two day gathering of senior professionals and executives having the real conversations about what works, what doesn't, and what successful leadership actually requires when the stakes are highest. For more information, visit manager-tools.com mconference
- [19:10]
A
now, folks, retention isn't the only benefit of this type of thinking. This let's hire from inside type of thinking. There's also a huge protection of your corporate culture when you're hiring from within. Corporate culture is often changed when external hires are brought in at middle levels. And, and surely there are companies who pride themselves on just the opposite. That is, oh, we gotta bring some new people in here, new blood, new ideas. We want them to come in and shake things up. But even those companies generally stick with the rule of not allowing an external candidate to take a promotion away from an internal candidate by hiring an external candidate without experience at the level for which they're hiring.
- [19:58]
B
Yeah. Finally, I just want to say, most companies recognize the risk of hiring someone from a lower level, from outside, because of the inherent imperfections of the hiring process. Whether it's theirs or anybody else's, the average hiring process is crap. Interviewing is an inherently risky undertaking, even if you don't consider the average manager's lack of understanding of how to do it. Well, far too many managers end up going with their gut. They have little knowledge of the dangers of panel interviews. Oh my gosh. They only conduct one final interview rather than having some of the directs this person's peers interview them. They don't train their directs on how to do that interview. Or they hire someone just like them. Or they hire a friend whom they trust. And then even worse, they let the friend in the back door and they don't take them to the process, thereby eliminating the value of the external component of a successful interviewing. All of these behaviors, and these are normal behaviors. By normal, I mean routine. They happen everywhere, all the time. They're not effective, but they're normal.
- [21:06]
A
But they do.
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Yes. All of these behaviors make the risk of an external candidate winning a promotion with a move too high.
- [21:15]
A
Absolutely. Imagine being interviewed for a senior manager job when you've only been a manager and being asked behavioral interview questions about accomplishments that one would likely only have at a senior manager level. Now, most of us having no experience doing these things would be hard pressed to have really good examples. And so the hiring company would have to make a really big bet that you could learn incredibly fast. You might say that would be true for an internal hire as well. But that internal hire will very likely have already been exposed to projects where they've gotten delegated parts of the role previously. So in terms of, of this dynamic, the internal candidate would both be fully knowledgeable about the company's culture and its norms.
- [22:14]
B
Which you wouldn't.
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A
Which you wouldn't. Exactly. And have existing relationships with the colleagues that they would be working with. And folks, we've said it a million times, relationships matter. So even if you could say yes, they won't have the same experience. Absolutely. But culture and relationships are no small feat. And the external candidate would have neither of them.
- [22:40]
B
Yeah, exactly. Or imagine yourself as a director. Bring into your vice president an external candidate you want to hire for a senior manager role. Reporting to you. Okay, the first question you'll get if you're bringing them a manager, not a senior manager from another company upon your VP seeing their resume will be, this person's never been a senior manager before. What makes them so good? Without a perfect answer, and we mean perfect, and loads of supporting information, you're not going to win that argument. Even if your company would allow it, you're not going to win that argument.
- [23:18]
A
Yeah, you know what else the VP is going to say, folks? Why haven't you got your senior managers getting their best people their number twos ready for this promotion? We need to look at your development and succession planning. That's what we need to look at. Instead of this external hire, which they'd be fully within reasonable expectations to say. It's a solid burn though. I mean, you go in there with this, this wonderful, in your mind, external candidate and you're the one that's now in trouble because you haven't done your job. And it was exposed by you promoting this external candidate for a role because you haven't got your own internal people where they need to be. And we hope this is also going to be a reminder for some of our longtime community members of the importance of succession planning and development. In fact, Mark, this morning I was talking to Steven Price. Hi, Steve. If you're listening to this one, we were talking about Ready Now, Ready Next. So, yeah, yeah, I mean, and John Nuttall, I mean, the king of Ready now, ready next.
- [24:27]
B
Oh, gosh, we should have, you know, John should be on a cast and talk about his experience at, at And t. And what he has done. I mean, other managers come to him say, how did you do this? And he basically says, manager Tools. But that's not it. Because there are a lot of people who are huge manager tools. Fans use a lot of our stuff. But they're nowhere near what John is doing with a team. They're full of talent. They're. They're pushing him to grow them. And that's why good people want to come to his team.
- [24:54]
A
That's exactly it.
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B
And by the way, we haven't said anything about what this says about HR's responsibility here. Have they not been seen? There's a gap in their oversight of succession planning. Where are the baseball cards? Where's the nine box? If you don't know what a nine box is, you may not be an Executive Tool subscriber. And I think that cast came out just last week, actually, or maybe two weeks ago. Okay, where are the internal number twos? We should have already had more. Already had ready for more responsibility. Now, again, I'm just going to say it because I mentioned nine box. We do recognize that some of these topics are executive Tools guidance, and we encourage you to become an Executive Tools licensee, particularly if you're a senior manager above. But frankly, when I think about the number of individual contributors who start listening to Manager Tools. Right. That want to understand about management before they get there, which I think is a genius move. I've said before, West Point didn't teach me how to be a manager. The army didn't teach me how to be a manager. Procter and Gamble didn't teach me how to be a manager. I didn't learn it until I started interviewing and surveying and studying and gathering data on actual managers. So if individual contributors can be learning about how to be a manager before they're a manager, then you can learn about the cadence and the structure and what happens in executive life and the executive responsibilities before you become an executive. It will make you a much smarter consumer of what your boss is giving to you. You will understand more. We actually call it here intern swimming upstream, learning what your boss does and who's. Who's driving your boss and who are his or her internal customers and so on.
- [26:32]
A
You know, I would actually take that a step further, Mike. Oh, my gosh, I can't believe I just called you Mike.
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B
Yeah, that was a good one.
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A
Oh, my God.
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B
Cheers to Mike.
- [26:40]
A
Cheers to Mike. Yeah, no, I would. I would take that a step further. I think it was Lisa McCauley, and I could be wrong. Lisa, if you hear this and. And I'm wrong attributing this to you, then I'm sorry. But I'm sure it was Lisa who told me the reason I am a subscriber at a level above my current role is because I want to know how to be a good direct to my boss who's in that role. So it. And I think that, I mean, I think that really speaks back to the point of today's cast. We talked about this. A lot of people are feeling stuck right now. A lot of people are feeling like the promotion that they want, they just can't have. They might even be looking elsewhere. And we hope this podcast changes your mind in your searches potentially. But one of the values of consuming materials at a higher level than your current role is it makes you a better direct. And the better direct you are, the more likely you are to be considered for a promotion. So just another thing that you can do to get yourself ready to be seen in your boss's eyes as getting it.
- [27:44]
B
Tip of the hat to Lisa McCauley. Of course. Now we've mentioned her three times and she can write and say, it wasn't me.
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A
That wasn't me.
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B
I know.
- [27:51]
A
And the person who has an egg on our face, who actually did.
- [27:53]
B
We like you, Lisa.
- [27:54]
A
We do.
- [27:54]
B
We like you. If you were the one and it wasn't Lisa. Lisa will tell us if you were the one, please let us know and we'll correct our errors.
- [28:01]
A
We'll correct our errors. Thank you so much for joining us, folks. Join us again next week as we continue this topic. Now, help us help others and tell your friends. Friends. And of course, follow rate and review our podcast. And remember, five stars only, please.
- [28:17]
B
Yeah, five stars only, please.