Planning for progression
Start your plan by understanding the traditional and alternative pathways and progression routes. Remember: Promotions are a way for the firm/company to manage numbers and salaries. Therefore there will quite often be a formal assessment process/ business case hurdle to overcome.
Do some research.
Identify which options are available to you. If there are any that won’t work for you put them to the side and focus on those that match well with your circumstances, goals and personality. If you are in a traditional firm following a traditional (linear) route there should usually be a clear process with guidelines that are published by your firm/company about the different roles/grades and how to get there. This should form part of your appraisal and feedback process as you are likely to be measured/assessed against these guidelines.
Read, digest and plan against the guidelines.
You have to be achieving/hitting these basic fundamentals before you can be thinking about the extras/above and beyond categories. After all, you can do as much “extra credit” as you like but if you are not hitting the basic essentials you will get passed over for promotion.
There is often not much “transparency” beyond the published guidelines. This is often because the route to the top is subject to a whole host of variables, so it is not uncommon to be hitting the grades, but not being able to get an answer to what your real prospects are. So this is something to bear in mind.
To overcome this hurdle you then you need to:
- (1) recognise that variables are largely out of your control and
- (2) maximise your business case (because it is within your control).