The Art of Leadership

Chapter 23. A Meritocracy Is a Trailing Indicator

As a manager, when a direct report asks, “What do I need to do to get to the next level?” I maintain that the quality and completeness of your answer is directly correlated to your effectiveness as a leader.

Let’s start with the worst answer: “We’re a meritocracy where the best idea wins.”

This is a bulls—t cop-out answer. First off, being a meritocracy is a philosophy, it’s not a strategy. Using this as an answer to a question about professional growth is akin to saying, “We give out gold medals when you win, so when you start getting gold medals, we’ll all know you’re winning.”

A meritocracy, if achievable, would be a trailing indicator—a sign that long ago, your leadership team successfully created a culture where humans were recognized because of their ability. It reads like a noble dream worth striving for, but it is poor career growth advice.

Here’s a better answer.

Two Paths

There are two career paths¹ in your organization: one that describes the growth of individuals and one that illustrates the growth of managers. These paths are readily visible public artifacts written by those who do the work. This means engineering writes the path for engineers, marketing writes the path for marketing specialists, and so on.

The contents of these artifacts need to reflect your organization’s values, culture, and language. For individual contributors, I humbly recommend the career path contain the following information:

A series of ...