This article is part of the Design Your Promotion and Get Paid at the Right Number course. Click here to explore the full course.
Your manager told you he sees you in a bigger role, and youβve been working toward that conversation ever since. None of it is written anywhere. It lives in one personβs memory, and a reorg can make somebody else your manager three months before your review.
Erfan Hesamiβs manager raised the promotion before Erfan did. Three months before the annual review, a reorg put another manager between them and moved the old one a level up. The companyβs first offer was 12%. Erfan finished with the lead title and 22%.
A written case carried that promotion across the reorg. Maybe his old managerβs word would have been enough on its own. I wouldnβt bet a year of work on finding out.
A promise from a one-to-one belongs to whoever made it
When your manager says he sees you in a bigger role, thatβs an intention. He built it out of a year of watching you work, and itβs stored in his head and nowhere else. A reorg moves the only person holding it.
The new manager inherits your team and your review date, and has never seen a day of the year your old manager watched. Heβs also the one who now argues for you, in a meeting youβll never sit in, for a promise somebody else made.
And your manager rarely decides this alone. I sit on promotion committees, and the group asks whichever manager is in front of it. After a reorg, thatβs the manager who knows you least.
Then the review comes round and the new manager tells you nobody briefed him. Your old manager is a level up and busy with his half of the reorg. Everybody agrees youβre good, and nobody has a damn thing to take into the committee.
If your promotion only exists in your managerβs memory, it leaves when your manager does.
The whole run, meeting by meeting, is in the Promotion OS in Erfanβs case, start to finish.
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Put the ask on the record six months early
Say you want the next step at your mid-year review. Six months out is the last point where your manager can still plan around it.
That conversation is about responsibilities, the ones you already carry and the ones youβre ready to take next. Write them down and send them before the meeting as a short document. One page, because an executive wonβt open ten. The title comes later, once your manager has watched you carry them.
Erfan spent most of 7 years doing the opposite. A good review, the standard increase, and a thank you for another year. A manager who hears nothing assumes youβre happy where you are, and nobody spends advocacy on somebody who looks happy.
After the mid-year conversation, give your manager things to repeat. Send updates before anybody has to chase them, short and weekly and shaped for whoever reads them. My own version is in The Weekly Message That Got Me Promoted. Take the work nobody owns, too. Erfanβs company had AI initiatives running with no governance under them. He pointed it out, volunteered to write it, came back with a plan when his manager asked for one, and was left to run it.
I ask my own team for their number 3 to 6 months before the cycle, because I canβt fight for a figure nobody has given me. A title works the same way. By the time Erfanβs case went out, his manager had raised the promotion himself, months earlier.
When your manager changes, take the case to both of them
Starting again from zero with the new manager throws away a year of evidence and the only person who watched you earn it.
Going around him to your old manager is worse. The new manager is the one whoβll argue for you, and nobody argues hard for someone who went over their head.
Keep the old manager in. In Erfanβs reorg the old manager became the new managerβs boss. He remembered the year, and he outranked the person presenting it.
Write down whatβs already been said. What was agreed, roughly when, and what was meant to happen next. Send it to both of them and get the three of you agreeing on one version of the past and one plan for the months you have left.
If your old manager has left the company, that written history is all that survived the reorg, so send it to the new one anyway.
Build the case for the one who wasnβt there. Youβre now writing for two readers who each know part of your year, and one of them has to carry it up to the other.
My own senior management team changed a few months ago. The business case Iβm taking to the board is a document first, and my manager has already been through several revisions of it. Without that, Iβd be learning what the new people want live, in front of the board.
Write the case for the manager who wasnβt there.
Four things for the case the course left out
Lesson 4 has the structure. Erfanβs case carried four things none of the lessons taught.
Three titles in the ask. Your first choice, then two youβd accept. A title has to fit the companyβs ladder, so options keep it a conversation.
Every person you worked with this year, by name. Erfan didnβt think his list would reach 15. It came to more, and a list like that is the scope argument for a lead title.
Work outside the job. A year mentoring graduates at his old university, one of whom landed a software engineering internship, and community awards he nominated himself for and made finalist in.
Praise you never asked for, pulled out of your inbox. Lesson 3 left the back catalogue open. Erfanβs answer for the feedback half was to have AI search his email for it, then keep every quote with the personβs name, job title and a screenshot. We check those on the committee, by going to the names on a case and asking whether itβs true.
If they name the number first
Erfanβs case asked for the title, the progression and the scope. It left the number out, so the company named it first, at 12%.
Lessons 2 and 4 both tell you to put the number in. Sometimes they go first anyway, because you left it out or because they got there before you did.
Counter with a sourced number, built the way lesson 2 describes, on the duties youβve just agreed for the new title. Erfanβs research was finished before their offer arrived, so he wasnβt building his number while looking at theirs. Without that research youβre negotiating up from their figure with nothing in your hands, and thatβs a shit place to stand.
Your manager will ask where the number came from. Send the sources, with dates on them. He needs something he can forward to finance, and a manager canβt repeat a figure he canβt attribute.
Then finance checks it. For Erfan that took about a week.
Somewhere in there, somebody asks what else would work if they canβt reach your number. Say what comes first and that youβll hear the rest. Erfan told them salary was his priority and he was open to other options. A flat this-or-nothing ends the negotiation.
Before the last meeting, write down three outcomes. A yes. A tight budget, where you ask for a review at 3 or 6 months or when the budget resets. A no, with what has to be true by the next cycle. Erfan walked in with all three and needed the first.
One meeting becomes four, so write each one down
The first meeting can end in a reschedule. Erfanβs did. His manager hadnβt opened the case, opened it in the meeting, saw how much was in it and moved the conversation so he could read it properly. Thatβs a decision maker asking for time alone with your case, which is why lesson 4 tells you to send it ahead. Take the reschedule.
Erfanβs promotion took four meetings over three weeks, for a new title and a 10-point jump. Every round waits on somebodyβs calendar, and at least one waits on finance.
Each of those meetings ends with something agreed out loud, and each one is another promise from a one-to-one. Send a recap within 24 hours to everyone who was there. Decisions, next steps and a checkpoint date. The template is in Step 5 of the Promotion OS, and no lesson in this course taught it.
The recaps are also what saves you when the reorg lands in the middle of the negotiation, after the case has already gone out.
Final thoughts
If your manager has told you youβre next and thereβs nothing written anywhere, you have a good relationship and no promotion yet. Write it down this month, while the person who made the promise is still the person you report to.
Iβve told you twice in this course to put the number in the case. Erfan left it out and got 22%. I still think it belongs in there, and his run is the best argument against me Iβve got.
Thatβs the course.
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Until next time,
Yordan
