Latest / The Promotion Memo with Fexingo: Getting Visibility, Sponsors, and Executive Presence / How One Employee Got Promoted by Defining Career OKRs
Transcript
- Lucas: You've probably heard about OKRs at work — Objectives and Key Results. Companies use them to align teams. But what if you used OKRs to plan your own promotion? That's what a project manager we'll call Mia did, and it worked. Luna: OKRs for your career? That's interesting. How does that even work when you don't have a team reporting to you? Lucas: Mia was a mid-level PM at a mid-sized SaaS company — about 300 employees. She wanted to become a director of project management. She didn't have direct reports, no budget ownership. So she wrote a personal OKR document and shared it with her manager. Luna: And the manager didn't think she was trying to game the system? I know some leaders get skeptical when people get too strategic about titles. Lucas: That's the thing — she framed it as, 'Here's how I want to add more value.' Her manager, a VP of operations, actually loved it because it made promotion decisions less subjective. Mia set three quarterly OKRs for Q3 2025 through Q4 2025. Luna: Three objectives — that's manageable. What were they? Lucas: First objective: improve project delivery speed for the two most critical product launches. Key results included reducing average cycle time by 20 percent and hitting all major milestones within a week of the original deadline. Second objective: develop two junior PMs into independent leads. Key results were conducting weekly coaching sessions, getting them to own a full project lifecycle, and having them receive positive feedback in their 360 reviews. Luna: So she's showing she can do the work and grow others. That's classic director-level stuff. Lucas: Exactly. The third objective was personal: build executive communication skills. Key results: deliver three presentations to the leadership team, get at least a 4 out of 5 on feedback surveys, and receive one unsolicited positive comment about a presentation from a VP or above. Luna: She made it measurable. That's smart — it's not 'become a better speaker,' it's 'three presentations, scored feedback.' Lucas: Right. The OKR framework forces you to define success concretely. Mia tracked her progress in a shared document. Every week she'd update the status — green, yellow, red — and add a sentence on what she did. By the end of Q4, she'd achieved eight out of nine key results. Only one was yellow: the cycle time reduction hit 17 percent instead of 20. Luna: Seventeen percent is still impressive. And I bet her manager noticed the discipline of tracking that way. Lucas: He did. When promotion conversations came up in January 2026, he used Mia's OKR document as the primary evidence. He told HR, 'She set clear goals, executed against them, and demonstrated the impact we'd expect at director level.' She got the promotion effective March 1. Luna: What about the year before that — did she just start with OKRs from scratch? Or did she have some support? Lucas: She actually started with a conversation with her manager about what the director role really needed. She asked, 'What does success look like in the next six months for a director?' Then she backward-mapped her OKRs. That's key — your OKRs should align with the business priorities, not just your wish list. Luna: So the first step is understanding what the company needs at the next level. Not just what you want to do. Lucas: Yeah. Mia told me, 'I used to focus on my own tasks. With OKRs, I had to think in terms of outcomes that matter to the business.' That shift in perspective is what got her noticed. Luna: I'm thinking about how listeners can apply this. Let's say someone is a senior analyst eyeing a manager role — what would their OKRs look like? Lucas: Good question. They'd probably have an objective about improving a key process — say, reducing monthly reporting time by 30 percent. Another objective about mentoring an intern. And a third about presenting to senior leadership. The specifics depend on the role, but the structure is the same: three objectives, three to five key results each, all measurable. Luna: And they should share it with their manager? That feels vulnerable. Lucas: Vulnerable, but powerful. If you don't share, you don't get feedback. And feedback can tighten your key results. For example, Mia's manager told her to include a key result about cross-functional collaboration because the director role requires that. She added a KR: lead at least two cross-departmental meetings per month. Luna: So it becomes a collaborative tool. That's way better than just hoping your manager notices your good work. Lucas: Exactly. And it works beyond promotions. One listener wrote to us saying they used career OKRs to pivot from marketing to product management. They set an objective to ship a small feature — key results about user testing, stakeholder sign-off, launch metrics. They got the internal transfer within two quarters. Luna: OKRs as a career navigation tool. I love that. Lucas: You know, speaking of listeners writing in — we get a lot of messages saying these episodes have helped people make real career moves. And honestly, that's what keeps us going. If you've found value in the show, a couple of dollars a month at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo genuinely makes a difference. It helps us keep the podcast ad-free and focused on practical advice. Luna: Yeah, it's a small way to support something that's helped you. We really appreciate it. Lucas: Back to OKRs — one pitfall to avoid: don't set too many objectives. Three is the sweet spot. More than that and you spread yourself thin. One analyst I know set six objectives and achieved almost nothing. He got discouraged and quit the whole system. Luna: So pick the three that matter most. And tie them to the company's quarterly goals if you can. That way your OKRs are automatically aligned. Lucas: Biggest takeaway from Mia's story: she didn't wait for her manager to tell her what to do. She proactively created a roadmap. That kind of initiative is exactly what executives look for when deciding who to promote. Luna: And she used data to make her case. By the time the promotion conversation happened, the evidence was already in the document. Lucas: So if you're aiming for a promotion in the next year, consider drafting your own career OKRs. Set a one-hour meeting with your manager to share them. Then track relentlessly. You might be surprised how far a structured approach can take you.