Latest / The Promotion Memo with Fexingo: Getting Visibility, Sponsors, and Executive Presence / How One Employee Got Promoted by Building a Communication Map
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this analyst at a Fortune 500 healthcare company — we'll call her Priya — who realizes she's been passed over for promotion twice. Her manager tells her she's technically excellent but not visible enough. Luna: Classic feedback. 'You need more executive presence.' Vague and unhelpful. Lucas: Exactly. So Priya decides to treat visibility like a systems problem. She spends two weeks mapping who actually makes promotion decisions at her company. Luna: Wait — not just her reporting line? She maps the whole network? Lucas: The whole thing. She identifies roughly forty people who influence promotions — not just the VP and director, but the cross-functional leads, the project sponsors, even the executive assistant who schedules the talent review meetings. Luna: That EA part is smart. Gatekeepers control who gets airtime. Lucas: Right. Priya then builds what she calls a communication map. It's basically a spreadsheet with four columns: name, role, communication preference, and current awareness level of her work. Luna: Communication preference — you mean, 'this person prefers Slack over email, or brief bullet points over detailed memos'? Lucas: Exactly. And she goes deeper. She notes which meetings each person attends, who they listen to, what kind of data they trust. One senior director only reads one-page summaries with a single chart. Another wants raw numbers emailed three days before a review. Luna: Okay, so she gathers intelligence. But how does she act on it without looking like she's playing politics? Lucas: That's the key question. Priya doesn't start schmoozing. Instead, she starts adjusting how she communicates existing work. For the chart guy, she adds a one-pager to her project updates. For the raw-data director, she sends a pre-read with the numbers she knows he'll ask about. Luna: So she's not doing extra work — she's repackaging what she already does. That feels authentic. Lucas: Exactly. And she tracks it. She has a little dashboard — not for anyone else, just for herself — where she notes who she's reached, what they know about her projects, and whether she's building what she calls 'awareness density.' Luna: Awareness density. I like that. The idea that multiple people in the network can independently vouch for your work. Lucas: Right. Because one sponsor is fragile. If that person leaves or gets distracted, you're back to zero. Priya aims for at least five people in different parts of the org who can speak to her impact. Luna: And how long did this map take her to build? Lucas: About two weeks to build the initial map. Then she spent about thirty minutes a week maintaining it. Six months later, she gets promoted to director. Luna: That's a pretty concrete result. But I want to push back a little — doesn't this feel like gaming the system? Like you're engineering relationships instead of building them naturally? Lucas: Fair pushback. I'd argue two things. First, Priya isn't faking anything — she's just ensuring her actual work gets seen by the right people in the format they prefer. That's not manipulation; that's effective communication. Luna: Okay, that's fair. What's the second thing? Lucas: The second thing is: the system is already political. If you don't map it, you're navigating blind. The people who get promoted unconsciously already do this — they just don't write it down. Priya made it systematic. Luna: So it's a leveling the playing field move. For people who aren't natural networkers. Lucas: Exactly. Introverts, new employees, people from underrepresented backgrounds who don't have built-in social capital — a communication map gives them a structured way to build visibility without having to be the loudest person in the room. Luna: Alright, let's get tactical. How would someone listening today start building their own map? Lucas: Step one: identify the decision nodes. Who actually sits in the talent review meetings? That's usually your VP, director, maybe a few senior managers. But also — who influences those people? Look at who the VP asks for opinions in meetings. Luna: Yeah, the 'shadow executives' — people whose opinion carries weight even though they don't have the title. Lucas: Exactly. Step two: map the information flow. How do decisions actually get made? Is it top-down, or do certain people control the agenda? Priya found that one senior manager set the agenda for the monthly review — so if your project wasn't on his radar, it didn't get discussed. Luna: That's huge. If you don't know who controls the meeting agenda, you're invisible before the meeting even starts. Lucas: Step three: tailor your communication. For each node, note what format they prefer, how often they want updates, and what kind of data they trust. And step four: build advocacy loops. Luna: What's an advocacy loop? Lucas: It's when you create a situation where someone else naturally champions your work. For example, Priya wrote a one-pager on her project that her director could forward to the VP. The director looked good for sharing a great update, and Priya got visibility without self-promoting. Luna: So you're giving your stakeholder a script to talk about you. That's clever. Lucas: It is. And it's ethical because the work is real. You're just making it easy for others to share. Luna: Speaking of making things easy — a quick honest thing. This show stays ad-free because a small group of listeners chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. If these strategies have helped you think about your own career, that's literally what funds making more episodes like this. No pressure, just wanted to mention it. Lucas: Yeah, and we mean that. It's listener-supported, and that keeps us independent. We don't have to tailor content to sponsors. So if you find value, that's the way to keep it going. Luna: Alright, back to the map. One thing I want to dig into: the maintenance. How do you keep this thing alive without it becoming a second job? Lucas: Priya set a recurring thirty-minute calendar block every Friday. She'd review: did I connect with anyone new? Did anyone change roles? Did I learn a new preference? That's it. Thirty minutes, not three hours. Luna: And what about updating the map when the org changes — reorgs, new hires? Lucas: She treated it like a living document. After any reorg, she'd spend an extra hour updating the nodes and flows. Because those are exactly the moments when visibility resets — people are figuring out who to trust again. Luna: So reorgs are actually opportunities to increase your awareness density. Lucas: Exactly. Everyone else is confused and waiting. If you're proactively reconnecting with the new decision makers, you jump ahead. Luna: I want to talk about one more thing: the risk of the map being discovered. If a colleague sees your spreadsheet, could it backfire? Lucas: That's a real concern. Priya kept hers in a password-protected personal file, not on the company drive. And she never used the word 'map' with anyone. She'd say things like 'I'm trying to understand how decisions get made here' — which sounds curious, not calculating. Luna: So the communication map is a private tool. It's not something you share or flaunt. Lucas: Right. It's your personal strategic document. Like a career blueprint, but focused on the human network around you. Luna: One last question: for people who feel like they're already visible — maybe they're in a small team or a flat org — is this still useful? Lucas: Even more useful. In a flat org, influence is even less tied to title. You need to know who the informal connectors are. A communication map helps you find the three people who actually set the culture. Luna: So it scales. Works in hierarchies and networks. Lucas: Exactly. Because at the end of the day, promotions are a human decision. The better you understand the humans making that decision, the better your odds. Luna: And the work still has to be good. The map doesn't create impact — it just makes sure the impact gets seen. Lucas: Couldn't have said it better. That's the whole episode. We'll be back tomorrow with another Promotion Memo.