Latest / The Promotion Memo with Fexingo: Getting Visibility, Sponsors, and Executive Presence / How One Employee Got Promoted by Building a Career Heat Map
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I want to run something by you. Have you ever had the feeling that you're working really hard, putting in the hours, hitting every deadline — and still your boss seems surprised when you bring up promotion? Luna: Oh, absolutely. I think that's one of the most frustrating career moments. You're producing, but nobody's watching. Lucas: Right. And the standard advice is always 'get more visibility' or 'build your brand' — but that's vague. What does that actually look like on a Tuesday morning? So I came across a tool called a career heat map, and I think it's the most concrete thing I've seen for this problem. Luna: Heat map — like a weather map, but for your career? Lucas: Exactly. You map your key activities and relationships onto a grid. The horizontal axis is impact — how much does this thing move the needle for the business? The vertical axis is visibility — how many senior people see it? And you end up with four zones: the sweet spot, the blind zone, the overextension zone, and the dead zone. Luna: Okay, I'm interested. Give me a real example. Lucas: I talked to a marketing manager at a big retailer — she ran the email campaigns for their loyalty program. She was managing a team of four, hitting every metric, but she kept getting passed over for director. So she built a heat map of her last six months. She listed every project, every meeting, every stakeholder touchpoint. Luna: And what did she find? Lucas: She found that about sixty percent of her time was in the overextension zone — high visibility, low impact. She was spending hours on weekly status decks for the CMO, but those decks had no real decision-making power. Meanwhile, the project that actually drove a three percent lift in customer retention — that was in her blind zone. Low visibility, high impact. The CMO had no idea she led it. Luna: So she was doing the work that mattered, but nobody in leadership connected her name to it. That's the classic trap. Lucas: Classic. The heat map made it visible in five minutes. So she made two moves. First, she delegated the status deck to a senior analyst — it freed up about eight hours a week. Second, she scheduled a fifteen-minute monthly sync with the CMO titled 'Retention Insights Update.' No agenda, just a quick walk-through of the retention metrics she owned. Luna: And did it work? Lucas: Within four months, the CMO started coming to her for input on broader strategy. At her next review, she was promoted to director. She told me the heat map was the single most useful career exercise she'd ever done. Luna: I love that it forces you to be honest about where your time actually goes versus where you think it goes. But I have to ask — does this work for remote workers? Because if you're not in the office, visibility is way harder. Lucas: Great question. I think it's even more important for remote workers, because you can't rely on hallway conversations. In fact, the same woman I just mentioned was hybrid — two days in the office. She used the heat map to identify which meetings had the most senior attendance and made sure she attended those in person, even if it meant shifting her schedule. Luna: So she was strategic about where she spent her in-person capital. That's smart. Lucas: Exactly. And for introverts, the heat map can actually reduce anxiety, because you're not trying to be visible everywhere. You're picking two or three high-impact, high-visibility activities and doing them well, instead of spreading yourself thin. Luna: That's a relief, honestly. The standard advice to 'network more' can feel exhausting for someone who's not naturally outgoing. Having a map narrows it down to what actually moves the needle. Lucas: Right. And that's the key insight — it's not about being visible everywhere. It's about being visible in the right places. The heat map helps you see where those right places are. Luna: Let's break down the four zones more concretely. Sweet spot first. Lucas: Sweet spot is high impact, high visibility. This is where you want to spend as much time as possible. For a product manager, that might be the launch of a new feature that the CEO is tracking. For a finance analyst, it could be the quarterly forecast review with the CFO. These are the projects that get you promoted. Luna: Blind zone — high impact, low visibility. That's where the marketing manager's retention project was. If you're in the blind zone, you need to find a way to raise visibility without adding more work. Schedule a brief update, share a one-pager, invite a senior leader to a check-in. Lucas: Exactly. Overextension zone — low impact, high visibility. This is the trap a lot of ambitious people fall into. You say yes to every presentation, every committee, every cross-functional task force. You're seen as a go-getter, but none of it is moving the business forward. Luna: And the dead zone — low impact, low visibility. This is busywork. Formatting reports, updating spreadsheets that nobody reads, attending meetings that could have been emails. The heat map helps you see how much of your week is in the dead zone, so you can delegate or eliminate it. Lucas: Right. And here's a number that shocked me — when I started tracking my own time with a heat map, I found that almost thirty percent of my week was in the dead zone. I was doing things out of habit, not out of value. Luna: Thirty percent is huge. That's twelve hours a week that could go into the sweet spot. Lucas: Exactly. So the exercise is simple. Take a spreadsheet or a piece of paper. List every activity you did last week — meetings, reports, emails, projects, one-on-ones. Then rate each one on impact from one to five and visibility from one to five. Plot them on a grid. Then look at where the clusters are. Luna: And what do you do with that information? Lucas: You make a plan. For every activity in the dead zone, ask: can I stop doing this? Delegate it? Automate it? For the blind zone, ask: what's the smallest action that would increase visibility? For the overextension zone, ask: can I reduce the time I spend here without completely bailing? And for the sweet spot, ask: how do I do more of this? Luna: It's basically a prioritization framework, but applied to your career instead of your project backlog. Lucas: Exactly. And the beauty is that it's dynamic. You should revisit it every quarter, because the business changes, your role changes, and what was in the sweet spot last quarter might be in the dead zone now. Luna: One thing I'd add — this also works for mapping your relationships. You can create a heat map of your stakeholders. List every key person you interact with, rate the impact of that relationship on your career and the visibility of that relationship to senior leaders. Lucas: That's a great extension. Because sometimes you're spending a lot of time with a peer who's fun to talk to but has zero influence on your promotion. Meanwhile, you're avoiding the VP of your division because they seem intimidating. Luna: Right. The heat map makes that mismatch obvious. And it gives you a concrete action: schedule a fifteen-minute coffee chat with the VP, even if it's awkward. Lucas: You know, if this episode has helped you think about your own career visibility in a more concrete way, I'll just say this — if it was worth a coffee to you, there's a link. It's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's the smallest ask I can make, and it genuinely helps us keep this show ad-free. Luna: Yeah, I think a lot of listeners might feel that same 'aha' moment we're describing. If you do, that link is there. No pressure, no guilt. Lucas: And we're not going to make a big deal out of it. Let's get back to the heat map. I want to talk about one more application — using it to prepare for your performance review. Luna: Oh, good. Because that's where the rubber meets the road. Lucas: Right. Before your next review, build a heat map of everything you did in the last six months. Then, in the review, lead with the sweet spot projects. Don't bury them on page three of a brag document. Say, 'Here are the three things I did that had the highest impact and were seen by leadership. Let's talk about what I can do more of.' Luna: That frames the conversation around value, not effort. Much more persuasive. Lucas: Exactly. And if your manager points to something in the blind zone and says, 'I didn't know you did that,' you have your answer. Next time, you'll make sure they see it. Luna: So the heat map isn't just a self-awareness tool — it's a communication tool. Lucas: Exactly. It helps you tell your story more strategically. And in a world where promotion decisions are made by people who aren't in your day-to-day, that story is everything.