Latest / The Promotion Memo with Fexingo: Getting Visibility, Sponsors, and Executive Presence / How One Employee Got Promoted by Building a Peer-to-Peer Recognition Program
Transcript
- Lucas: So a listener named Rachel wrote in last week with a question that stuck with me. She said: 'I see people getting promoted for starting internal initiatives — newsletters, dashboards, onboarding docs. But everything I think of feels either too small to matter or too big to pull off alone.' And that made me think of a case I came across recently. A marketing manager at a 3,000-person software company who got promoted not by owning something broken, but by building something that didn't exist: a peer to peer recognition program. Luna: Oh, I love that. Because recognition is usually top-down — manager gives kudos. peer to peer is a different animal. Lucas: Exactly. Her name is Maya — mid-level marketing manager, about four years in at the company. She noticed that even though the company had grown fast, there was no formal way for teams to celebrate small wins. No kudos channel, no shout-outs at all-hands. So she built one herself. A simple Slack bot that anyone could use to send a public thank-you with a few tags. She coded it with a no-code tool in about two weekends. Luna: Wait — she coded it herself? That's impressive. Most people would go to IT and wait six months. Lucas: That's exactly what she avoided. She knew that if she pitched it as a big project with a cross-functional team, it'd never launch. So she built a minimum viable version — just a slash command in Slack that posted to a channel called #kudos. She tested it with her own team of twelve for two weeks. The engagement was immediate: people loved being able to thank each other publicly. Luna: And then she took it to HR? Lucas: Not right away. She collected data first. After the pilot, she had metrics: 85 percent of the team had sent at least one kudos, and the average was four per person per week. Then she went to HR with a specific proposition. She said: 'This costs almost nothing to run — the bot is free, the channel already exists. If we roll it out company-wide, I can track engagement and correlate it with retention.' And HR's ears perked up because the company had been losing people in mid-level roles, and exit interviews often mentioned lack of recognition. Luna: So she framed it as a retention tool. That's smart — it's not just 'let's be nice to each other', it's 'this saves us money'. Lucas: Right. She projected a 2 percent reduction in voluntary turnover within six months. Even a rough estimate like that gets leadership attention. HR gave her the green light to roll it out to three departments. She trained the managers in a single thirty-minute Zoom. The bot had a simple template: 'I want to recognize for because.' And it automatically tagged the person and posted in the #kudos channel. Luna: How did she get visibility out of this? It sounds like she's behind the scenes. Lucas: That was the clever part. She didn't put her name on every kudos. But she sent a weekly digest to the VP of Marketing and the CHRO — a one-page summary of the top recognitions, the most thanked people, and the engagement rate. She included a one-sentence insight each week, like 'Kudos are 40 percent more likely to be sent on Fridays' or 'The engineering team adopted this twice as fast as sales.' She became the person who understood the culture data. Luna: So she built a reputation as the culture data person. Not the bot builder, but the strategist. Lucas: Exactly. After three months, the program had generated over 1,200 kudos across three departments. The CHRO started mentioning it in all-hands meetings. And when the company decided to launch it company-wide, Maya was asked to lead the rollout — not just the bot, but the whole strategy. That's when she wrote a one-page memo outlining the long-term vision: tie kudos to performance reviews, create a monthly 'kudos leaderboard' with a small prize, and integrate it with the existing recognition budget. Luna: And that memo is what got her promoted? Lucas: Partly. But the promotion came because she had a sponsor. The CHRO became her sponsor — started advocating for her in leadership meetings. And the narrative was: Maya didn't just build a tool, she proved she can shape culture at scale. She went from marketing manager to director of employee experience. That's a jump that usually requires an external hire. Luna: It's such a clean example of solving a real problem and getting noticed without being pushy. If today's episode gave you one useful idea for your own career, that's exactly the kind of thing we love hearing. And the way this show stays ad-free — no sponsors, no interruptions — is through listener support. So if you found this helpful, consider tossing a few dollars at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, it genuinely helps us keep doing deep dives like this. And we mean it — no pressure, just if it's useful. So back to Maya: one thing I think is underappreciated is her timing. She launched the pilot in a period when the company had just lost three mid-level managers in two months. The exit interviews were fresh. She didn't just build something; she built it at the moment the organization was most receptive. Luna: That's a great point. Timing is often luck, but she also created the conditions. She had the data ready before anyone asked. Lucas: And she didn't over-engineer it. A lot of people would try to build a full platform with nominations, voting, rewards. She started with a simple Slack bot and a channel. That's the minimum viable project — something you can build in two weekends, test with your team, and then expand. The key is to make it easy for people to participate. If the first version requires a training session and a login, nobody uses it. Luna: So for someone listening who wants to try this — what's the first step? Not the bot, but the thinking. Lucas: Look for a gap that feels small but emotional. Maya picked recognition because it's a pain point that everyone feels but nobody owns. Start by talking to five people in different departments. Ask: 'What's one thing you wish existed but doesn't?' If three of them say the same thing, you've found your project. Then build the tiniest version that addresses it — a Google Form, a Slack channel, a shared doc. Test it on your immediate team for two weeks. Luna: And then collect the data before you pitch it wider. That's the part most people skip — they pitch the idea before they have evidence. Lucas: Exactly. Maya had two weeks of pilot data showing 85 percent engagement. That's not just an idea, it's a proof of concept. When she went to HR, she wasn't asking for permission to run a pilot — she was saying 'I've already run it, here are the results, here's the projected impact, can we scale?' That's a much easier ask. Luna: And it positions you as someone who executes, not just talks. That's exactly the kind of thing that gets you promoted. Lucas: One more thing: Maya made sure to give credit to everyone who helped. In her weekly digests, she always thanked the team who tested the bot, the managers who championed it in their departments. That made people feel invested in her success. When the CHRO brought up the program in a leadership meeting, three VPs spoke up in support because their teams were using it. That's social proof without self-promotion. Luna: So the project itself is almost secondary. It's about the narrative — the story of how you identified a need, built a solution, got buy-in, and scaled it. That story is what makes you promotable. Lucas: Right. And that's the through line across so many of these episodes. Whether it's a dashboard, a newsletter, or a recognition program, the common thread is: you find a genuine organizational pain point, you solve it in a way that's visible to the right people, and you let the results speak for themselves. Luna: I think the recognition angle is especially powerful because it feels altruistic. It's hard for anyone to say 'oh, she's just promoting herself' when she's literally building a system to thank other people. That's a kind of armor. Lucas: Great framing. So for Rachel and anyone else wondering what project to start: look for the thing that everyone complains about but no one has tried to fix. Start small. Test it. Measure it. Then tell the story. You might not get a director title in six months, but you'll absolutely get noticed. Luna: And if you do build something like this, let us know. We love hearing about real projects. Lucas: Absolutely. That's all for today. Talk to you next time.