Latest / The Promotion Memo with Fexingo: Getting Visibility, Sponsors, and Executive Presence / How a Lateral Move Landed a VP Role
Transcript
- Lucas: So we get a lot of questions from listeners who feel stuck because they're not getting the title they want, even though they're doing the work. And one pattern we keep seeing is people assume the only path up is a vertical one — bigger role, more responsibility, same function. Luna: Right, the straight-line promotion. But we've talked before about how sometimes the fastest way forward is actually sideways. Lucas: Exactly. And today I want to drill into a specific case. A marketing manager at a mid-sized regional bank — let's call her Sarah — who moved laterally from the marketing team into a compliance-adjacent role, and 18 months later she was a VP. Luna: Eighteen months. That's fast. What was the trigger for the move? Lucas: She noticed the bank was about to roll out a new digital product — a small business lending platform — and the compliance team was overwhelmed. They had no bandwidth to design the customer-facing disclosures, the marketing language, the training materials. It was a bottleneck. Luna: So she volunteered to help write those materials? That sounds like extra work with no promise of a title bump. Lucas: Exactly. But here's the thing — she didn't just volunteer. She went to her marketing director and said, 'I want to do a six-month rotation into the compliance team to help launch this product. It'll make our marketing team look good, and I'll learn the regulatory side.' And she got approval. Luna: So she framed it as a win for her current team first. That's smart. Lucas: Right. And once she was inside the compliance team, she saw a bigger problem. The bank had 14 different legacy disclosure templates, all slightly inconsistent. Regulators had flagged it in a previous exam as a 'matter requiring attention.' No one wanted to own the cleanup because it was tedious and politically risky — you're stepping on toes. Luna: So she took the ugliest project. Classic. Lucas: She spent three months cataloging every template, mapping it to the regulation, and proposing a unified standard. She documented every instance where an inconsistency could have led to a fine — she found 14 specific cases where the bank had narrowly avoided penalties because a loan officer used the wrong version. Luna: That's a tangible number. 14 near-misses. That's hard for executives to ignore. Lucas: Exactly. And she didn't just hand in a report. She presented it to the head of compliance and the head of marketing together. She said, 'Here's the risk we're running, here's the fix, and I've already done the heavy lifting.' They approved the standardization project, and she led it. Luna: So she went from being a rotational marketing person to the de facto project lead for a compliance-critical initiative. That's a huge visibility boost. Lucas: And it's not just visibility — it's sponsorship. The head of compliance became her champion because she solved a problem that had been nagging him for two years. And the marketing director looked good because one of his people bailed out a key partner. Luna: I can see how that leads to a VP title. But I want to push back a little — isn't this just survivorship bias? We hear about the one person who made the lateral move work, but we don't hear about the dozens who got stuck in a dead-end rotation. Lucas: Fair point. But I think the difference is intentionality. Sarah didn't just take a rotation — she identified a specific, measurable business risk that no one else wanted to touch. And she documented her impact in terms executives care about: regulatory risk, potential fines, operational efficiency. Luna: So the lesson is, if you're going to move laterally, you need to pick a problem that's both painful and visible to senior leadership. Lucas: Exactly. And you need to be able to quantify the pain. She had 14 near-misses. That's the kind of number that sticks in a VP's mind. If she had just said 'the templates are inconsistent,' that's vague. But '14 near-misses that could have cost us $50,000 each' — that's a different conversation. Luna: So what happened in the 18 months between the rotation and the VP promotion? She didn't just do that one project and then coast. Lucas: No, she built on it. After the template standardization, she proposed a quarterly compliance review process for all marketing materials. That became a permanent role — she was the liaison between marketing and compliance. She wasn't just a project manager; she was the bridge between two functions. And that's a classic vp type role: cross-functional ownership. Luna: And the title came because? The bank created a new VP of Marketing Compliance position? Lucas: Actually, the original VP of Compliance left, and the bank decided to split the role. The head of compliance moved into a broader risk role, and they needed someone to own the marketing-facing compliance work. Sarah's work had made her the obvious internal candidate. Luna: So the lateral move positioned her perfectly for a role that didn't exist when she started. That's the dream scenario. Lucas: It is. But it required her to think about the bank's needs, not just her own career. She saw a gap and filled it, and the promotion was a byproduct. Luna: I think that's a really important reframe. Too many people think about promotion as something they 'deserve' because they've put in time. But Sarah earned it by creating value that the organization couldn't ignore. Lucas: Right. And I think that's a good moment to mention something about this show. We deliberately don't run ads on these episodes. The reason is simple — we want the advice to be useful and direct, without any sponsor messaging getting in the way. Luna: Yeah, and that's a choice we made from the start. If you find this kind of concrete career strategy helpful, and you want to support keeping it ad-free, there's a link — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, just a way to keep the lights on. Lucas: Exactly. And now back to Sarah's story. One last piece — when she went for the VP interview, she didn't just talk about the project. She brought a one-page summary that listed the 14 near-misses, the cost avoidance estimate, and the time saved by standardizing templates. She used that as her anchor. Luna: So she had a physical artifact. That's smart. It's easy to talk in abstract terms during an interview, but having a one-pager makes it real. Lucas: And it forced her to be concise. She could say, 'Here are the numbers. Here's what I did. Here's why it matters.' The executives didn't have to guess about her impact. Luna: I think the takeaway for our listeners is: if you're considering a lateral move, don't just look for any rotation. Look for a specific, measurable problem that's a pain point for someone senior. And then document everything. Lucas: And don't be afraid to take the ugly work. The project no one wants — that's often where the most visibility lives, because when you solve it, everyone notices. Luna: I'd add one more thing: build your coalition before you need it. Sarah had the head of compliance and the marketing director both rooting for her. That's two sponsors, not one. Lucas: Great point. So here's the question I'll leave you with — what's the ugliest problem in your organization right now that you could volunteer to solve? Luna: And if you find one, let us know how it goes. We love hearing these stories.