Latest / The Promotion Memo with Fexingo: Getting Visibility, Sponsors, and Executive Presence / The Invisible Tax of Unseen Work
Transcript
- Lucas: There is a persistent myth in corporate America that meritocracy is a straight line. You do good work, you get noticed, you get promoted. It sounds logical on paper, but if you look at the actual movement of talent through large organizations, it’s anything but linear. The problem isn’t that people are lazy or unskilled. It’s that they are operating under a false assumption about how value gets distributed. Luna: Right, and I think the hardest part for high performers is that their best work is often the kind that disappears once it’s done. If I fix a critical bug in the codebase, nobody sees the struggle, they just see the stability. That silence feels like success, but it’s actually invisibility. Lucas: Exactly. And that’s what we’re calling the invisible tax today. It’s the penalty you pay when your contributions are too functional, too quiet, or too well-integrated into the existing workflow that no one realizes how much effort went into maintaining them. A recent study from the Harvard Business Review looked at promotion rates among senior individual contributors and found a stark correlation between visibility and advancement, regardless of performance metrics. Luna: I remember reading that piece. The key insight wasn’t just about being seen, but about who was seeing you. There’s a difference between being visible to your team and being visible to the people who control budget and headcount. Lucas: Precisely. Let’s talk about a specific case to ground this. Consider Sarah, a fictional senior product manager we’ll use as our anchor here. Sarah had delivered three major features ahead of schedule, with zero critical bugs. Her peer reviews were consistently top-tier. Yet, when the director level opened up, she wasn’t even on the shortlist. The person who got it? Mark, whose features were messy, late, and required two rounds of rework. But Mark sat in on every executive steering committee and could articulate the strategic impact of his work in simple terms. Luna: It’s frustrating because Sarah did the harder job. Mark’s work was probably easier to explain because it was less refined. Does that mean we should start over-engineering our projects just so they look more impressive? Lucas: No, and that’s where most people go wrong. They think visibility means performing or creating noise. It doesn’t. Visibility is about translation. Sarah’s failure wasn’t in execution; it was in narrative. She assumed her results would speak for themselves. But executives don’t have time to dig through Jira tickets or read detailed post-mortems. They need a summary that connects daily tasks to revenue, retention, or risk mitigation. Sarah didn’t provide that bridge. Luna: So the issue is less about the work itself and more about the packaging of that work for an audience that doesn’t care about the mechanics. They only care about the outcome. Lucas: That’s right. And the cost of that disconnect is real. When you stay invisible, you aren’t just missing out on promotions. You’re missing out on the mentorship, the stretch assignments, and the trust that comes from being known by leadership. It creates a feedback loop where you get quieter opportunities while the visible people get the big ones. Over five years, that gap compounds significantly. Luna: It’s basically the compound annual growth rate of your career trajectory being determined by how well you can summarize your own value. Which is a skill set that has nothing to do with technical proficiency. Lucas: Spot on. So how do we break that loop? Because we’re talking about smart people who hate self-promotion. They view it as bragging or sucking up. We need to reframe what visibility actually means. It’s not about ego. It’s about clarity. Think of it as reducing friction for the people making decisions about your future. Luna: I like that framing. Reducing friction. If my boss has to guess whether I added value, that’s friction. If I give them a clear line from action to result, that’s service. It’s almost a customer service mindset applied to internal stakeholders. Lucas: Yes, and it starts with identifying your three primary audiences. Your direct manager is obvious. But who else? Who holds the budget? Who influences the culture? Who hires for the roles you want? Most people spend ninety percent of their energy pleasing their direct manager and ten percent everywhere else. That’s a misallocation of attention. Luna: That’s a hard pill to swallow. We’re trained to be loyal to our immediate team. Going outside that circle can feel like crossing a boundary or stepping on toes. Lucas: It feels risky until you realize that loyalty without visibility is just servitude. You’re working hard, but you’re working in a vacuum. The solution isn’t to abandon your team. It’s to create structured touchpoints with those other stakeholders. Maybe it’s volunteering to present a project update to a cross-functional group. Maybe it’s asking for feedback on a deliverable from a peer in marketing before it goes final. Luna: Asking for feedback is interesting because it shifts the dynamic. You’re not telling them how great you are. You’re inviting them into your process. It makes them invested in your success, which naturally increases your visibility. Lucas: Exactly. Investment drives attention. When someone helps you solve a problem or gives you input, they become a stakeholder in your outcome. That’s organic sponsorship. It’s not about buying lunch for the CEO. It’s about creating moments where your competence is demonstrated to people who matter. Luna: But there’s still the fear of looking like you’re trying too hard. What if the cross-functional presentation goes poorly? Then I’m not just invisible, I’m negatively visible. Lucas: That’s a valid concern. The key is preparation. Don’t wing it. Use your same rigorous standards for visibility as you do for execution. If you wouldn’t send an email without proofreading it, don’t show up to a meeting without an outline. Competence builds confidence, and confidence looks like presence. People respect thoroughness, even if the message isn’t perfect. Luna: Yeah, I think a lot of us freeze because we think we need to be charismatic. But actually, we just need to be clear. Clarity is accessible. Charisma is intimidating. Lucas: Clarity wins every time. Let’s talk about the mechanics of that clarity. One tool that works surprisingly well is the weekly digest. Not a status report full of bullet points about what you did, but a brief note highlighting one key win and one strategic insight. It takes five minutes to write. It takes thirty seconds to read. But it lands in the inbox of your manager and maybe one or two others. Luna: A weekly digest feels low-stakes but high-frequency. It keeps you top of mind without being annoying. It’s like background radiation. You don’t notice it until it stops. Lucas: Exactly. And it trains your brain to look for wins. Most people don’t realize they achieved something until it’s pointed out to them. Writing that digest forces you to reflect on what actually moved the needle. It’s a practice in strategic thinking, not just reporting. Luna: I can see how that would help during performance reviews too. Instead of scrambling to remember everything you did in six months, you already have the evidence sorted and framed. Lucas: It transforms the review from a negotiation into a confirmation. That’s powerful. Now, let’s pause here for a second. If we’ve helped you think through a career move or decision, and you appreciate this ad-free approach to honest business conversation, consider supporting the network directly. You can find the link at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo — that's F. E. X. I. N. G. O. It’s the only way we keep these episodes free and focused on substance over clicks. Luna: Thanks for listening. We really appreciate the support that lets us keep digging into these topics without worrying about algorithmic trends. Lucas: Back to the topic. So we’ve talked about audiences, friction, and the weekly digest. But there’s a deeper layer to this. It’s about the type of work you choose to highlight. Some work is inherently more visible than other work, simply because of its nature. Luna: Like crisis management? If a server crashes, everyone knows who fixed it. But if the servers run smoothly for a year, nobody knows anyone did anything. Lucas: Crisis management is the easiest form of visibility. It’s loud and immediate. But it’s also exhausting and unsustainable. You can’t build a career on putting out fires. You need to make proactive, strategic work visible. That’s harder because it doesn’t have the adrenaline spike of a crisis. It requires you to frame preventive measures as valuable achievements. Luna: So instead of saying 'I prevented a security breach,' you say 'I implemented a new protocol that reduced risk exposure by forty percent.' Same action, but the second one sounds like a strategic asset. Lucas: Exactly. You’re translating prevention into value. Executives love value. They hate risk. By framing your quiet work in terms of risk reduction or efficiency gains, you make it relevant to their priorities. It stops being administrative and starts being strategic. Luna: This feels like a fundamental shift in how we view our jobs. We’re not just task-doers. We’re value-communicators. That’s a heavier lift, but it’s also more rewarding. Lucas: It is. And it protects you from that invisible tax. When you can articulate the strategic weight of your daily grind, you become indispensable. Not because you’re the only one who can do the work, but because you’re the only one who understands why it matters. Luna: That’s the difference between being replaceable and being essential. Replaceable workers do tasks. Essential workers connect tasks to outcomes. It’s a subtle distinction, but it defines entire careers. Lucas: Well said. So, as we wrap up, I want to leave you with a question to sit with this week. Look at your last completed project. Could you explain its impact to a stranger in thirty seconds? If not, where is the gap? Is it the work itself, or the story you haven’t built around it? Luna: I think that’s the most important takeaway. The work is never enough on its own. You have to build the bridge between what you did and what they care about. Start building that bridge today.