What Got You Here Won't Get You There

Everyone who moves up carries the same habits upward that got them there: the willingness to work harder than everyone else, the desire to be noticed, the rush to solve things fast. The problem is that the higher you climb, the less those habits set you apart from the colleague next to you, because everyone on that floor already knows how to do the technical work well. What starts to decide who gets one more step up and who stalls is something else: the interpersonal habit, the way you treat people.

It's like the factory worker who becomes a supervisor by fighting to prove he knows more than everyone on the shop floor, and keeps fighting the same way once he's a manager, except now he's fighting other managers who know the work just as well as he does. The behavior that drew attention down below, up here, wears people out and pushes them away.

The author spent his career sitting across the table from executives like this: competent people, hired and promoted for their technical results, who couldn't understand why the board hesitated to give them the next step. Almost always the reason wasn't in the spreadsheet. It was in a meeting, in a comment, in the way they treated someone who brought bad news.

People who reach a good position carry four beliefs that, together, work like an engine: I've won before, I have the ability to win again, I'm willing to do whatever it takes, and I'm lucky when I bet on myself. These beliefs are great for trying again after a stumble. The problem shows up when they mix with twisted reasoning: if I did all this and it worked, then everything I did, including my flaws, must have helped.

It's a kind of superstition, like the player who always wears the same shirt because once, the team won while he wore a new one. Nobody really believes the shirt scores goals, but he repeats the gesture because it worked before. A successful executive does the same with bad habits: since I'm up here, even this rude way of answering must have contributed.

This belief explains a curious phenomenon: almost nobody warns a successful boss about a flaw. First, because it seems risky to give that heads-up to the person who controls your paycheck. Second, because even if someone does warn them, the successful person usually listens politely and keeps doing the same thing, since deep down they believe that trait is part of the formula that has worked so far.

The first habit that gets in the way is the urge to win in any situation, even the ones that are worth nothing. It's the manager who argues with the rideshare driver about the fastest route to the airport, or who has to prove he knew the game's result before everyone else in the work group chat. Alone, each episode seems silly. Added up over a year, it becomes a colleague who turns every conversation into a contest.

At the bar after work, everyone has seen that colleague who has to win even the argument about which team will be champion, with no real interest in the subject. The issue isn't disagreeing, it's the need to win the disagreement at any cost, even when nobody remembers the argument the following week.