Incredible Health CRO Holly Procter introduces us to the Company-All Test, a 3-step masterclass in how to make internal promotions.
What’s the Company-All Test?
The core concept is that as managers we should imagine the response from other employees if we were to send a Company-All comms announcing that we’re promoting a direct report: the goal response is that our promotional rationale and explanation is so clear and so compelling that everybody’s reaction is “Hell, yes!”
Going one level deeper the Company-All Test uses 3 criteria for making and communicating the promotion decision:
(1) Is the promotee demonstrating Mastery? Not that they make some shots, but that they shoot until they can’t miss. Multi-time CEO and longtime LinkedIn executive, Mike Gamson, highlights this idea in “Practice until you can’t miss.” We love this concept because it also turns the question back on the potential promotee: are they confident they’ve reached mastery? Using a basketball analogy, are they making shot after shot, “Splash” after “Splash?”
(2) Is the promotee acting as an Example to others? It’s not enough to just demonstrate mastery, they also need to be seen as setting the example for others. Serving as a role model and inspiring others to learn the same skills and use the same playbooks. Returning to our basketball analogy, are others waking up early to join them at the gym to hone their shots too?
(3) Is the promotee already doing the New Job already? Have they already demonstrated some of the skills the new role requires. Sometimes this is an exact match; for example, they covered for their Manager during some type of extended leave. More often, the person has taken on larger responsibilities, for example, managing colleagues on a project for first-time managers or already being a sought-out mentor for more senior leaders. Back to basketball, are aspiring managers already actively coaching their colleagues?
Finally, what the team and company needs is important too. Employees can go 3 for 3 on our criteria, but if there isn’t a business need to promote them, they’re going to need to wait until that changes.
Therefore, the full framework is that when there’s a clear business need, we promote employees who are demonstrating mastery, setting the example, and already doing the next job:
When to use the Company-All Test?
If we interpret the framework literally, we can use it when making a senior internal promotion - most likely a Director or VP promotee - that warrants Company-All comms, whether Slack, email, or other. Not only how we make that decision, but how we communicate it, emphasizing the blend of mastery, setting the example, and already performing at the next level.
If we interpret the framework more liberally, we can use it with all our employees to set clear expectations. Although we may not send Company-All comms for a more junior promotion, our promotion criteria would still be to reward those who are crossing the bar on all 3 criteria. Therefore it’s our responsibility as managers and leaders to make our approach clear.
And if we’re the employee seeking a promotion, it’s our responsibility to work with our managers and leaders to get that clarity. If it’s not clear, it’s on us to get to clear. The first rule of careers is that nobody cares as much about our careers as we do, where “hope” is never a good strategy, especially when it comes to our own careers, so let’s push for clarity.
How do we use the Company-All Test?
John:
The Company-All Test felt just right as our second “Favourite Operator Video” Blueprint because where 
I also know first-hand, both from getting this wrong as a Manager, as well as feeling lost as an aspiring promotee, that promotions are a sensitive subject and getting the fundamentals right is 80% of the job. I’ve seen too many managers take for granted that more junior employees understand promotion expectations - perhaps because they’re written in an HR document published somewhere - but it’s the responsibility of every leader to get to clarity with their teams. Not only with their direct reports but also through their management chain to everybody in their organization.
James:
100% agreed clarity is key here. I love the 3 criteria from the Company-All Test, where a company can use different criteria if they choose to, but it’s being crisp on what matters that matters.
The hardest element for me with promotions has always been how to find the “Goldilocks” right amount of obvious for internal promotions: if it’s OBVIOUS, should we have promoted the person 6 months ago? And if it’s borderline-obvious, as a company do we default to rounding-up or rounding-down? I recommend erring on rounding down so there’s less “grade inflation,” otherwise levels can get devalued quickly when too many on-the-fence promotions going through.
This idea of how ready is the person especially connects to the third criterion, that the person is already performing at the next level: does this need to be for a month or two? Or a quarter or two? Or a year or two?
Overall, it’s less important what the expectation is - one company may use 2 months of demonstrated performance at the next level, another may use 2 quarters - but that it’s consistently applied. We’ve all experienced the frustrated manager complaining that, “I held back my promotee for 6 months to ensure 3 quarters of demonstrated mastery, but you’re promoting Pat after at most a month or maybe two of mastery, WTF!”
Clarity and consistency are 80% of what it takes with internal promotions.
John:
I want to emphasize a point Holly made about bringing new and diverse perspectives onto the team. Sometimes a promo takes courage…as Holly says “sometimes a team knows what they want but not what they need”. Ideally a candidate can make the backstory compelling but ultimately a leader needs to craft the story that will play out in order to lead the team in a new direction. Most of a great promotion process is getting to the right decision, but the “final mile” matters too, which is the storytelling, especially in these situations where the promotion is more surprising to others. Not only the final correspondence, but also sharing 1-on-1 with the right group of people ahead of time to build some momentum and avoid surprises at go-time.
James:
Definitely no surprises. From the promotee’s perspective, I enjoyed Holly’s point about their helping to write their own story. It reminds me of applying to business school back in the day: on day 1 of a new project I shared with my Manager at Bain, “[My goal is that] you’re going to write me a glowing recommendation in about 8 months. If any point, I’m off-track, let me know immediately.”
It’s important to get on the same page around goals and what it takes to achieve those goals with your Manager, whether a promotion or anything else.
John:
Holly’s point about the candidate’s perspective struck a nerve with me too. I've also been fortunate to have enjoyed a few positive experiences where I learned I wasn’t ready yet for a promo, but in the process I learned exactly what areas I needed to invest in for next time. Some of my biggest areas of professional growth - for example, learning to be a better people manager and communicator - came as a result of these not yet conversations. Like so many other things, it connects back to embracing
James:
Finally, it has nothing to do with the Company-All test, but I have to mention how much I love your (John’s) observation that Holly is a smile-talker! I have quite the opposite situation and smile-talker is such a perfect way to capture her inspiring mix of optimism and dynamism.
It reminds me of one of my favourite business school Professors, Frances Frei, and her work with Southwest Airlines where she learned how they recruited personnel to maintain their sometimes zany and always customer-first culture. After analyzing all the characteristics of their model employee, they found something interesting:
Southwest Airlines found that its best screener for hiring new employees was “people who smile in a resting state.”
Holly Procter smiles in a resting state and would be an AMAZING Southwest employee if she weren’t so busy matching incredible hospitals with incredible nurses at Incredible Health!
Want to learn more?
WANT TO GO DEEPER ON THIS TOPIC & RELATED ONES?
We already shared Mike Gamson’s piece on “Practice until you can’t miss”, but we’re children of the 80s and 90s, how could we resist showing a thumbnail of Michael Jordan making a free throw in a game with his eyes closed? [here’s MJ repeating this feat several times]:
Broadening to the importance of clarity and consistency when it comes to management and leadership more broadly, Fred Kofman and his Conscious Business ideas may be the single body of work that has impacted both of us most:
And last, but certainly not least, broadening to management in general, we’ll certainly Blueprint Kim Scott’s Radical Candor as well as several frameworks from Julie Zhuo’s The Making of a Manager, both great operators turned rockstar, best-selling authors:
Here’s a good piece by a former Amazon exec, including the memorably phrase, “At Amazon, we spent significant effort trying to turn every door into a two-way door.”
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