CEO Note to Self

HAVE YOU BROKEN A PROMISE YOU DON'T THINK YOU MADE?


As a top executive, if you are lucky, you have more people ready for top
spots than you have spots.  If you are very very lucky.

Regardless, you are trying to keep a pool of people happy enough to hang around until you make a final choice of who to place in a top job.

And so it is tempting to semi-promise or declare support for more than one person for a position.  It's not in writing.  There is no formal promise.
But there are moments of overt support after a job particularly well done or over enthusiastic performance reviews or confidential collegiality over drinks.
It's also tempting to give over compensating words to a direct report after a professional disappointment.
It happens.

You think you are giving subtle indicators of possibilities for the future.
Your direct report and valuable future exec thinks you are making a kind of promise.

At the decision moment, someone will feel, at worst betrayed or at best, poorly treated.  Don't be blind to the harm you cause with pre-mature innuendo of future promotion.  It's not the way to keep high potentials or to keep them fully engaged.

The solution is a very clean and transparent promotion process which often gets to be a too relaxed process for top positions.  

Have you made promised you can't keep?  Do you have a pristine promotion process to prevent promises and betrayal?   Don't be blind to the power of every word and innuendo you put out into the workplace.  People do hang on your every word.  After all, you are the top power person. Your words make things happen.