A bunch of people I've worked with have done this - my old boss's boss made it to SVP of Search at Google, another boss's boss (inserted into the management chain below the former, actually) is now CPO of Slack, one of the other manager's I worked with is now CTO at DropBox, former coworkers are heads of product at Asana and IPFS, my current manager is up for director, and a college classmate has been a highly successful C-level exec that took a company from series-B to IPO.

Some common threads I've noticed:

1. Don't piss people off. Figure out what people's hot buttons are and avoid them. The exec team at Google circa 2007-2013 was notoriously combative. Who got the CEO job? Sundar, who was a very quiet, unassuming executive who presided over a string of low-profile successes and had a knack for translating Larry's visions into terms that the rest of the exec team could agree with.

2. Be consistent. Successfully delivering base hits, one after another, is often better than striking a home run and flubbing your next project.

3. ...but go after the high priority projects, and realize that priorities change. People who stick to their areas of expertise usually end up getting pigeonholed as ICs or first-level managers. People who rise through the hierarchy usually need to reinvent themselves every 1-2 years.

4. Take people with you. Folks that rise through the hierarchy usually have a core group of high performers around them that they're loyal to and who are loyal to them. Oftentimes these people are folks who don't want to bother with #3 but are very good at what they do, and then their manager provides them cover from the rest of the org so they can keep doing that.

5. Be open to opportunities outside your current employer. Of the folks I listed before, only 2 of them have risen exclusively within Google (and one of those was a high-performer at Sun before then). Everybody else needed to switch jobs. I was talking to the CTO of one of the companies I was applying to recently, and he said that he interviewed at 20 companies and this was the only one that wanted him. Your job search gets a lot less liquid the higher you get - if you're looking for a CxO job, you need to go to the company that is looking for a CxO with your particular skillset, and that may require moving to a different geographic area or considering companies that you wouldn't otherwise want to work for.

Also make sure you really want to do this. All the people I know that have rocketed up to executive levels basically live for their work. A lot of them never bothered to have a family, or if they did have a family, they downshifted their career for a while and only started accelerating again once their kids were in school. Several founder/CEOs I know have broken families - either they're divorced, or they hate their spouse and are just roommates who stay together for the kids. Most of them have friends, but they don't have the type of tight, regular dependable friendships that my friends who are in dead-end jobs have. It's probably that reason why this isn't really a path I'm going for - I had a choice between being a decent father or a decent founder, and chose the former.