I'm fascinated with the concept of moving up the corporate ladder. I went from a dotcom high growth company in 1999-2001 where the avg age was roughly 25 to a post dotcom company where the avg tenure was close to 25. I always wondered, why are some people CXOs by 45 while others are still "Lead X" or "Senior X" (aside from personal preference)?

I've observed a couple factors that seem to be important. Warning... some of the following my sound like the crap that frustrates you the most at your job.

Smarts really doesn't have anything to do with it. Sorry straight A students. Reality check time. Classes were basically useless for ascending the corporate ladder. You were duped. (For the record, my undergrad GPA was something like 3.7 so I was duped too).

High performers in the career ladder game are ruthless with their time. Sometimes it makes them seem like an ass but they're just focused on their end goal.

The high performers seem to be closer to the revenue. They're not always in sales, but they've been in roles that involve big picture deliverables. Or they were in sales.

They're picky about what they do. They don't say no, but they know how to distance themselves from petty, small, or insignificant busy work. They take care to manage their image as someone who works on a grander scale.

They plan their career path. It's not enough to simply work hard and hope it happens for them. They know how to create strategic projects and get themselves into a position to lead those initiatives.

Hard work is not enough. The high performers aren't just the hardest workers. Though they do tend to work very hard. Their hard work isn't always in the "doing" of the work at hand. Tbat type of hard work just gets you more work and maybe some corporate reward of $50 in perk buying gift cards. High performers see that and figure out what needs to be done to get to the nests level of management. Spoiler alert: it's. It the stuff in the job description.

Balance is not really an option. If you're not doing extra, someone else is. IF you're playing by the rules, someone else is figuring out the unwritten rules.

The rules to follow aren't the rules that are written down. If there's anything that's the most frustrating to those who try to advance but haven't cracked the code, this is it. The job description, the company policies, anything anyone tells you is a big deal... is only important to doing your job. It's not important to your career path. If you want your job to be doing your job, great. But if you want your job to be getting to the c-suite, figure out the rules of that game. Following the written job rules only gets you praise and silly perks.

It is a competition. If the ratio of employee-manager is 10:1, you have to beat out 9 others to be a manager. 50:1 for employee:director. 200:1 for employee to VP. 1000:1 for employee:CXO. You have to beat out 1000 others. I'm not saying all high performers are vicious, back stabbing sociopaths. But some are. Know how to deal with that. Be ruthless with your own time. Be supportive of others. Know which projects have visibility. Become someone who sends out the "we couldn't have done it without these people" email at the end of a big project.

If this all sounds like corporate, political bullshit to you, that's fine. It did to me too. But I watched people who were no smarter than me get promoted and I decided to figure out why. It turns out CXOs are hackers too. They hacked the career ladder. Good for them. I hacked my way to th CEOs chair too. I left my job and started a company.