The Inside Track

Certain people move faster here than their output explains. What they have is proximity, not performance.

You've watched certain specific people move through this organization noticeably faster than their actual output would reasonably explain on its own. Not incompetent people, to be clear, just not obviously or measurably better than colleagues who've remained comparatively stuck in place for years. What those particular people consistently had that others around them didn't was proximity: to the right person, to the right high-visibility project, to the right room where advancement decisions actually get discussed and made.

Everyone who's genuinely been paying attention has noticed this recurring pattern by now. Most people have quietly stopped actually bringing it up out loud, because naming it directly changes essentially nothing about the underlying dynamic, and it tends to cost the person naming it something real in the process.

Merit and Access Aren't the Same Filter

The organization likely genuinely believes, in good faith, that it promotes primarily on merit, and the specific people actually making individual promotion decisions probably believe that themselves too, without any conscious sense of contradiction. What actually determines real outcomes, in practice, is frequently a second, entirely unstated filter running quietly alongside the stated merit criteria: proximity to key decision-makers, meaningful visibility in the specific rooms where advancement genuinely gets discussed, informal personal relationships that never appear anywhere in any formal review criteria or documentation. Merit and proximity correlate closely often enough, in enough individual cases, that the underlying gap between them goes genuinely unnoticed for a considerable stretch of time. When the two clearly diverge in a specific case, proximity usually wins out in practice, and nobody formally flags it internally as any kind of policy failure, because no specific policy technically failed in that instance.

What Watching This Teaches Everyone Else

People generally don't need this particular pattern explicitly explained to them by anyone. They observe carefully who actually advances within the organization over time and reverse-engineer the real, operative criteria for themselves, in essentially the same way they'd naturally learn any other genuinely unstated organizational rule through direct observation. Once the real underlying criteria are correctly understood by the broader workforce to be proximity rather than measurable output, the entirely rational individual response becomes investing meaningfully in cultivating proximity to the right people, rather than continuing to invest primarily in the actual work itself. That's not cynicism on anyone's part. It's simply an accurate, rational read of the true incentive structure as it actually operates, and it quietly and steadily redirects genuine effort away from precisely where the organization would presumably rather see it going.

What the Pattern Actually Shows

Specific individual people have advanced noticeably faster than their actual output would reasonably predict, and colleagues can readily name them by name. Not vague, generalized suspicion floating around: an actual, specific, genuinely sharable list that people privately agree on.

What those particular people consistently share is proximity to key decision-makers, not any clearly distinguishing performance record relative to their peers. Compare their actual measurable output directly against peers who advanced considerably more slowly, and the gap in underlying results simply doesn't explain the observed gap in career outcomes.

People have already started actively managing their personal visibility to specific individuals as a deliberate career strategy, entirely separate from managing their actual measurable output. Ask people privately how they genuinely believe advancement actually works here in practice, and you'll consistently get an answer centered on relationships before you get one centered on results.

Saying Merit Louder

Formally reaffirming publicly that the organization genuinely values merit above all doesn't actually touch the real underlying mechanism at work, because the people already successfully navigating the inside track already know perfectly well what the officially stated policy says. What they're actually responding to, in practice, is the observed real-world pattern of who advances, and a formal statement simply doesn't overwrite an observed and repeatedly confirmed pattern. Only a genuine, visible change in what actually gets rewarded in practice can accomplish that.

Closing the Track Requires Making the Criteria Real

First, make the actual criteria genuinely used for advancement explicit and consistently applied, properly documented, rather than simply assumed to be understood. If proximity has been quietly functioning as an unstated criterion all along, clearly naming the real, intended criteria is the necessary first step toward actually being able to enforce them going forward.

Second, audit recent actual promotion and advancement decisions honestly against those newly documented criteria. This process will genuinely surface specific cases where proximity clearly outweighed the stated standard. Expect and prepare for some real discomfort during that particular review process.

Third, make the very next advancement decision visibly and demonstrably consistent with the documented criteria, even in cases where doing so is genuinely inconvenient for someone who currently has proximity. One single decision that clearly breaks the established pattern is worth considerably more, in terms of rebuilding trust, than any number of restated formal policies, because it's the only kind of concrete evidence that people who've been watching this dynamic actually trust.