Promote the right people with the 6-120 Rule!

Getting asked about promotions

As a manager, part of the gig is helping people progress in their careers, so you probably get asked about promotions a lot. Typically I get asked in one of three ways:

1. The "it's been long enough" : I've been here for two years, isn't it time for me to get promoted?
2. The "I'll just ask and see what happens": Hey manager, can I get a promotion?
3. The "how do a qualify for a promotion": What do I need to do to get a promotion?

Needless to say, #3 is my favorite because this person is coming in wanting to learn and it likely more open to a conversation about their development. Many times the first two are just wanting a promotion because they asked for it.  

You need a playbook to handle this conversation

The problem most managers have is that they have no playbook to handle this situation. So all that happens is they have an awkward conversation, with no real outcomes, and it usually ends with some version of "let's bring this back up at your next annual review".

When you can't give anything concrete, you don't just punt the conversation, you're basically telling your employee that you don't want to promote them and they'll start wondering whether they have a future at your company. More often than not, they end up looking around and quit before you get to the annual review.  

Introducing the 6-120 rule

David Cancel, CEO of Drift, recently shared this simple anecdote on his Seeking Wisdom podcast and I've used it many times since. It goes like this: if one of your employees asks for a promotion, share the 6-120 rule. The basic idea is that for at least 6 months they need to do 100% of your day job and 20% of the next job, then they can come back and we can talk about a promotion. 

This does a few things.

• First, it puts the ownership for the promotion back on the employee.
• Second, if gives them concrete next steps so they know what they need to do.
• Third, it gives the employee a trial run at the role they're asking for so both you and them can see whether they're a good fit.  

Putting the ball back in their court

The benefit here is that you can now have a productive conversation about their career development. More often than not, they haven't truly mastered their day job, so first it gives you a chance to talk about their areas for improvement. This is especially helpful when you've developed a skills/attributes rubric of what mastery of the day job actually looks like.  

Also, when we start to talk about the 20% portion, you can start to give assignments that will demonstrate whether they can step up into that role.  Examples I've used a lot are things like mentoring a new hire, building a playbook for a topic that the team needs to learn, running training sessions for the team on key topics, or figuring out a problem the team has been struggling with and bringing the solution back to the team. 

Different applications

I've applied this in dozens of different ways, depending on the employees skills, and I've also adjusted the numbers when necessary. For smaller promotions, I've done as little as a 3-120, and had some larger promotions at 12-130, the exact numbers don't matter.

What really matters is that you set the expectation that as your manager, I don't need to worry about your day job performance, so now we can focus on scaling you up.  

Take a shot with this and let me know how it goes below.