What it takes to get a promotion

Paul M. Ingevaldson, who retired as CIO at Ace Hardware Corp. in 2004 after 40 years in the IT business, said he often was asked by employees why they were not being promoted. In this regard, Ingevaldson said he is referring to real promotions that involve a change in responsibilities such as programmer to analyst, analyst to manager, manager to director and director to vice president.

"Whenever I got this question, I tried to explain how the promotion decision was made. My explanation was always this: 'You never promote somebody who has done a good job. You promote someone who has changed his job,'" he wrote in CIO.com.

Ingevaldson said the person who has done a good or even a great job should be given praise and more money, but shouldn't be promoted. "The person who should be promoted is the one who has shown not only the ability to do the current job, but also the behavior and the interest that would indicate the ability to do the next job," he said.

The former CIO said that if you are a programmer and your only interest is to get clear specifications and go off and do the coding, you may not get promoted. "But if you ask intelligent questions about why things are specified the way they are and perhaps suggest some alternative approaches that might improve the outcome, you are on the way to being an analyst," he said.

For more advice:
- see this CIO.com article