# "You're almost there"

## This week's cartoon

![Cartoon: three gold-plaqued circular podiums labeled Year 1 (2024), Year 2 (2025), and Year 3 (2026) recede toward a raised platform marked PROMOTED. The same exhausted employee with glasses stands on each podium, looking progressively more drained on the nearest one. A cheerful manager with a clipboard and lanyard waves beside Year 3. Manager says, "You're almost there!"](../../img/cartoons/almost-there-again.png)

> _Caption: Three cycles. Same speech. Same step._

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### Glossary: *promotion evidence gap*

**Promotion evidence gap:** the distance between doing next-level work and having a case that a promotion committee can actually say yes to. Performance reviews can be strong, peers can agree you are ready, and still the packet fails if the proof is not packaged for the room that decides.

Committees trade in artifacts, not impressions. They want a short, undeniable record: ownership that is yours on paper, impact other leaders can name without your manager translating, evidence that closes a specific bar rather than a vibe of readiness. Vague feedback like "almost there" usually means that gap is still open, not that you are one more quarter of the same work away.

The fix is not to work harder in the same place. Ask what specifically would have made this a yes, and who needs to see it. Then spend the next cycle producing those two or three pieces of evidence and putting them in front of the deciders. "Almost" three years running is a packaging problem, not a talent problem.