You and I are fed a carefully constructed myth about career progression: that experience is measured by the tick of a clock, and promotions are simply a matter of enduring years. They tell us it’s a linear climb, a predictable ladder. But that is an illusion. True experience is not about the tenure but a mixture of results, perseverance, and blessings. Leaders are judged by results and for such are willing to revisit the so called-career growth plans they sell you.
At a raw twenty-two, I found myself tethered to a desk as an Accounts Assistant at Leather Industries Uganda. Every morning, my heart felt like a lead weight, sinking with the rising sun. A bleak canvas of a sad, stagnant future painted itself across my mind. “Is this truly all there is?” The veterans, those who’d walked this path before me, spun tales of promotion, each ending with the same, hollow refrain: “Work hard, and you’ll be promoted.” They thought my melancholy stemmed from a yearning for a title. They couldn’t grasp the truth: my spirit was being crushed, day by day, by the sheer, agonizing weight of doing something I profoundly did not love.
I asked to be moved to Marketing and Sales—though I’d later discover its true moniker was Business Development. The shackles of accounting were loosened, but not entirely broken. This new world, however, pulsed with a different kind of danger. I was entrusted with signing off sensitive documents, authorizing massive fund transfers – tasks laden with high-stakes risk. The clashes with my boss became legendary he had no choice but to fire me (More details in my book when it comes out)
Then, two years later, a defiant act against the company’s rigid tradition happened. At twenty-four, I shattered the glass ceiling, becoming a manager. Most department heads were in their forties, their fifties – seasoned, entrenched. “What on earth happened, Sudesh?”
In the pages of “Good to Great,” the authors illuminate a phenomenon they call a “luck event.” It’s an occurrence that meets three crucial criteria: First, you don’t orchestrate it. Second, it holds the potential for monumental consequences, good or devastating. And third, it arrives cloaked in complete surprise. Bosses, with their well-intentioned but often misguided wisdom, love to spin the illusion that all promotions are a straightforward path: “Do this course, achieve these metrics, put in these years, and you’re elevated.” My decade-plus navigating the corporate labyrinth, both as an employee and a consultant, screams a different truth. . Leaders always deal with the unplanned, and that is what makes them great leaders.
Here’s another raw, uncomfortable truth: success doesn’t always breed success. Sometimes, it’s the brutal, unforgiving sting of failure that births true triumph. Look at the titans of industry, the truly visionary companies. They didn’t glide effortlessly to the top; they stumbled, they fell, they faced early defeats that forged their very character, transforming them into legends. This same, gritty reality applies to your career. Some promotions aren’t just off-script; they’re the direct, paradoxical consequence of your deepest valleys.
Those who see life, business, and the pursuit of accomplishment as about finding that one big hit—the one big lucky break—fail to grasp how true greatness happens. No great company, no great career, no great body of work comes about by a single event, a single flip of the coin, a single hand played.
My promotion wasn’t a reward for seamless performance; it erupted from the very heart of failure. I stood my ground, fiercely opposing my boss on a critical deal. In a fit of white-hot fury, he fired me. What followed were seven agonizing months in limbo, a period of gnawing uncertainty. But then, the phone call. After exhaustive investigations, I was not only acquitted but, in a twist that would stun everyone, invited back. Not as an Accounts Assistant, but as the Manager of Marketing and Sales. The universe, it seemed, had a darkly humorous way of delivering justice.
The company’s leadership, in their wisdom, began to understand. To build a truly great enterprise, they had to dismantle and reimagine their promotion strategies, their rigid plans, their very methods. But beneath all that strategic foresight, they grasped and embodied a simple, profound truth: Luck doesn’t just happen; it fiercely favors the persistent, especially those who walk with unshakeable integrity.
My promotion came from failure. I opposed my boss on a certain deal, and he fired me on the spot. Upon investigations, I was acquitted seven months later, invited to rejoin the Company as a Manager of Marketing and Sales.
The leaders of the Company understood the need to change promotion strategies, plans, and methods on the long path to building a great company. But they also understood and lived out this simple truth: Luck favors the persistent with integrity.
Be prepared to kill, revise, or evolve an idea . . . but never give up on the company or pursuit of promotion. Ever since then I have gone on to build business and I can tell you most of big success has come after we thought we would not endure the coming days.
Failure before promotion is that side of growth that sucks
