The Founders Guide to Managing Performance, Promotions and Expectations
Why promotion conversations keep going wrong, even with a skills matrix
This is a departure from what I typically post about, but in recent discussions with other management groups, the topic of promotions and skills development has revived and become a hot point of discussion.
As someone who has been both an amazing manager (if I do say so myself) and a horrendous one (if some others had a say), I’ve come to realise there’s a fundamental misunderstanding on both sides of the aisle (employee and employer) in how skills matrices and competency charts are designed to guide career progression. It’s one I’ve fallen for myself too.
Over my decade of building and managing teams, I’ve built everything from extremely complicated scoring matrices to extremely simple personal development frameworks. Deep inside, I knew both were slightly missing the mark in terms of what I was trying to communicate on behalf of the company.
Like most of us, I grew up with standardised competency matrices and skills charts. Both my best and worst managers used them to manage my expectations. The same tools, presented from different perspectives, led to completely different experiences. Some were devastating. Some were genuinely enlightening.
How is it possible that a tool designed to standardise evaluation can create such wildly inconsistent outcomes?
My view is this: skills matrices try to turn promotions into a checklist. Promotions are not a checklist. Promotions are a scope change, and a risk decision.
How we got here:
Both businesses and employees want the same thing: certainty about the future.
In the search for certainty, in the form of a concrete, repeatable, scalable way to manage development and expectations, managers standardised performance into measurable goals and metrics.
Perform these tasks, accomplish these goals, and you will qualify to jump to the next level.
In return, employees receive a checklist (but not really a checklist 😉) of tasks and skills they can work towards to reach that next level.
It sounds fair. It sounds clean. It sounds like something you can run at scale. However, as all managers know, it’s not that simple.
Receiving a promotion isn’t a checkbox exercise. There’s nuance that can’t be captured cleanly. Some skills matter more than others. Some behaviours only matter when the pressure is on. Some people can do a task, but can’t yet own the consequences of that task.
So the chart grows. More categories are added. Scoring becomes more complicated. More edge cases are baked into the competency chart. Eventually, managers go down the rabbit hole trying to account for every permutation of skillsets that might matter.
And once you’re detailing out 20 skills and activities (and admitting that some are more important than others), communicating the system becomes a complicated explanation. It turns into endless permutations of “if I say this, then I should also say that…”, until the tool becomes something you maintain instead of something that actually helps.
So what now?
A new framework to role definition: A structure for both Employees and Employers to understand
First Principles:
If we’re going to build something better, we have to go back to first principles. As a manager, the first principles are pretty simple:
To the employee: your job is to shepherd them and prepare them for the next level so they do not fail.
To the company: your job is to shield the business from risk, and from the damage an unprepared employee can cause.
However, this is a two-way street.
Employees need to understand that even if they feel ready for a promotion, the company might not be ready to bet the business (or the team, or the client relationship) on that decision.
Employers need to understand the opposite is also true. They are beholden to the career progression of their employees. Otherwise, in today’s market of low corporate loyalty, employees will look out for their own career interests ahead of the company’s.
While the tension sucks, it’s a healthy way for two parties with overlapping, but not identical, interests stay aligned.
Stop defining roles by skills. Define them by scope change.
Roles should not be defined by the skills and competencies a person develops over time. They should be defined by the scope of work that changes as someone steps up.
If you want a structure that actually holds, the framework for “the next level” needs to answer two questions:
For the employee: is the scope change big enough that you are likely to struggle if you take it on?
For the employer: if you struggle, what risk profile is the business willing to accept for this new scope?
That’s it.
For the employee side, we factor in things like knowledge requirements, technical experience, judgement, and soft skills.
For the employer side, we factor in things like liability, standards, performance expectations, reputational cost, customer impact, and what happens if it goes wrong.
On the employee side the conversation is ‘can you handle it’. On the employer side, it’s ‘what happens if you can’t’.
The role, and the level within the role thus becomes a composite of those two components. Scope plus risk.
An Example
In my earlier years, I was a supremely confident project manager with all the blind confidence of someone in their 20s who had not yet experienced a major failure. I was also deadly with the written word.
With one well-thought and articulated paragraph, I could dismantle arguments, people, performance, and build an irrefutable case to support my situation. I was not afraid to weaponise that to achieve my own goals. To me, that was my strength, but to the company, that was a risk.
To me, I was a HI-PER, performing at the peak of individual performance, wielding persuasive arguments as my sword. To the company, I was a volatile risk who did not yet understand how to lead by example. That example being: not tearing people down to get your way.
(If you’ll notice, I’ve now redirected that energy of persuasion in other ways.)
A skills matrix would have rewarded me for “communication”, “stakeholder management”, “influence”, “ownership”. I could tick those boxes all day long.
But the scope change I was really asking for required something else: judgement under ambiguity, restraint, and leadership that didn’t rely on winning at any cost. The company wasn’t wrong to hesitate. They weren’t blocking me because I hadn’t “met the competencies”. They were hesitant because the risk profile of giving me more scope was higher than I understood at the time.
That’s the gap skills matrices consistently fail to communicate. They measure capability in isolation. Promotions are capability plus the consequence if the individual gets it wrong.
Mapping out scope change (the part that replaces the matrix)
Instead of saying “Here are the skills you need to demonstrate”, you say “Here is how the scope changes at the next level, and here is the risk the business is taking on by giving you that scope”.
Now you can have a real conversation.
What is the new scope?
What changes about decision-making?
What changes about who gets impacted by your mistakes?
What changes about what “good” looks like?
What does the business need to believe to feel safe making the bet?
The replacement artefact: the Scope Ladder
If you take anything from this, it’s this: you don’t need a bigger, more detailed matrix. You need a clearer artefact.
The thing that replaces a skills matrix is not another spreadsheet. It’s a one-page “Scope Ladder” for each role.
It answers, plainly:
What changes about the work at the next level
What the business is taking on by giving you that scope
What needs to be true for both sides to feel good about the bet
And it does one more important thing that competency charts rarely do. It makes the manager’s job visible too. Because “get promoted” should not be a scavenger hunt where the employee tries to guess what the company is nervous about.
What it looks like in practice
You create a Scope Ladder per role. Make it short, readable and able to fit on one page.
Each level has two parts:
Scope (what you now own)
Risk notes (what the company is protecting itself from, and how we reduce that risk)
That’s the core component of the document.
Then you add a third part that keeps it human:
Support (what the manager and company will do to help you succeed in that new scope)
If you want to be very honest, add a fourth:
If it goes wrong (what “going wrong” looks like, and what the plan is)
Most companies avoid this because it feels negative. I think it’s the opposite. It reduces fear, makes expectations clearer, and stops the weird mind-reading games that happen around promotions.
Why this solution works better than a matrix
A skills matrix forces you into arguing about whether someone is a “4” or a “5” on “stakeholder management”.
A Scope Ladder forces you into something more real:
Are you already operating in the next scope, or are you still doing the current one really well?
If we widen the scope, what changes about the consequences of your decisions?
What proof would make the business comfortable making that move?
It also removes a common trap. People over-index on collecting skills, and under-index on demonstrating ownership. The ladder makes ownership the centre of gravity.
A simple template you can steal
You can put this in Notion, a Google Doc, whatever. The format matters less than the clarity.
ROLE: [ROLE NAME]
PURPOSE (1 SENTENCE): [PLAIN ENGLISH PURPOSE OF THE ROLE]
------------------------------------------------------------
LEVEL: [TITLE]
------------------------------------------------------------
A) SCOPE (WHAT YOU OWN)
- …
- …
- …
B) DECISION RIGHTS
- YOU DECIDE: …
- YOU RECOMMEND: …
- YOU ESCALATE: …
C) WHAT “GOOD” LOOKS LIKE
- …
- …
D) RISK NOTES (WHAT THE BUSINESS IS PROTECTING ITSELF FROM)
- …
- …
E) SUPPORT (WHAT YOU GET SO YOU DON’T FAIL)
- …
- …
------------------------------------------------------------
PROMOTION READINESS (PLAIN ENGLISH)
------------------------------------------------------------
SIGNS YOU’RE ALREADY OPERATING AT THE NEXT LEVEL
- …
- …
SIGNS YOU’RE NOT THERE YET
- …
- …
WHAT WE NEED TO SEE IN THE NEXT [4–8] WEEKS
- …
- …
WHAT I’M COMMITTING TO AS YOUR MANAGER
- …Quick example: Product Manager to Senior Product Manager
This is a common one because, on paper, the skills often look the same. You’re still doing discovery, still writing docs, still shipping. The change is not “more PM”. The change is the scope you carry, and the consequences attached to it.
=============================================
QUICK EXAMPLE: Product Manager → Senior PM
=============================================
------------------------------------------------------------
LEVEL: Product Manager
------------------------------------------------------------
SCOPE (what you own)
- Own a defined problem space or well-bounded product area
- Translate goals into clear problems, options, and a plan the team can execute
- Run discovery with support, then turn learning into decisions
- Ship reliably, learn fast, keep stakeholders informed
- Maintain a healthy delivery rhythm with engineering + design
DECISION RIGHTS
- You decide: approach within an agreed direction
- You recommend: priorities with input from your lead
- You escalate: when trade-offs affect other teams or company-level goals
WHAT “GOOD” LOOKS LIKE
- The team knows what they’re doing and why
- Decisions are documented, progress is visible, surprises are limited
- Trade-offs are explained clearly, even when people disagree
RISK NOTES (if it goes wrong)
- Wasted cycles within one team
- A feature that misses the mark or needs major rework
- Stakeholder confidence drops because communication is unclear
------------------------------------------------------------
LEVEL: Senior Product Manager
------------------------------------------------------------
SCOPE (what you own)
- Own an outcome across a broader area, often spanning multiple teams or systems
- Define the shape of the work, not just the next set of tickets
- Drive alignment when there is no obvious single answer
- Make hard calls with incomplete information, and stand behind them
- Improve how the product function operates, not just what it ships
- Coach other PMs informally through examples, not authority
DECISION RIGHTS
- You decide: sequencing across a wider scope
- You set: the narrative leaders + teams can repeat accurately
- You trade off: customer value vs tech constraints vs business reality
- You escalate: less, because you can resolve more
WHAT “GOOD” LOOKS LIKE
- Clarity increases around you even when the situation is messy
- Multiple stakeholders stay aligned without constant hand-holding
- You can turn a fuzzy goal into a credible plan with decision points
- The work holds up over time, not just at launch
RISK NOTES (if it goes wrong)
- Misalignment across teams that becomes expensive to unwind
- Strategic drift that goes unnoticed until it’s costly to fix
- Loss of trust because decisions feel inconsistent
- A lot of activity that doesn’t move the outcome
------------------------------------------------------------
PROMOTION READINESS (plain English)
------------------------------------------------------------
SIGNS YOU’RE ALREADY OPERATING AT Senior PM
- You frame problems in a way that makes decisions easier for everyone else
- You manage conflicting stakeholders without escalating every time
- You surface risks early and adjust course before it becomes public
- Your plans survive contact with reality
SIGNS YOU’RE NOT THERE YET
- You need constant validation to make decisions
- You stay inside your team boundary when the outcome depends on others
- You default to delivery activity when the real issue is alignment / trade-offs
- Your roadmap shifts often because the narrative isn’t anchored
How you use it
You don’t pull this out at promotion time. You pull it out early.
In a 1:1, you literally sit side-by-side and answer:
“Here is your current scope, are we aligned that this is what you own today?”
“Here is the next scope, which parts are you already doing, which parts are you not doing yet?”
“Which risks are the company most nervous about in that next scope?”
“What would reduce that risk in a way that’s fair and observable?”
That turns the promotion conversation into something sane for both parties. It also protects the employee from the most demoralising outcome, which is thinking you’re doing everything right, then being told “not yet” with no real explanation.
Communicate Early
Using this framework, an employee can feel ready for the next level because they’ve “ticked all the boxes”, but the company might still say no. Not because the employee is bad, or because the company is playing politics, but because the scope change introduces a risk profile the business isn’t willing to accept yet.
The goal, then, is to communicate that early. Not at promotion time. Not after the employee has already emotionally promoted themselves. Early enough that the employee can actually build towards reducing that risk, rather than just collecting skills like badges.
The career conversation becomes a joint plan, not a negotiation
If you’re using scope and risk as the model, then the career conversation changes shape.
It stops being “convince me I deserve it”. It becomes “let’s make a plan that’s fair to you and safe for the business”.
Because here’s the part that’s often left unsaid: employees don’t just want the title. They want clarity that their career is going somewhere. They want to know what to aim at. They want to know the rules of the game they’re playing.
Likewise companies, whether they admit it or not, want to reduce uncertainty. They want to know that if they widen someone’s scope, they’re not about to create a performance issue that harms the team, the customer, and the manager who signed off on it.
So the agreement becomes simple:
The employee gets clarity, support, and a real opportunity to demonstrate next-scope work.
The company gets evidence, risk reduction, and a path that doesn’t rely on gut feel and politics.
And importantly, the manager stops hiding behind vague language.
If the real concern is “this role involves more cross-team trade-offs and you haven’t done that yet”, you can just say that.
If the real concern is “this role carries reputational risk and we need to see your judgement under pressure”, you can just say that.
That honesty, even when it stings a bit, tends to be received better than being fed a checklist that doesn’t match the decision that gets made.
How to not create another checklist
There is a real danger that the moment you propose using the new artefact above, companies will try to turn it into the same old thing.
This is not meant to become “Your Next Scope Ladder has 37 criteria”. If that’s what it becomes, it will suffer the same problem as before.
The replacement is not “more categories”. The replacement is a more honest form of proof.
The proof is: can you carry the next scope without the manager secretly doing the hard parts for you?
That’s what readiness looks like in practice.
Of course some of that will be output. But realistically speaking, most of it is judgement, prioritisation, and how you navigate ambiguity without melting down or causing collateral damage.
So instead of asking “have you demonstrated competency X”, the questions become:
Are you already operating in parts of the next scope?
Which parts are missing, and why?
What would we need to see to feel comfortable widening that scope?
What support and guardrails would make that fair?
This stops people from collecting skills like badges and starts focusing them on ownership. Ownership is where promotions actually live.
Scope trials: the fairest way to answer “am I ready?”
If you want a practical mechanism that doesn’t feel political, it’s this.
You run a scope trial.
Rather than propose a vague goal such as “act like a senior” or suggest a performative task of “take on more”. You create a defined, time-boxed scope bump with a safety net.
You agree, in writing, on four things:
The scope bump: what is different from today, specifically?
The outcome: what are we trying to move, not what are we trying to ship?
The guardrails: what’s in bounds, what gets escalated, what support exists
The time window: long enough to be real, short enough to be reversible
For PM to Senior PM, a scope trial might look like: owning a cross-team outcome, or leading a messy trade-off space where there is no happy path, or taking responsibility for a decision that has real downstream consequences.
The point is not to observe a perfect score. The point is whether the person can carry the weight of the scope without the whole system compensating for them.
And for the employee, this is where it becomes fair.
If you want me to operate at the next level, then give me access, decision rights, and the room to actually do it. Don’t ask me to prove myself while keeping me fenced in like it’s still my old scope.
That is where a lot of resentment is born. People are told to perform senior work while being blocked from doing senior work.
Promotions are lagging indicators
A promotion is not the moment someone becomes senior.
It’s the moment the company acknowledges they already are, because they’ve been carrying that scope in a way that’s safe enough to formalise.
If the Scope Ladder is honest, and if scope trials are real, then promotions become less dramatic and less emotional or some thing issued by the decree of some court case.
You’ve already done the work. You’ve already been calibrated. The title just catches up.
This also cuts the other way.
If someone has been carrying the next scope for months, moving outcomes, reducing risk, doing the hard parts that nobody wants to own, and the company still won’t acknowledge it… they will leave.
And they won’t leave because they’re disloyal. They’ll leave because they’re not stupid.
Where skills matrices still belong
To be clear, I’m not saying skills matrices are useless.
They’re fine for baseline expectations.
onboarding
training
safety and compliance
“can you do the job without breaking things”
identifying broad gaps across a team
That’s where they shine.
They break when they’re used as the logic for promotion, because promotion is not a list of skills. It’s a change in scope, with consequences attached.
Matrices measure capability in isolation.
Promotions measure capability under responsibility.
Those are not the same thing.
What I wish I’d been told earlier
If I could go back and talk to my younger self, I wouldn’t tell him to create more tick boxes or more complex scoring algorithms.
I’d tell him to ask a different question.
“What scope am I asking for, and what is the company actually nervous about if you give it to me?”
Because once you know that, the path becomes clearer. Not easier, but clearer.
And if you’re a manager reading this, the most important thing that you need to know is that you can’t outsource this to a chart.
You have to do the work of making the scope explicit, making the risks explicit, and then supporting someone through the stretch in a way that doesn’t set them up to fail.
That’s what good management is. Not filling in cells in a spreadsheet.