Politically inconvenient high performers are held in place by promises of a future role that keeps receding, which carries them through review after review and keeps them from making trouble.
An example
At a tax advisory firm, a senior director who had questioned the managing director's pricing strategy was told after her third straight top rating that the transfer pricing practice would be hers within nine months, once its head retired. The next spring the retirement slipped. That fall the practice was being reshaped, and the timing depended on a merger. Each conversation added a detail, a larger team or a seat on the operating committee, and each one was oral. She turned down two recruiter calls. At a training week, over drinks, she learned that a director in the audit group had been promised a similar role on a similar schedule for two years. Neither had anything in writing. The pricing strategy went through that winter without a word from her.
Why it works
A concrete picture of the promised role, a bigger title, more scope, an equity refresh, makes staying look better than it is, and the wait starts to feel like a runway. Leaving looks costly: walking away at the finish line, losing unvested equity tied to the promotion, explaining impatience to recruiters, and the fear of having left just before it came through. Sunk cost makes the hold stronger over time with no new effort. The hold needs a person who trusts the promise, a plausible role, high switching costs, and no way to compare notes with others promised the same thing.
The thinking behind it
George A. Akerlof Akerlof's The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism (1970) shows how a gap in information, where one side knows the quality and the other cannot tell, distorts a market. Here only the person making the promise knows whether the role will ever exist. The defense closes the gap: a promise in writing, made before a body that can hold the promiser to it, and notes compared with others promised the same.
Barry M. Staw Staw's Knee-Deep in the Big Muddy: A Study of Escalating Commitment to a Chosen Course of Action (1976) found that people committed the most to a course when they were personally responsible for its setbacks, which he read as self-justification. Each recruiter call the waiting person turns down is their own choice, so every slipped date makes them more inclined to wait again and prove the waiting right.
Hal R. Arkes Arkes and Blumer's The Psychology of Sunk Cost (1985) describes a greater tendency to continue an endeavor once money, effort, or time has gone into it, partly from a wish not to appear wasteful. Years spent waiting for a promised role are such an investment, which is why the hold strengthens over time without the promiser doing anything new.
Warning signs
For several review cycles, the same senior role has been six to nine months away. Each conversation adds a new detail while the timeline shifts with a retirement, a reorganization, or a deal. None of it is written down. Others in the organization have been promised similar roles, and nobody compares notes. The person waiting has stopped pushing on the issues that made them inconvenient.
How to defend yourself
Ask yourself one question: has this promise ever been put in writing, in a forum where breaking it would cost the person who made it? If not, there is no role yet.
- Ask for the promise in writing, with a date and a scope, or ask that it be made in front of a body such as a promotion committee.
- Compare notes with others who were promised similar roles, and with people who left after waiting. Their timelines are your best evidence.
- Test the market and bring back an outside offer with a firm deadline, which forces a decision.
- Keep raising the issues you care about. If the promise depends on your silence, you will learn that quickly.
How a leader shuts it down
Make promised roles traceable: succession plans written down, reviewed by a committee, and checked against actual appointments. Ask managers how many of the promotions they have promised have happened. When a top performer has been six months from a role for two years, others are watching, and they are drawing conclusions about every promise the firm makes.