The Six Elements That Drive Your Career Forward
These six elements weren't invented. They were observed.
Over years of coaching senior leaders, a decade at Amazon, personal experience navigating career transitions, being coached myself — the same six patterns kept emerging.
Not as theory. As the consistent difference between leaders who kept rising and those who plateaued.
Every framework I've encountered converges on the same underlying principles when you strip them back far enough. The six elements are what's left when you do that stripping. The irreducible core of what separates leaders who build sustainable, compounding careers from those who work harder and harder at the wrong things.
One important thing before we go through them: they work as a system, not a checklist. Strength in one doesn't compensate for a gap in another. And the element that's holding you back is almost always the one you're least focused on.
The Six Elements
Write Your Wow Paragraph
Are you solving what's assigned — or seeing the strategic opportunities no one else has identified?
No Customer Pain, No Gain
Do you know exactly who depends on your work — and what they actually need from you?
Move
Do you have a plan — and can you prove it's working?
Relationships Early, Relationships Often
Do you have people alongside you who are invested in your success?
Never Stop Campaigning
Do the right people understand what you're building — and why it matters?
Make Yourself Redundant
Can you build something that runs without you?
Write Your Wow Paragraph
Are you solving what's assigned — or seeing the strategic opportunities no one else has identified?
Can you draw a direct line from your three biggest current priorities to a customer outcome or an enterprise outcome?
The most consistently underestimated element. Most senior leaders are excellent at solving problems that are given to them. A surprisingly small number are excellent at identifying which problems are worth solving in the first place.
The leaders who rise to executive level aren't just better at executing — they see differently. They understand where value is being created and destroyed before anyone tells them. They identify the opportunities that aren't yet on the agenda. They work on the things that matter most, not the things that are most visible.
This isn't about being strategic in the abstract sense. It's about having a precise, current understanding of what your organisation needs — and then choosing your work accordingly. Every week.
No Customer Pain, No Gain
Do you know exactly who depends on your work — and what they actually need from you?
Can you name the five people most affected by your work, and describe what success looks like for each of them?
You're a business inside a business. Every business has customers. Most senior leaders have a vague sense of their stakeholders. Fewer have a precise map of who depends on their work, what those people need, and how well they're currently being served.
This element is about specificity. Not "the business" or "my stakeholders" but named individuals, specific needs, current gaps. When you know this precisely, your priorities become obvious. When you don't, you optimise for the wrong things.
The leaders who build the strongest reputations at senior levels are the ones who make their customers' success feel inevitable. That starts with knowing exactly who they are.
Move
Do you have a plan — and can you prove it's working?
If your most senior stakeholder asked you right now what you're delivering and how you'd know it's working, how confident are you in your answer?
Having a plan is table stakes. Having evidence that it's working is what separates leaders who build credibility from those who coast on goodwill.
Most senior leaders have an action plan. Fewer have a systematic way of capturing and communicating proof of progress. The result is that impact becomes invisible — which is career-limiting at the level where you're competing against people who are equally capable and equally busy.
This element is about building the habit of proof alongside the habit of execution. What did you commit to? What happened? What changed as a result? This isn't bureaucracy — it's the evidence base your career compounds on.
Relationships Early, Relationships Often
Do you have people alongside you who are invested in your success?
Name three people outside your direct team who are actively invested in your success. What are you doing to maintain those relationships?
Career transitions at senior levels are rarely solo efforts. The leaders who make the biggest moves have usually built, often unconsciously, a network of people who advocate for them, sponsor them, and open doors before those doors officially exist.
This isn't about networking in the transactional sense. It's about building genuine relationships with people who understand what you're building and why — and who have the influence to help you when the moment comes.
The most common pattern we see: leaders who plateaued had the capability but not the coalition. This element is about building that coalition deliberately, not hoping it assembles itself.
Never Stop Campaigning
Do the right people understand what you're building — and why it matters?
Do the three people most influential over your next career move understand what you're working on and what impact it's having?
Impact that isn't visible isn't impact — not at senior levels. The leaders who advance are not always the ones doing the most important work. They're the ones whose important work is understood by the people who matter.
This element is about communication as a strategic discipline, not a personality trait. It's about knowing who needs to understand what, choosing the right moments to create visibility, and building a personal narrative that's consistent, credible, and current.
The leaders who struggle here are usually excellent at their craft and poor at making that craft legible to the people above them. The gap between what you're delivering and what your sponsors understand you're delivering is where careers stall.
Make Yourself Redundant
Can you build something that runs without you?
If you stepped away from your role for a month, would your team deliver at the same level? If not, what would break — and why?
The floor is your operating model — the systems, processes, and people that mean your function delivers consistently, whether or not you're personally in the room.
Leaders who can't build a floor become indispensable in the wrong way. They're essential to the current operation, which makes them impossible to promote. The organisation needs them exactly where they are.
Leaders who build a strong floor create a different kind of indispensability — one based on what they can see and build at the next level, not on being the best person in their current role. This is the element that creates the space for everything else.
See where you stand across all six.
The Scan is a free 10-minute diagnostic. It gives you a personalised picture of your current position across every element — and where to focus first.
Take the free diagnostic →