Dear Leaders,

Most of us believe in meritocracy.

We have to. We’ve spent decades outperforming peers, taking bigger roles, carrying larger P&Ls, and surviving environments where the margin for error gets thinner every year.

Merit is the prerequisite – true. It determines who gets in the room. It just doesn’t determine who rises highest once you’re already there.

Politics does.

At junior levels, performance is relatively visible.

We ship products, hit numbers, build teams, produce outcomes that are measurable and comparable.

There is politics, of course, but competence dominates.

The game changes once we reach the executive tier.

Everyone is competent. Everyone has a track record. And everyone has references that sound identical.

The differentiator stops being execution and starts being positioning:

– Who frames the narrative around strategy?

– Who shapes board perception?

– Who becomes the trusted interpreter of ambiguity?

As roles become less operational and more interpretive, merit becomes harder to measure. Influence fills the gap.

Many of us fall into the same trap: We assume that if we continue delivering results, recognition will follow naturally.

That assumption works until it doesn’t.

What happens instead is subtle:

We become the reliable executor. We fix complex problems. We deliver consistency. And over time, the organization begins to rely on us exactly where we are.

Our competence becomes an anchor.

Meanwhile, someone else — sometimes less technically strong — becomes associated with vision, direction, or transformation.

The altitude gap opens. They didn’t outperform us. They outpositioned us.

Boards rarely evaluate leaders using a single objective scorecard. They assess:

– Confidence under pressure.

– Perceived alignment with the future strategy.

– Relational trust.

– Communication clarity.

– Reputation inside and outside the company.

None of these are purely merit-based in the traditional sense.

Two executives with similar results can be viewed very differently depending on how their work is framed.

One is seen as “strategic.” The other is seen as “solid.”

One becomes CEO-ready. The other becomes indispensable but static.

Same outcomes. Different altitude.

The illusion isn’t that merit stops mattering. It’s believing that merit remains purely technical.

At senior levels, the definition of merit expands:

– Political judgment becomes a capability.

– Strategic storytelling becomes a capability.

– Timing becomes a capability.

– Alliance-building becomes a capability.

Executives who dismiss these as “games” often find themselves plateauing while peers with equal or less competence move ahead.

Those peers aren’t necessarily better operators. But they are better interpreters of power.

This isn’t dysfunction, either. Executive roles involve deep uncertainty. Boards and investors don’t just want performance. They want confidence in how leaders navigate ambiguity.

Influence signals survivability when data is incomplete.

Politics at the top isn’t an accident. It’s a byproduct of roles that require judgment more than execution. The problem isn’t that it exists. It’s pretending that it doesn’t.

Not all politics are equal.

Toxic politics manipulates information, undermines colleagues, and prioritizes personal gain over organizational outcomes.

Strategic navigation is different. It means:

– Understanding how decisions are perceived.

– Communicating context rather than just results.

– Anticipating stakeholder reactions.

– Building trust before crisis moments arrive.

Executives who master this aren’t gaming the system. They’re simply operating within it as it actually functions.

Once you accept that altitude is influenced by politics, you start making different choices.

You invest in how strategy is communicated, not just how it’s executed.

You spend more time shaping perception upstream rather than defending results downstream.

You stop assuming silence equals neutrality and recognize that absence from the narrative is itself a signal.

And, most importantly, you stop confusing humility with invisibility.

If you’ve been in enough succession discussions, you already know this.

The technically strongest candidate isn’t always chosen. The person who best embodies where the organization believes it’s going, often is.

That isn’t unfair. It’s how leadership selection works when outcomes depend on future interpretation rather than past performance.

It’s naive to believe that excellence alone guarantees advancement.

Excellence guarantees relevance. Advancement requires alignment with power structures: boards, investors, founders, or market narratives.

Understanding this doesn’t make us cynical. Ignoring it does.

Cynicism isn’t seeing the game clearly. It’s watching our careers stall while refusing to acknowledge, let alone master, the dynamics at play.

Onward,

Hamza