Climbing the Corporate Ladder

  • 1 min read

Wanting to climb the corporate ladder? This article has a graphic that demonstrates the pyramid of corporate ladder, and describes how to move up the pyramid in a normal corporate hierarchy.

The Pyramid

This pyramid represents the routine transition from new employee, into management, into director, vice president and then as CEO.

Moving Up The Pyramid or Corporate Ladder

If you seek to be at the top of the corporate ladder, you must visualize the steps beneath and the imagery above should give you a more defined picture. Of course, there are special circumstances, that usually involve timing and a bit of luck, such as employees switching to new departments or your division prospering. Managers, directors, vice presidents or even the CEO might leave the position, allowing an understudy to fill in. Also, your division might be highly successful (in terms of revenue generated) one year and the CEO might want to invest more money and labor into it, meaning you will have direct reports, giving you a boost into management.

In general if you would like to be CEO or even merely a manager, the diagram above gives an accurate read of how many years of experience you must have in order to be in the selection pool. If you think that you could be a manager after only a year, you are wrong. You will not have the full understanding of your field in only one year. Further, you will not have earned the respect as a new employee to handle that position. There are leadership development programs that allow you to successfully push up the pyramid at a faster pace. Otherwise,  you must start from the bottom and work up, gaining valuable experience at every step of the way.

Not everyone wants to step into management. Management means more responsibilities, more stress, and more time away from your friends and families. This blog is more geared to those who wish to stop at nothing and create upward mobility in order to accomplish at the highest level. If you want to do this, you MUST put in the time, the effort and most importantly the realization that others are seeking the same goals as you are. Just keep focused, build your personal brand, and you will climb the corporate ladder over a period of time.

Picture of Dan Schawbel

Dan Schawbel

Dan Schawbel is the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, a Gen Y research and consulting firm. He is the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Promote Yourself: The New Rules For Career Success (St. Martin’s Press) and the #1 international bestselling book, Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future (Kaplan Publishing), which combined have been translated into 15 languages.

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