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workers who received performance ratings of “very good” were only 12 percent more likely to be promoted than colleagues rated “good.”7 Meanwhile, many studies have documented the influence of numerous factors, ranging from educational credentials to race and gender, on careers, with performance often having a statistically significant but substantively small effect on advancement. For instance, a study of more than 200 employees from a variety of companies found that managers considered job tenure, educational credentials, overtime work, and absence as well as job performance in determining internal mobility for employees.8 A study of federal civil service employees, an excellent setting because of the extensive measures captured in the database, noted that performance ratings were weakly tied to actual productivity and that people with more educational credentials were more likely to be promoted even if they weren’t the best employees.9

Not only may outstanding job performance not guarantee you a promotion, it can even hurt. Consider the case of Phil. A talented young executive working in a large financial institution, Phil had the uncanny ability to bring complex information technology implementation projects in on or ahead of schedule and under budget. His boss, a very senior executive in the bank, profited mightily from Phil’s performance. He was willing to reward Phil financially. But when Phil asked his boss about broadening his experience by moving to other jobs in the bank, the answer was immediate: “I’m not going to let you go because you are too good in the job you are doing for me.” And while Phil’s boss was quite willing to expand Phil’s scope of responsibility for IT implementation in his division, he was completely unwilling to do anything that would bring Phil to the attention of others and thereby risk losing him.

A slightly different variant of this same story comes from “Glenda.” A Scottish manufacturing executive with an extraordinary ability to bond with front-line employees, Glenda had worked for her employer for more than a decade, moving around the world to accomplish almost miraculous turnarounds in troubled plants. Her job evaluations were great and she received performance bonuses and regular raises for her work. But there were no promotions in Glenda’s recent past with her employer nor, she told me, in her future. Glenda figured out the problem: the senior executives in her company saw her as extremely effective in her current position. But they did not want to lose her abilities in that role, and they did not see her as senior executive material—as a great candidate for much more senior jobs in the company. Thus, great performance may leave you trapped because a boss does not want to lose your abilities and also because your competence in your current role does not ensure that others will see you as a candidate for much more senior jobs.

Doing great doesn’t guarantee you a promotion or a raise, and it may not even be that important for keeping your job. Most studies of job tenure examine CEOs, because CEOs are highly visible and that’s the position for which there is the best data. Performance does affect job tenure and its obverse, getting fired, but again the effects are small. According to one study, CEOs who presided over three straight years of poor performance and led their firms into bankruptcy only faced a 50 percent chance of losing their jobs.10 Whether or not poor performance led to dismissal depended on the CEO’s power. Executives who had power because of their own ownership position, because other ownership interests were dispersed, or because there were more inside board members—executives who reported to the chief executive—were more likely to retain power even in the face of bad business results. A study of the top five executive positions in almost 450 companies found the sensitivity of turnover to company performance was even smaller for those jobs than it was for CEOs. Turnover in senior executive ranks was affected by CEO turnover, particularly when an outsider came in.