The Battlefield Promotion
A Leadership Pathology
A battlefield promotion (or field promotion) is an advancement in military rank that occurs while deployed in combat. A standard field promotion is advancement from current rank to the next higher rank; a "jump-step" promotion is advancement from current rank to a rank above the next highest.1
Every experienced leader has a memory that makes their stomach clench: the moment you hear about a promotion that makes no sense. It’s not just a questionable decision; it’s a violation of the invisible physics of fairness, a tear in the fabric of organizational trust. It’s the battlefield promotion, a promotion born from a vacuum, not from validated capability. This is the organizational equivalent of battlefield surgery—a messy, desperate measure taken to stop the bleeding, with little regard for long-term health.
Consider this all-too-familiar scenario:
> Jane: Hey John, did you hear about Jack's promotion?
> John: Huh? What do you mean? It's not promo season.
> Jane: Well, after Jenny resigned last week, they promoted Jack into her role as the team's software development manager.
> John: Wait a sec. Jack's a level 2 engineer with 3, maybe 4, years of work experience! I thought the manager track was level 4. Not to mention that he wasn't a particularly strong engineer. How's that make any sense?
> Jane: I don't know... there wasn't an announcement. Guess you have to be in the right place and time to get promoted here... 🤷🏼
> John: 🤬 My shields are down.
We instinctively recoil at this exchange because it violates the foundational principles of a healthy organization: fairness, transparency, and accountability. A single battlefield promotion can be dismissed as a fluke, an unfortunate anomaly. But when it becomes a pattern, it is a flashing red indicator of deep systemic dysfunction. As Donella Meadows wisely observed, “Purposes are deduced from behavior, not from rhetoric or stated goals.”2 The repeated act of promoting based on convenience reveals an organization’s true purpose: stability at any cost, even the cost of its integrity.
The Diagnosis: Why Leaders Commit This Malpractice
The battlefield promotion is a symptom of weak leadership, not a solution to an organizational problem. It is an act of managerial cowardice, driven by a handful of predictable pressures:
The Vacuum Fallacy: The departure of a key individual creates a void that triggers a primal fear in managers. Instead of patiently conducting a proper search for the right candidate, they rush to fill the role to restore a superficial sense of order. The primary goal is not to find the best leader, but to simply have a leader in place.
The Path of Least Resistance: A proper hiring process is hard work. It requires defining the role, sourcing candidates, conducting rigorous interviews, and making a difficult decision. Promoting a warm body who is “close enough” is seductively easy. It’s an expedient shortcut that mortgages the team’s future for the manager’s present comfort, creating a moral hazard that ripples through the organization.
A Failure of Succession Planning: Healthy organizations are constantly identifying and grooming future leaders. Battlefield promotions are a clear signal that this work has not been done. The organization has no bench strength, forcing it into reactive, desperate decisions when vacancies inevitably occur.
Nepotism and Loyalty Cults: In the most toxic environments, battlefield promotions are not just about convenience; they are a mechanism for rewarding loyalty over competence. The “Jack” in our scenario is often a member of an inner circle, a “founder bro” or a loyalist whose primary qualification is their relationship with the decision-maker. This transforms the promotion from a mere mistake into a deliberate act of cultural corruption.
The Organizational Cancer: The Ripple Effects of a Single Act
The immediate damage of a battlefield promotion is the installation of an unqualified individual into a role they are unprepared for. But the second- and third-order effects are far more corrosive. This single act is a potent cultural virus that spreads through the entire organization, infecting its core systems.
Erosion of Trust: The message sent to every other employee is stark and demoralizing: your hard work, your demonstrated performance, and your adherence to the defined career path are irrelevant. What truly matters is proximity to power or being in the right place at the right time. This instantly evaporates the psychological safety required for people to do their best work. Why strive for excellence when the rewards are distributed arbitrarily?
Destruction of Meritocracy: It renders the official career ladder a lie. The carefully defined levels, competencies, and performance expectations become a meaningless piece of corporate theater. High performers become cynical and disengaged, while the politically savvy learn that the real game is not about impact, but about alignment and visibility.
Flight of Talent: Your best people, the ones who value fairness and have the most career options, are the first to leave. They will not tolerate an environment where their growth is blocked by the unqualified. This creates a downward spiral, as the talent pool becomes increasingly concentrated with those who are either unable to leave or willing to play the political game.
Normalization of Incompetence: The promoted individual, now operating beyond their capabilities (a textbook example of the Peter Principle), will likely struggle. To protect themselves, they will often surround themselves with loyalists or lower-performers, further degrading the team’s overall competence. Their very presence lowers the bar for what leadership looks like.
Achieving Coherence: The Antidote to Expediency
Preventing battlefield promotions requires systemic discipline and a commitment to principle over convenience. The antidote is not a single action, but a reinforcing system of organizational health.
Transparent and Calibrated Promotion Processes: Promotions should occur on a predictable cadence, judged by a calibrated committee (not a single manager), against a clearly articulated and universally understood set of criteria. Any “off-cycle” promotion must be subject to the same level of scrutiny and require an even higher burden of proof.
Robust Succession Planning: Leadership at every level must be tasked with the explicit responsibility of identifying and developing the next generation of leaders. “Who are your potential successors?” should be a standard question in every leadership review.
Interim Leadership as a Default: When a leader departs, the default action should be to appoint a qualified interim lead, often a trusted senior IC or a leader from an adjacent team. This stabilizes the team without making a rash, long-term commitment. It buys the organization the time it needs to run a proper, thoughtful search for a permanent replacement.
Leadership Courage: Ultimately, the antidote is courage. It is the courage to withstand the discomfort of a leadership vacuum. It is the courage to have a difficult conversation with a loyal but unqualified employee. It is the courage to prioritize the long-term health of the team over the short-term comfort of having a box filled on an org chart.
A battlefield promotion is never just one bad decision. It is a referendum on an organization’s character. It reveals whether a company is truly committed to the principles it espouses, or if those principles are the first casualty when faced with the slightest inconvenience. Healthy organizations play the long game. They understand that the integrity of their promotion process is the bedrock of their culture, and they refuse to sacrifice it on the altar of expediency.
“Battlefield Promotion.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 May 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_promotion
Meadows, Donella. Thinking in Systems: A Primer. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008.