Two people are given identical painkillers. One ...
Preparing For Your Next Promotion
You've delivered flawlessly for years. Built teams. Solved problems no one else could solve. Your technical authority is unquestioned. The Managing Director or VP role is the logical next step. You can see it clearly. But something's blocking your advancement, and the feedback isn't helping you fix it.
You hear "be more strategic," "develop your executive presence," "show broader influence." You understand these matter at the executive level. But nobody's teaching you what they actually mean in practical terms.
Maybe the promotion is coming, and you're determined to be prepared. You've seen what separates leaders who thrive from those who struggle. You know your current leadership experience won't be enough. You're piecing together feedback, observing what works for others, trying to decode the unwritten rules before you step into that role.
Or maybe you're being passed over entirely. You've heard "you're not quite ready yet" three times now while someone else got promoted. Meanwhile, you're told, “You need to grow in specific areas,” but with no clear path to what "ready" actually looks like.
Here Is What's Actually Happening
There's a gap between senior management and executive leadership that nobody's explicitly teaching you how to cross.
At senior management, you're evaluated on technical delivery, problem-solving, and team leadership. At the executive level, you're evaluated on influence, stakeholder navigation, power dynamics, and how you position your expertise in business terms.
When you raise concerns about a flawed approach, executives hear resistance instead of risk management. When you present recommendations, they question your judgment because you led with technical rationale instead of business impact. When you're in meetings with non-technical leaders, your expertise gets dismissed as "too in the weeds" because you can't translate it into their decision-making language.
The feedback you receive - "be more strategic," "develop executive presence" - isn't actionable because the people giving it can't articulate what they mean in terms you can implement.
Nobody teaches technical leaders this translation. They just expect you to figure it out.
A Mini Case Study
When Arjun (Engineering MD) was preparing for his VP promotion, he knew his technical capabilities weren't in question.
The question was whether he could operate at the executive level - navigate board dynamics, influence across the organisation, position himself as a strategic advisor rather than a technical specialist.
He'd been told he was "almost there" for 18 months. The feedback never got more specific than that.
He was still communicating like a senior manager - leading with technical details, arguing from his functional perspective, getting frustrated with lack of buy-in from others rather than building strategic influence.
Within six months of working with us, Arjun secured his VP promotion. Not because his technical capabilities improved - they were already strong. Because he learned to position technical recommendations as a business advantage and argue from the executive team's position instead of his own.
What Happens If You Don't Prepare?
Executive Positioning
Colleagues with less technical depth advance because they've mastered executive positioning.
Promotion Timeline
The promotion timeline extends indefinitely, with feedback that doesn't help you improve.
On The Job Learning
You finally secure the role, but struggle publicly in the first quarter because you're learning on the job.
Passing Over
The organisation passes you over entirely for someone they perceive as "more ready".
Salary Growth
Your salary growth plateaus £75K-£150K below where your capabilities should have taken you.
How the Executive Transition Accelerator™ Helps
Most technical leaders preparing for executive advancement try to decode the vague feedback alone - "be more strategic," "develop executive presence" - hoping the gap will become clear. It rarely does. Because the people giving you feedback can't articulate what they mean by “be more passionate" in an actionable way.
The Executive Transition Accelerator™ gives you what you can't get from internal feedback: Specific frameworks for translating technical expertise into executive-level communication, peer validation from leaders who've successfully made this transition, and approaches that work for analytical minds in high-stakes environments.
You work with Directors, MDs, VPs, and C-suite leaders who've navigated the same gap you're facing. You learn to present Board-level recommendations in language that resonates with non-technical executives, frame technical concerns as risk management rather than functional resistance, and build the executive presence that makes "almost there" turn into "approved for promotion."
So you can enter your next role fully prepared rather than learning through expensive mistakes while everyone evaluates whether the promotion was the right call.
Previous clients have secured VP and Managing Director promotions worth £100K-£200K salary increases, becoming strategic advisors to the CEO, advanced to roles they'd been "preparing for" for years, and entered executive positions with the frameworks that prevent first-90-days struggles.
The question isn't whether you'll eventually figure out what "be more strategic" means. The question is whether spending another 12-18 months decoding vague feedback is the most effective path forward.
Faq
Visit our ETA programme page for complete details on programme structure, what's included, and how it works.
Yes. We provide detailed documentation to support getting this programme 100% funded by your company. We position this as bespoke, high-level strategic advisory rather than personal coaching, which makes organisational funding straightforward.
For our flagship Executive Transition Accelerator™, we accept 18 senior leaders and recently appointed executives per year across three cohorts. Our ETA Platinum™ programme has ongoing enrollment but requires a formal application process and is exclusive to leaders who currently operate at SVP, Director and C-suite levels.
