War-game a promotion decision before title, scope, and pay leave the private room and become org truth.
Promotion decisions fail when the bar is oral, when managers invent title inflation to clear a raise, when peer calibration is skipped, and when finance discovers the total cash and equity hit only after approval theater. A tidy nomination form is not evidence that the package survives scrutiny.
Freeze the promotion package
Lock the level criteria, the evidence window, the scope change that comes with the title, the compensation impact, and the exception policy you actually intend to use. Attach performance samples, peer notes, market comps with as-of dates, and the list of other promotions in the same cycle. If people, finance, and hiring managers tell different stories about what the level means, stop and reconcile before the seating pass.
Write the decision you will make if the war game finds nothing new, and the reverse criteria: the failed close, peer revolt, or budget overrun that would reopen the call within a stated window.
Seats that matter
- People. Level integrity, consistency across teams, and the rumor surface from uneven exceptions.
- Manager. Scope readiness, retention risk, and the first ninety days after a denied or approved move.
- Peer calibrator. Which evidence is weakest next to peers at the same level.
- Finance. Cash and equity cost, forecast integrity, and what breaks if revenue softens after approvals.
- Skeptic. Which "ready now" claim is least sourced or oldest.
Give every seat the same pack. Secret retention lists for one chair create fake consensus and angry managers later.
Private failure loop
Feed Pingpong the nomination memo, level rubric, and compensation math. First pass steelmans the proposal. Later passes attack from people, manager, peer, and finance seats. Final pass turns surviving objections into a narrower scope, a phased title change, or a hold. Delete invented peer companies, fabricated percentiles, and dual-counted equity.
If quiet one-off exceptions are the real risk, force the review to invent the exception policy before announce. Write the approval owner, the monthly cap, and the audit trail into the package, then ask people and finance seats to attack those rules. A promotion that only works with silent add-backs is not a promotion. It is a shadow compensation plan with worse reporting.
Separate scope change from pay change in the model. If managers blur them to clear a number, ask the finance seat to price both paths and the dilution story each implies. Pair with war-game a comp review, war-game a performance plan, war-game a hiring plan, pretend you are the CFO, and the war-game decisions hub. See how to run a Pingpong.