The Mario Meeting

Review season. You start your career thinking the review is the most important milestone of the year, but as an individual, you only see part of the picture. Everyone cares about the compensation (base salary, bonus, and stock). That’s the data they care about, but where did this pile of compensation come from? Who decided how big it is? And how is it allocated? It is a long, complicated, and large process that began over a year ago. And as a Senior Leader, it’s your job to figure it out. The Most Important Milestone I’m going to work backward because we’re all — correctly — focused on compensation. Before I do, one thing to hold onto, because it’s the thing that trips everyone up: in any given Summer, two budgets are moving at once. One is being spent — the money for this year’s raises, which was locked in a year ago. The other is being built — next year’s budget, which is just now getting decided in rooms most people never see. Keep those two apart in your head, and the rest of this…