Looking back: April 2026
I spent time earlier in my career in consulting, and one of the things I watched most closely was the partnership track. The lesson of who made partner and who didn’t has stayed with me ever since — because what separated the two groups wasn’t what the firm told anyone they were measuring.
The Formal vs. Actual Criteria
Officially, partnership decisions were about revenue generation, client outcomes, thought leadership, and team development. Measurable things. Discussable things.
Watching it happen in practice, the actual separator was something else: the breadth and depth of client relationships that the candidate had built across the firm’s senior client base. Revenue came and went. Client outcomes were often shared across teams in ways that made individual attribution fuzzy. Thought leadership was nice but rarely decisive.
What mattered, really, was whether the senior clients at the firm picked up the phone for this person — and whether they recommended them to their peers.
The candidates who made partner were the ones who had built real, bilateral relationships with senior clients over years. They didn’t just deliver projects well. They had invested in those clients as people — referred business to them, introduced them to people worth knowing, been available in ways that weren’t tied to current projects, and shown up for clients in moments when the firm didn’t specifically require it.
The candidates who didn’t make partner were often equally strong technically. They delivered excellent projects. Their clients were satisfied. But they hadn’t built the durable relationship infrastructure — and so when the partnership decision was being made, the senior clients’ voices were either absent or measured.
Why This Generalizes
I took two lessons from watching this:
First, the things that get formally measured are usually proxies for the things that actually matter. Revenue is a proxy for client value delivered. Project outcomes are a proxy for trust earned. Thought leadership is a proxy for professional authority. Partnership decisions eventually go to the people who have earned the underlying thing — not the ones who’ve optimized the proxy.
This shaped how I think about metrics generally. If you optimize the proxy without building the underlying thing, the proxy eventually breaks down. If you build the underlying thing, the proxies take care of themselves.
Second, career capital compounds through relationships — not through credentials. The consultants who made partner often had less impressive CVs than some who didn’t. What they had was a network of senior clients who would recommend them, hire them, and advocate for them. That network was the real asset. The credentials were the visible surface.
I’ve watched this play out in every industry since. The operators who build durable careers do it through relationships that compound. The operators who build credential-heavy careers often hit ceilings when the credentials alone aren’t enough.
The Pattern in Non-Consulting Contexts
Looking back, the consulting partnership track was an unusually legible laboratory for this pattern because the stakes were so visible — the decision was binary, the timing was known, and the outcomes were watched. But the same dynamic operates everywhere in professional services, enterprise sales, and executive progression generally.
- In enterprise sales, the reps who get promoted to director and VP are almost always the ones with the deepest client relationships — not necessarily the ones with the biggest quota attainment in any single year.
- In founder paths, the CEOs who build durable companies are almost always the ones who’ve built wide networks of peer relationships they can draw on — not necessarily the ones with the best product on day one.
- In board service, the directors who get invited to the most boards are the ones who’ve treated prior boards well — being responsive, adding value outside the meetings, supporting other directors in difficult moments.
The pattern is always the same: durable career capital is relational. The credentials, titles, and deal records are the visible output. The relationships are the underlying engine.
If you’re earlier in your career and you’re optimizing for credentials — thinking the next job, the next title, the next deal is what matters — look at the people 15 years ahead of you who have the kind of career you’d want. Almost all of them built their position on relationships that span decades.
That’s the asset. Build it deliberately. It pays for a long time.