Win promotion decisions before they are made

How to Actually Win

A six-week programme for Senior Manager and Director level women navigating promotion, power, and positioning inside large organisations.

Six live sessions. A private 1:1. A personal positioning report. Everything that determines how the institution makes the decision about you.

CHF 1,750 (founding rate)

Key Details

Cohort Dates: Wednesdays

Time: 12:00 to 13:30 CET

Format: Remote, Google Meet

Live Sessions: 6 x 90 minutes

1:1 with Lisa: 1 x 45 minutes included

A personalised positioning report

An AI positioning tool built on the NPA Framework

Private WhatApp Group

Free Negotiation Guide: What's on the table

Places: Up to 10

LISA MAYER

Former Head of Technology HR, UBS. Former Head of Technology Reward, Credit Suisse.

I ran calibration cycles across populations of more than 5,000 people. I managed the full Technology reward cycle: 24,000 bonus decisions working directly with the UBS CTO and presenting to the UBS CEO for sign off. I led Technology HR through the Credit Suisse and UBS merger integration covering 13,000 people.

I was also promoted twice inside banking. I know what the decision-makers weigh because I was one of them. And I know what it takes to build the case from the inside because I built it.

The research in this programme confirms what I observed in those rooms. The framework is built from the observation.

Why this programme exists

The problem is structural. The framework is built from the inside.

For every 100 men promoted to manager, only 93 women are. At Senior Manager and Director level, women hold 39% of roles. In the C-suite, 29%. The gap does not close at the top. It widens.

This is not a talent problem. Women consistently outperform men in academic achievement and match men in stated ambition. When women receive the same career support as men, the ambition gap disappears entirely. The problem is structural. It is built into how organisations calibrate, advocate, and promote.

Most programmes focus on teaching women to be better leaders. This programme responds differently. It teaches women how the institution makes the decision about them and how to build the structure that changes that outcome.

Who this is for:

Senior Manager or Director level. Inside a large organisation. Promotion not materialising on the expected timeline.

• Senior Manager or Director level inside a large structured organisation: financial services, technology, professional services, consulting, or life sciences

• Delivering at or above level, but promotion is not materialising on the expected timeline

• 18 to 36 months of runway before the next natural decision window

• Wants a concrete plan, not motivation, not leadership development, not coaching

• Willing to work in a small group applying the framework to a real situation in real time

Not for: junior professionals, people in active crisis, or people seeking emotional support. If your situation is already moving, live counter-offer, redundancy, active negotiation, a Decision Call is the more direct starting point.

THE SIX SESSIONS

A complete framework applied to your real situation over six weeks.

Each session runs 90 minutes with a structured agenda: framework input, live exercise, group analysis, and a week assignment that applies what was covered directly to your situation. Sessions are cumulative. Each builds on the last.

Session 1

Read the Room

Who has the power and where do you actually sit? The real power map, not the org chart. How promotion decisions are actually made before the formal cycle opens. The calibration room: what happens there, who is present, what determines the outcome. Exercise: complete your internal and external Power Map and identify your mandate clarity gap.

Session 2

Know Where You Stand

How strong is the case for you in their terms, not yours? The likeability penalty and the power trade-off. The safe pair of hands ceiling. The emotional labour tax and why invisible work is positioning-negative. Managing the manager: what they need to say about you before calibration, and how to give them the language to say it. Exercise: Outside-In Readiness Audit across six dimensions.

Session 3

What's Actually at Stake

What deteriorates if nothing changes over 18 months? The five positioning risks: sponsorship erosion, perception drift, structural obsolescence, market window narrowing, and identity risk. The honest closed-path assessment: not every internal situation is a positioning problem. Some paths are structurally closed. Knowing how to read that, and what a planned exit looks like, is as important as knowing how to build the case. Exercise: 18-month deterioration model across all five risks.

Session 4

Who's Got Your Back

Who needs to hold a specific view of you inside and outside? Support versus sponsorship. Why women are over-mentored and under-sponsored. Networking as access infrastructure, not socialising. How external credibility strengthens internal leverage. Exercise: The Leverage Map, categorising your internal sponsors honestly and identifying your external gaps.

Session 5

Make Your Move

The sequence of moves that shifts perception inside and out. Five positioning move types. How to operate in senior rooms without underplaying. The shift from informing to influencing. Reputation management during moves: who needs to hear what before you act, not after. Exercise: build your 90-day positioning sequence with named targets, timing, success indicators, and reputation considerations for each move.

Session 6

Play the Long Game

What to move. What to hold. How to protect what you have built. Pre-negotiation positioning: where most leverage sits before the formal conversation opens. Containment: reversible versus irreversible moves. Decision calendar alignment. What signals indicate the 90-day plan needs to be revised, escalated, or replaced with an exit strategy.

YOUR PRIVATE SESSION

One 45-minute session with Lisa, scheduled in weeks 2 or 3.

This is not a check-in. It is a private advisory session on your specific situation: your power map, your readiness gaps, the highest-leverage move available to you right now. Everything in the group sessions is applied directly to your situation in this session.

It is scheduled in the period after the initial framework sessions and before the execution sessions, so you have enough context to use the time well.

THE POSITIONING REPORT

A personalised strategy document generated from your six session worksheets.

Over the six weeks you complete six structured exercises: the Power Map, the Readiness Audit, the Deterioration Model, the Leverage Map, the 90-Day Positioning Sequence, and the Containment Review. These exercises are done in a private Notion workspace.

After Session 6, Lisa generates a Personalised Positioning Strategy Report from those completed worksheets. It documents where you stand, what the plan is, and what the highest-leverage next moves are, in a format you can use and return to. Delivered within 5 working days of Session 6.

WHAT THIS ADDRESSES

The structural patterns that stall women at this level.

Pattern 01

Being valued but not sponsored

Support means someone thinks well of you. Sponsorship means someone will spend political capital on your behalf in a room you are not in, without being asked. Most professionals discover the difference at the worst possible moment.

Pattern 02

The safe pair of hands ceiling

Being excellent and reliable at your current level creates a category that is hard to shift. Operational indispensability signals that you belong where you are, not where you are heading.

Pattern 03

The emotional labour tax

Invisible work: mentoring, conflict resolution, morale management, administrative gaps. It is not rewarded in calibration. It consumes the bandwidth needed for visible, strategic, promotable work.

Pattern 04

The likeability penalty

When a senior woman shifts from reliable to directive, claiming scope or setting limits, behaviour is reinterpreted. The programme names how to shift without triggering reputational backlash.

Pattern 05

Decisions already made before the cycle opens

Calibration outcomes are shaped informally before the formal process begins. The window to influence them is before it closes. This is the core thing most women at this level do not know.

Pattern 06

Misreading a closed path as a difficult one

Not every internal situation is a positioning problem. The programme includes an honest assessment of whether the path is open, and what a planned exit looks like if it is not.

RESEARCH FOUNDATION

Built on a combination of direct institutional experience and peer-reviewed research.

McKinsey / LeanIn Women in the Workplace (annual, 2015 to 2025): the largest longitudinal study on women's representation in corporate settings. Broken rung statistics, sponsorship data, promotion rates.

Catalyst, The Double-Bind Dilemma for Women in Leadership (2007, updated 2024): the foundational research on the likeability and competence trade-off.

Ibarra, Carter, and Silva, Why Men Still Get More Promotions Than Women, HBR (2010): the over-mentored, under-sponsored finding and the 15% promotion gap in high-potential cohorts.

Babcock, Recalde, Vesterlund, and Weingart (2017): the non-promotable tasks research. McKinsey Women in the Workplace (2021): less than 25% of companies formally recognise this work in evaluations.

Lisa Mayer: direct experience running executive calibration cycles, compensation committees, and retention strategy across a 24,000-person population at UBS and Credit Suisse.

QUESTIONS

What you might want to know.

What level is this programme for?

Senior Manager and Director level inside large, structured organisations. The framework is built around how large institutions make promotion decisions. It requires enough seniority to have a power map worth mapping, a calibration process worth understanding, and a promotion decision worth building a case for.

I am already quite senior. Is the group format right?

The group is small and deliberately so. The sessions are not lectures. They are structured working sessions where each participant applies the framework to their real situation. The value of the group comes from peer stress-testing in comparable situations, not from scale.

I have 18 to 36 months before my next decision window. Is that the right timing?

Yes. That is the design window. Positioning takes time and the moves that matter most need to be in place before the formal cycle opens, not scrambled together in the weeks before. The 90-day plan built in Sessions 5 and 6 is designed to produce visible movement inside that window.

What if my situation is already in motion?

If you have a live counter-offer, a redundancy starting, or an active negotiation, a Decision Call is the more direct starting point. The cohort programme is for building position over a medium-term horizon, not for navigating an acute event. The two are not mutually exclusive.

What is included in the founding rate?

Everything. The CHF 1,750 founding rate covers all six sessions, the 1:1, the WhatsApp community, the briefing notes, the Negotiation Guide, and the Personalised Positioning Strategy Report. From Cohort 2 the price will increase. There is no difference in programme content.

How do I apply?

Register your interest here. I will be in touch within 24 hours. If the programme is not the right fit, that will be said clearly with a recommendation for what is. If you prefer to speak first, book a 15-minute quick fit check.

How to Actually Win

A six-week programme for Senior Manager and Director level women navigating promotion, power, and positioning inside large organisations.

Six live sessions. A private 1:1. A personal positioning report. Everything that determines how the institution makes the decision about you.

CHF 1,750 (founding rate)

Not sure if this is right for you?

Lets have a 15 minute call to check if this is right for you.

Hope is not a strategy. Positioning is.