.png)
Howie Konopko has managed hundreds of people across Citi, Oracle and Publicis, and he reduces the stay or go decision to four things: fair compensation, interesting work, trust in your team, and a real opportunity to grow. If you are a founder, that list is also your retention scorecard, and it is short enough to actually check.
Who is on this episode
Howie Konopko is Executive Vice President at Publicis and a former Oracle colleague of Imran's. His career has spanned Citi, Oracle and Publicis, with hundreds of people managed along the way, which gives him a view of both sides of the promotion conversation.
What they covered
The framework comes first, and the useful part is that all four elements have to be present. A role can pay well and still fail the test, which is why compensation led retention efforts so often disappoint the person making them.
From there Howie gets concrete about going above and beyond without burning out, and about the traits that actually separate high performers from everyone else. His most contrarian position is that a bad manager can be one of the best educations in a career, on the grounds that you learn what not to do in a way no good manager can teach you.
He and Imran also cover the realities of current work culture: the expectations social media creates for people entering the workforce, and the unresolved tension between remote work and in person collaboration. Then the hiring side, from the person doing the hiring: what Howie actually looks for, how to differentiate yourself in an interview, and his argument for dressing and behaving like the role before you are given it.
Key insights
- Run the four part test on every role you own: fair pay, interesting work, trust in the team, room to grow. Missing any one of them is a resignation forming, and money will not cover for the other three.
- Going above and beyond is a strategy with a failure mode. Howie is explicit about doing it without burning out, which means picking what you overdeliver on.
- A bad manager is worth something. The experience teaches a set of lessons about leadership that a good manager cannot demonstrate.
- Social media has distorted what people entering the workforce expect from a job, which is a problem you have to manage rather than one you can argue with.
- Embody the role before the promotion. Howie's view from the hiring side is that visible readiness is what gets rewarded, not stated ambition.
Watch the full conversation on YouTube, or listen to the audio version on Apple Podcasts.
