Getting that big promotion is less about how good you are and more about whether your boss remembers you at the exact moment the choice is made.
March 24, 2026
Original Paper
<span><span>The RRR Selection Mechanism: A Structural Account of Recognition Failure at Senior Professional Levels<span> </span></span></span>
SSRN · 6334438
The Takeaway
This paper identifies a 'Recognition-Evaluation Gap' where high-performers are ignored simply because they aren't 'retrievable' during the rapid, biased mental shortcuts managers use. It suggests that at senior levels, being 'rememberable' is a strictly separate gate from being 'good.'
From the abstract
<p>This paper identifies a structural friction in senior professional selection that precedes formal evaluation: the <b>Recognition–Evaluation Gap</b>. Standard professional development frameworks operate under the Evaluation Assumption — the premise that career trajectory is a direct function of merit and that selection failure signals deficiency at the performance layer. This paper argues that the Evaluation Assumption mislocates the governing constraint. Before evaluation is possible, a field