What the signal actually is

The Signal You Keep Missing

Why senior bankers misread their own career data

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There is a moment in most senior careers that gets misread.

It is not dramatic.

It is not a crisis.

It is the moment when the person sitting in the role realises, in some part of themselves, that the work has changed.

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The role title is the same.

The compensation is the same.

The reporting line is the same.

But the work is not the same.

Decisions that used to sit with the senior leader are now being made elsewhere. Conversations they used to be in have moved without them. Mandate that was theirs has been quietly redistributed.

Nothing has been announced. Nothing has been formalised.

But it has shifted.

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The misread

This is the moment most senior bankers misread.

They tell themselves it is a phase. A quarter. A reshuffle that will sort itself out.

They wait.

Because waiting is easier than the alternative.

The alternative is acknowledging that the conditions of the role have changed in ways that will not reverse — and that the right response is to act on that, rather than to ride it out.

Most senior bankers wait too long.

Not because they cannot see the signal.

Because they can.

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What the signal actually is

The signal is rarely the obvious thing.

It is not the bad performance review. It is not the missed bonus. It is not the new executive layer introduced above.

Those things, when they happen, are usually consequences. Not signals.

The signal is earlier.

It is the meeting that used to include you and now does not.

The client conversation that used to come to you first and now comes to you third.

The strategic decision you used to lead and now learn about after it has been made.

These are small. Individually, they are explainable. Collectively, they are the signal.

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Why it gets missed

Senior bankers miss this signal for three reasons.

First, the signal is small enough that any individual instance can be explained away.

Second, the cost of acknowledging the signal is high — it means accepting that something is wrong, and that something has to change.

Third, the rest of the world is still treating the senior banker as if nothing has happened. The title is still respected. The compensation is still credible. The market still reads the trajectory as intact.

From the outside, everything looks normal.

From the inside, the conditions of the work have already changed.

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The question worth asking

There is one question worth sitting with this Monday morning.

If you mapped the meetings you were in twelve months ago against the meetings you are in today, would the map be the same?

Not similar. The same.

If the answer is yes, the conditions of the role are intact.

If the answer is no, the signal has been present for some time. The only question is what you intend to do about it.

Most senior bankers I have spoken to over the last twenty-five years could answer that question accurately in under sixty seconds.

They could also tell you exactly when they first noticed the shift.

Usually it was months — sometimes years — before they did anything about it.

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The signal is almost always there.

The question is whether you are reading it.

And whether, when you read it, you do something with it.

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Steve Slater

Founder & CEO, Ateca

Dubai · Qatar · Hong Kong · Singapore · Riyadh · Limassol · London

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