The Meritocracy Fable and Why Careers Rarely Rise on Merit Alone
- Mar 23
- 8 min read
Barbara Suigo is a charisma expert, HR consultant, and author. Specializing in the development of soft skills, she has published the "Charisma Trilogy" and offers personalized training and coaching programs for leaders and professionals.
There is a belief that many professionals internalize long before they even enter the workplace. It does not originate in organizations. It begins in school, takes shape at university, and is repeated during the early years of a career almost as a moral principle.
If you study hard, you will be rewarded. If you work well, you will be recognized. If you are competent, you will rise.
It is a powerful narrative because it reassures us. It places control in our hands. If something does not work, we can simply work harder. If recognition does not come, we can improve further. In this story, the system is fundamentally fair. Perhaps slow. Perhaps imperfect. But fair.
The problem is not that merit does not matter. The problem is that merit is not an autonomous force. It does not move on its own. It does not spontaneously enter the rooms where decisions are made.
As Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and one of the leading international scholars of power dynamics in organizations, observes with clarity, companies are not neutral environments that measure value with perfect instruments and reward it automatically. For more than forty years, Pfeffer has studied what truly determines success and influence in professional environments, challenging the reassuring belief that talent and performance alone are enough.
In his book Power: Why Some People Have It, and Others Don’t, Pfeffer argues that professional success largely depends on the ability to build strategic relationships, gain visibility, and accumulate influence. This is not a cynical view. It is a realistic description of how human systems of work actually function.
Organizations, he writes, are social systems. And within social systems, what matters is not only what you do, but who knows that you do it, who associates you with a result, and who mentions your name when an opportunity arises. Work does not speak for itself. It is made to speak. And this is far from a minor distinction.
When merit remains confined
Anyone who has spent years inside organizations knows this, even if it is rarely stated openly, outstanding professionals sometimes remain on the margins, while others with only moderate competence advance with surprising speed. This is not always a matter of luck, nor necessarily of injustice. More often, it is the result of relational dynamics.
Imagine a highly disciplined professional, focused on results and uncomfortable with exposure. They consistently deliver on time, are reliable, avoid conflict, and feel no need to attend cross-departmental meetings or informal conversations. They do not cultivate internal sponsors and invest little time in building relationships beyond their operational role. Deep down, they trust in a principle that feels solid, almost ethical, value will eventually emerge.
The problem is that organizational decisions are not made in a vacuum. They take shape in meetings where someone proposes a name, in corridors where impressions are exchanged, and in informal conversations where people assess who is present, who is ready, and who is visible. In these spaces, what matters is not only the objective quality of the work performed, but its public recognizability.
If your name does not circulate, your contribution risks remaining confined to the technical sphere, perhaps appreciated by those who work directly with you, yet absent from broader decision-making processes. Pfeffer is very clear on this point: performance is a necessary condition for advancement, but it is rarely sufficient. Visibility, alliances, and internal sponsorship play a decisive role not because the system is inherently corrupt, but because it is human.
People make decisions based on what they know, and what they know inevitably travels through relationships. For this reason, an excellent yet invisible contribution may remain unnoticed for years, while a good contribution supported by a strong network can generate far greater impact.
This is not a pessimistic reading of organizational reality. It is an empirical observation. Merit remains fundamental, but it is not self-sufficient.
Without a relational dimension that makes it visible and recognizable, it risks remaining confined within boundaries too narrow to truly matter.
The power we prefer not to see
At this point, a word emerges that many people prefer to avoid because it feels uncomfortable: power.
In everyday language, power is often associated with abuse, manipulation, or rigid hierarchy. In Pfeffer’s perspective, however, power has a far more concrete and less moralized meaning, it is simply the ability to influence decisions and the allocation of resources. In other words, it is a structural dimension of organizational life.
Ignoring power does not eliminate it. It merely means refusing to understand it and leaving it in the hands of others.
Many highly competent professionals avoid reflecting on power because they perceive it as incompatible with their identity. They prefer to define themselves through the quality of their technical work rather than through their capacity to exercise influence. This position is understandable, but often incomplete. Without some degree of influence, even the most solid technical work can remain confined.
This is where networking enters the picture. Not in the caricatured or manipulative sense often attributed to it, but as one of the mechanisms through which relational power is built and distributed. Being connected means having access to information, access to information provides a decision-making advantage and decision-making advantage often translates into strategic positioning within organizations.
The most naive vision of meritocracy assumes that technical value automatically generates influence. Organizational reality often shows that the opposite influence frequently precedes the formal recognition of value. This dynamic may feel uncomfortable, even disturbing. But ignoring it does not make it any less real.
Networking: Relational capital and power dynamics
Networking has an ambiguous reputation. For some, it represents a legitimate strategy for professional growth, for others, it is little more than disguised opportunism. In reality, reducing it to a caricature means misunderstanding its nature.
In its most mature form, networking is first and foremost a relational investment. It does not consist of collecting contacts or exchanging business cards, but of building connections over time, participating in meaningful conversations, and creating trust before one actually needs it. In other words, it means becoming a recognizable presence in the mental map of others.
Those who cultivate relationships consistently tend to access information before it becomes official, are involved in the early stages of new initiatives, and are remembered when opportunities emerge. Those who remain isolated often discover decisions only after they have already been made and trajectories have already been defined.
The point, however, is not to become opportunistic or to turn every relationship into a transactional exchange. Rather, it is to recognize that professionalism is not limited to technical competence. It also includes the ability to move within the relational flows that run through every organization. From this perspective, networking is not the opposite of ethics. It is the opposite of isolation.
The grey zone: When networks become weapons
At this stage, however, a more unsettling dimension emerges. If networking is a form of relational power, it can be used both to create shared value and to consolidate more subtle forms of control.
Some personalities understand these dynamics of influence perfectly and invest in relational capital with almost surgical clarity. They build networks not primarily to collaborate, but to occupy key decision-making nodes, not to share value, but to accumulate and manage it. Their presence is constant in strategic conversations. They anticipate movements, build functional alliances, and, when necessary, neutralize competitors in discreet and often invisible ways.
In contexts like these, the meritocracy fable becomes particularly dangerous. While many competent professionals wait for the system to spontaneously recognize the value of their work, others act with a far more strategic awareness of the power dynamics that shape organizations.
Ignoring networking in such a context does not protect people from manipulation. On the contrary, it risks leaving the field open to those who are most willing to exploit it.
Beyond the illusion of self-sufficient merit
The conclusion is not that “only relationships matter,” nor that competence is a secondary detail. On the contrary, cultivating and expanding one’s expertise remains essential because competence is the foundation upon which any solid professional path is built. Without competence, networks eventually collapse.
The point, however, lies elsewhere. Believing that competence alone is enough is a reassuring illusion. Organizations do not reward value in the abstract, they reward what they can see, recognize, and integrate into a relational fabric.
Work does not automatically enter decision-making processes. It must be associated with a face, a relationship, and a recognizable presence.
Many professionals avoid this dimension for reasons of identity coherence. They do not want to “play politics,” they do not want to expose themselves, and they do not want their growth to depend on dynamics they perceive as ambiguous. Yet ignoring relationships does not make the system more meritocratic. It merely increases the likelihood that others, perhaps less competent but more aware of the rules of the game, will occupy positions of influence.
Professional maturity, therefore, does not lie in choosing between technical excellence and relational intelligence, but in integrating the two without losing integrity. It means understanding that merit is the starting point, while the trajectory of a career unfolds within a system shaped by relationships, perceptions, and power. And within that system, networks are not an accessory. They are the infrastructure through which value becomes publicly visible.
Recognizing the dark side
So far, we have considered networking as a lever of influence. Yet every lever can be used ethically or manipulatively.
For this reason, networking cannot be approached superficially. It is not merely a social skill. It is a form of power. And like any form of power, it can be used either to build or to dominate.
Ignoring it on principle does not make us more ethical. It simply makes us less aware.
It is precisely within this grey zone that the reflection becomes more delicate and, in some cases, unsettling.
This article is drawn from my forthcoming book Charismatic Psychopaths – The Dark Side of Charisma, where I examine the power dynamics exercised by certain high-functioning individuals who operate at the top of organizations. Among the tools they use are networking and charisma, deployed as mechanisms to consolidate control. They do not build relationships to create shared value. They build them to accumulate influence, occupy decision-making nodes, and eliminate competitors.
Understanding this dynamic does not mean becoming cynical. It means becoming lucid. Because only by recognizing the dark side of influence can we consciously choose how to exercise our own.
Read more from Barbara Suigo
Barbara Suigo, Senior HR Consultant, Author, Charisma Expert
Born in Italy and naturalized as a French citizen, Barbara Suigo is an HR consultant, author, coach, and trainer specializing in the art of charisma. With solid experience in corporate communication and extensive training in NLP, persuasion, and storytelling techniques, she supports professionals and companies by offering personalized coaching, training programs, and in-depth content.
Barbara is the author of the Charisma Trilogy, a work that deeply explores how to develop and harness personal influence and leadership presence. She has also published other books focused on personal and professional growth, solidifying her role as a leader in the field of soft skills development.
