Institutional and corporate systems reward ascension over mastery.
Employees are nudged into unfamiliar management roles, not from aptitude, but ambition. Promotion is tied to hierarchy, not skill. Unfamiliar (out of their depth), their lived experience (expertise) must be supplemented by reported metrics (abstraction), eroding judgment.
An alternative: reward depth. Let mastery, not mobility, guide compensation. Value should scale with contribution, not elevation. Such a model preserves excellence, minimizes role misalignment, and honors the deep knowledge that sustains real innovation.