One question I always get from candidates is: "How do I know what I need to do to grow here?"

For a long time, we all gave the same answer - it's a conversation - but every manager brought their own nuance to it. The experience of growing at N5 depended too much on who you reported to.

The process was not broken, exactly - but not consistent either. Reviews happened, salaries got adjusted, but the connection between the two was murky. People weren't sure what they were being measured on. "Growth" felt more like it was something that happened to you, not something you drove.

So we built something. We call it IGR: Impact × Growth × Reward. With IGR, we have a consistent, foundational answer to this question. 

An inconvenient truth

The uncomfortable truth in most performance systems is that effort and impact get mixed up. Someone who works hard, shows up consistently, and is well-liked tends to be rewarded - even if what they actually delivered is unclear.

Our framework starts from a different premise: two people can work equally hard and have very different impacts. What matters is the concrete value you create - for clients, for your team, for the company.

How ‘IGR’ enables our people to grow

The framework has three connected layers, woven together by continuous feedback throughout the year - in 1x1s, project retrospectives, and structured reflection points - not just at review time.

Impact is what you measure. We use structured Impact Reviews three times a year, linked to our operational cadence. Self and lead assessments ultimately produce a score, while peer and upward feedback provide context. This happens consistently across four different dimensions: business, clients, culture, and exposure. These four dimensions aren't arbitrary. They reflect what we genuinely believe makes someone impactful at November Five - not just what they deliver, but how they understand and anticipate the business, how they show up for clients, how they contribute to the culture we're building, and how they grow their own visibility and influence.

Growth is how you intentionally develop. Our PDP (Personal Development Plan) is updated continuously, fed by three sources: expectations for your impact level, company OKRs, and feedback from your most recent Impact Review. Our people are in the driving seat of their personal growth - we provide the framework and coaching, but nobody builds your career for you.

Impact reviews tell you where you've been, your PDP points to where you're going. Together, they build a trajectory that means far more than any single moment.

Reward follows sustained and proven impact. It shows up first as scope and learning - bigger problems, higher-stakes work, more ownership. Base salary grows when the pattern is consistent over time. Bonuses can recognize contributions that clearly exceed role expectations. Consistent impact builds your base; exceptional moments can trigger a bonus on top.

Four things we’d never go back on

Making the bar visible. We define Impact Levels across the company - a clear description of what you own and what you're accountable for. As you grow, that scope expands: from tasks, to workstreams, to whole domains.

What makes this concrete is that each level is defined across all four dimensions mentioned above (business, clients, culture, and exposure). So it's not just "do more" or "be more senior." It's a specific picture of what ownership looks like in each area, at each level. And crucially: we've also defined what readiness for the next level looks like, so you're never left guessing whether you're there yet.

Everyone can see the bar. Nobody has to wonder what "the next level" looks like -  though making sure every lead reads that bar the same way is work we keep doing. That's what calibration sessions are for.

Two tracks, equally valued. Impact can be created in two fundamentally different ways - through individual craft and expertise (IC track), or through enabling people, teams, and systems (Lead track). Both have their own defined impact levels. Neither is a hierarchy. This matters because the pull toward management is still real - in a lot of companies, the fastest path to higher reward runs through becoming a team lead. We wanted to break that assumption. If you're a designer or engineer who wants to be the best at what you do - not lead others - there's a path for that at November Five, and it's not a dead end.

One annual progression moment. Promotion decisions - moving to the next impact level - are reviewed collectively once a year. You build the case yourself, from concrete examples over time. That case goes into a calibration session where leads actively challenge each other's assessments, before a final decision is made. No ambiguity. No silence. No wondering for months whether something is happening.

Reward ≠ salary alone. We talk about three forms of reward explicitly: scope and responsibility, learning and progression, and pay. Naming all three matters. It shifts the conversation away from "when do I get a raise" and toward a richer understanding of what growth actually means.

The harder truth we haven't fully cracked yet: measuring concrete value is itself subjective. Business impact can look different depending on your role, your team's visibility, and who your lead is. We built the IGR framework to address this - but we won't pretend it solves everything. What it does give us is a shared vocabulary to start the conversation more honestly than before.

So we're not sharing IGR because we've solved performance management. Writing it down is the easy part - building the habits, rituals, and culture to make it live is the real work, and we're still doing it. We're sharing it because we think progress worth seeing doesn't have to wait for perfection.

We're sharing this not because we think it's perfect - we've already named a few things we haven't fully solved. But putting it out there creates the kind of challenge that makes it better. If something resonates, or if you see a gap we've missed, we'd genuinely like to hear it.