If promotions are based on metrics (and they always are, even if the metric is "how much do I like this guy"), then you can either try to increase your score in

If promotions are based on metrics (and they always are, even if the metric is "how much do I like this guy"), then you can either try to increase your score in that metric as much as possible, or you can game the metric as much as possible to make it look like your score in the metric is high. Most of the people at the executive level have been doing the latter so long that the former just isn't really considered at that level