Some of the best ladder climbers I've seen are amazing at pitching projects. They get the business case done, fully funded, themselves promoted to run it - and then immediately leverage the new title into a job somewhere else.

I've been on the receiving end of one of those projects and once you dive in without the person who pitched it, you see how hollow and nonsensical it really is. But by then its too late. The consultants who wrote it are all paid and the executives who attached their names to it as sponsors keep it limping along for years, draining everyone's will to live.

The other guy meanwhile is doing the same thing again at a bigger company having a great time.