The four rungs

Every one of the twelve sub-skills in the Tri-Stack is scored on the same four-rung ladder. Foundational: you can do the work with support and a script. Established: you do it reliably in familiar territory. Advanced: you do it under pressure, across functions and with senior people who do not report to you. Master: others copy how you do it, and the organisation has reorganised around your way.

The rule that makes the ladder useful is that a rung is always backed by evidence. Asked where you sit on Rainmaker, you do not pick a number; you describe a piece of business you had to fight for, and the rung follows from the story. A rung with no real example behind it is not recorded, and the tool will say, kindly, that the example sounds more like Established than Advanced, and why. Forty-eight descriptors, one per sub-skill per rung, are the anchors, and they double as the map for climbing to the next one.