Signal Before You Ask

Six weeks before your pitch, start signaling scope creep. Take on one visible cross-team project. Present at one all-hands. Ship one metric your manager can quote in a calibration room.

The signal-first move separates surprise asks from inevitable ones. By the time you sit down to name a number, your manager has already been telling their own manager "we need to get ahead of this before we lose them" for a month. You just confirm what they already concluded.

Never let the conversation be the first time the idea exists. Seed it, water it, then pick the fruit on the right day.