Ignoring your Competency Book breeds too much of Incompetence: A case in perspective!

Ignoring your Competency Book breeds too much incompetency: An embarrassing case in perspective from a global management consulting firm! 

I heard something very, very weird yesterday. Mind repeating the word "very" and stay with me!

An ex-colleague in HR gets promoted and shares the joy on LinkedIn. Congratulations pour in! BUT,
A week later, she is demoted, and demoted not just one rank but two ranks in one shot! Surprised? Asking WHY? Wait a minute!
She has spent 16 years with this global management consulting firm! She was hired as an associate when I worked for them 16 years back. With years gone by, she gets one (Sr. Associate), two (Associate Consultant), three (Consultant), four (Sr. Consultant), and the latest, the fifth promotion (Manager). Not sure if her role ever changed over these years.
This week, she was asked to take 6 months pay and move out or accept the double demotion and stay.
Now, you may ask, what did she choose?
She chose to stay back! 😅
Now, I am puzzled with such a decision by this elite consulting firm, and if she is the only one who got such fiat!
I have no idea whether it was a wake-up call for the firm that, all these years of massive growth (now ~10K in India), may have ignored their competency book that precisely maintains a career progression demand on its associates!
Google ranks it as the 6th toughest job interview to clear at this firm.
Just to clarify, this associate HR is not an MBA from any tiered school, and she was and maybe only doing HR admin all these years.
I, with my 4 years post-MBA, was hired as a consultant in 2007 here. I had 9 rounds of interviews and 2 presentations to make to the principal and partners of the firm.
When I met the Principal (Global CHRO) of this firm in the US office, I had a question for her after a few days I spent in the HQ working with other HR colleagues there.
I asked her about many HR Admin staff there (who were in their mid-40s and had spent 8 to 12 years at this firm, but their titles were still Senior Associate or Associate Consultants). Julie, why have these HR staff not grown in their careers? Why are they not consultants, managers, and associate principals?
She answered, and those words still ring in my ears: "They will never grow, as the role is very limited in scope and its utility for the firm. Their job remains at the same level even when they spent decades in that role!"
She added, If they have to grow here, they will have to step out of their roles!"
So, after so many years of Julie's retirement from her role, when I saw this manager-level promotion for this ex-HR colleague, I believed Julie was wrong! But Julie was not wrong; she was just forgotten!
Good that they woke up now!
Extremely happy that my favorite competency book (aka, the Constitution of Talent Management) has resurrected at this firm!
My other question to Julie was, when do people get promoted here?
She answered, When they are 'ready' for it!

My rustic take on people asking for promotion:
Just because you have been milking cows for 10+ years, you don't become a dairy technologist! 😊
hashtag#HRGovernance, hashtag#FairPromotion