Thursday, April 26, 2007

Know Your Surroundings

As a leader you have to Know Your Surroundings at all times. There are times that people are going to be watching you, judging you and making political decisions about you. If you do not know these surroundings you might find yourself in a hole you cannot dig out of. In large corporations people traditionally carry their own agendas when making decisions. These decisions might include promotions, team alignment, or compensation analysis.

The question that some might ask is how do you handle these situations. This is a question I do not have all the answers to but I have come up with a couple solutions that might work:
  • Communicate to each person as if they were your boss, they might be
  • Build a network of people you can trust that are not affiliated with your organization share ideas and concerns
  • Identify who is on who's team
  • Know what is going on with the grapevine but do not get distracted by it
  • Control what you can control, no sense in worrying about things you have no control over

Unfortunately any one who is in a large corporation this will become part of their task as a leader. Knowing your surroundings makes you aware of what might be happening in the future and who can impact your career today.

1 comment:

Tyguy said...

Hi Brad,

Just aimlessly surfing blogs and stumbled across yours. Turns out that I'm a an Engineer in a Japanese company located in the Southern US. I've been struggling with the potential of promotion to supervisor lately and find this post most interesting. I can't say that I've ever quantified such points, per say, but find them very interesting. As a personal rule of thumb I always focus on what I can control and not worrying about other things, but I really find your insight refreshing. I like the idea of communicating to each person as if they were your boss. I'm in a particular situation where I dictate a manufacturing process to a Production department but end up struggling with implementation and management after the fact due to other departments/groups agenda. Fortunately for me, I am the point person and direct most every department in theory but in reality I have to negotiate and broker my image with these groups. Anyway, thanks for the insight I will try some of your suggestions.

Thanks!!