Stealing the Corner Office

🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences

Its a funny book about how to “rise to the top” in big corporations.

🎨 Impressions

✍️ My Top Quotes

• Overvaluing experience in hiring very much follows the old purchasing axiom: “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.” Hiring the most experienced candidate is the safe play. And people make defensive hiring decisions.

• “Promoting from within” is a policy disguised as employee loyalty but is really about cost and conflict avoidance. It is most widespread at the executive level where recruitment costs and scrutiny are highest.

• First off, as a Go-to Guy, your career success and failure is far too dependent on the success and failure of the executive you serve. These roles often masquerade as mentorships.

• The Passion Player always has an idea, or strategy, or vision for the company and will climb up the tallest mountain to shout it out for the world to hear. Think Jerry Maguire. They spend their lives debating their idea with others. They drag people to meetings, argue about the rightness or wrongness of their idea, and search out budget and support and alignment for their idea. And they gripe and complain to coworkers about why nobody gets it.

• The biggest reason the Passion Player’s strategy is a mistake is that it’s just too risky. Your upside with this strategy is that you might think up some truly great ideas, and people will value them enough to both excuse your behavior and promote you. But that so rarely happens in practice. On the flip side, your emotional attachment and dogged evangelism of an idea will almost certainly cause disruption. They will alienate you from the people who ultimately influence your success.

• For starters, 99.999 percent of us are not Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, so we shouldn’t be adopting their career strategies. We need to choose a winning strategy for our careers. Let me repeat that: a winning strategy. Your career is a game and you can play it any way you want. Just because something worked for Jobs doesn’t mean it’s the best strategy for you.

• In my experience, it’s 90 percent about attitude and 10 percent about ability when organizational change is afoot.

• Mr. Big Picture ignores process and analytical minutia. He never gets emotionally involved with any project or idea; he’s above that. This is the guy who starts and ends every discussion by relating the topic at hand back to the highest-level corporate objectives. And it doesn’t matter how low level the subject is. You’ll also never see him present an idea too passionately. He always comes equipped with options for consideration.

• One of the big warning signs that you are prey for a Precision Passive Aggressive is when they start inviting themselves to your meetings to “help out” or “stay on the same page—ostensibly to contribute, but in reality to take credit and marginalize your success in a highly visible project. It was not uncommon for a meeting that started out with five people on the invite list to balloon to 12 or more by the time it started.

• The Social Chair cannot get ahead in a company for two reasons. First, organizing social events creates a perception of subservience in the minds of others. As much as this sounds callous, you must be creating an image of leadership—not as a coordinator—to be taken seriously as a future executive. And although executives at your company may laud you for being so helpful, they’re never going to promote you for it. The second reason is a matter of priorities. If you are concentrating time and energy organizing events, you are not using it to actively manage your career. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day to do both.

• Acquisitions and other disruptive corporate changes are times of mass confusion. People get laid off, roles change, new processes and systems and strategies are introduced. It’s a total mess and many people, especially No-Change Agents, cannot handle that kind of uncertainty.

• For many intelligent managers, the idea of being recognized as a strategist and innovator is the driving force for them on a day-to-day basis. Although this is not always a career-limiting move, it can be if we’re not careful. Ultimately, the success or failure of playing this strategy depends more on how you deliver innovation and less on the innovation itself.

• In comparison even to 20 years ago, change in corporations happens at a faster pace than most of us appreciate. As we’ll continue to see in our stories, your best opportunities for advancement often present themselves in these times of uncertainty and transition. But at the same time, changing environments also bring the highest risk of career set-back if we don’t approach them strategically.

• Nancy’s final misstep was to opt for “what is right” over “what is right for my career.” Arguing concepts and ideas and plans until you get terminated doesn’t do you any good, whether you are right or not. Your priority at work is to get ahead, to improve your station in the corporation. If you do that, one day you can have influence and power and all the benefits that come with it.

• 1. Be helpful. Make the change easier on the acquiring company or new managers. 2. Be friendly. Find as many opportunities as possible to network with new people. 3. Be positive. Don’t spend time or be seen spending time with disgruntled team members. 4. Be patient. Wait to gain a solid foothold before creating conflict or debating issues. 5. Be visible. Show up to work early and stay late for the first three months after the acquisition.

• Pick the winner with your mind, not your heart. Make an objective assessment of which side is likely to come out on top and join that team.

• Here are three quick tips that will make sure you embrace the changes everyone else hates and ultimately end up on top: Make a change plan. You need to actually write down what your plan is or your emotions will likely get the best of you. Jot down some tactics when a major transition occurs to force yourself to act strategically and not emotionally. Pick the winner with your mind, not your heart. Make an objective assessment of which side is likely to come out on top and join that team. If someone has just bought your company or has just taken over your department, choose that team. Don’t fight against the winning side. Leave your ego at the door. If you execute the correct change playbook, people will make fun of you and tease you for being a suck-up. Ignore them. Your career is not about making friends; it’s about advancement.

• Concept promotion is about getting influencers excited about your work before you begin a project. When I say “influencers,” I mean the three to five people inside or outside the company who have the most to win and lose from the success of your work. It should go without saying they need to actually have influence within the company to be on this list. You don’t want to waste your time promoting work to lower level staff whose opinions aren’t likely to sway the sentiment of the organization.

• Effective alignment promotion starts by expanding your list of three to five influencers to now include a second set of people I refer to as “potential disruptors.” If you look around your own company, it’s easy to spot these people. They’re the ones asking all the questions in every company meeting and the ones who, on occasion, talk before thinking. Their default first reaction to anything is critical. You want to set aside time to walk these colleagues through everything you’re going to present a few days before delivering it publicly.

• The last type of internal promotion is results promotion. Results promotion can act as an insurance policy against poor performance when done correctly. However, it is too often done selectively, which can be dangerous for you in the long term. Too many managers promote the positive results but not the negative results.

• Know your influencers. Make sure you know the three to five people who have the most influence on your project’s success and failure. Look for outspoken people and individuals who tend to be critical. Promote three times. Good promotion starts with getting people onside with the basic concept. Then it’s about giving a sneak peek to bring critical people onto your team. Last, it’s about objectively promoting the results for everyone to share in its success or failure. Promotion is the priority. When you get busy, you’ll be tempted to forego promotion. It’s much safer to sacrifice the work instead. Invest what little time you have in preparing your audience and taking the risk out of the presentation.

• Reallocate your time. Favor skills expansion over results delivery. Spend 20 to 30 percent of every day learning new skills with the intention of broadening your expertise versus specializing in any one area. Expand your perceived position. Make a point of telling people what you’re learning and the progress you’re making. They need to be able to imagine you in other roles with wider responsibilities. Play the long game. Your career plays out over many companies and bosses. Never tie your future to one person or one skill set. In today’s rapidly changing corporations, you need to favor skill flexibility over skill depth.

• Gary showed us how much more comfortable it is to build our professional relationships at our own level and below, or just within our own team. It’s much harder to tactically network above our level in the company, so most of us don’t do it. And worse, we often go a step further and openly criticize those who do network with their superiors.

• Instead of hanging with his friends and talking about Jiro all day, Gary should have been building relationships and acting like a leader. That way, when change inevitably occurred, it would have been him instead of Jill who got the promotion.

• Being part of the herd will get you nowhere. At best, it will make you indistinguishable from your career competitors. At worst, it can cost you your job and set your career back many years. Gossiping and complaining about your boss or colleagues is a no-win strategy. Don’t fall into this trap. If you want to get ahead in your career, take the opposite approach of the mob.

• Never be negative. It never pays to be negative about your colleagues or your boss. Even if you’re surrounded by incompetence, you can’t get anywhere by being negative. It may seem disingenuous at times, but you have to act positive at all times and about all people. Create an image of loyalty and respect. Find as many opportunities as you can to show deference and respect for your boss. These opportunities come up a lot if you’re looking for them. Don’t debate with your boss in public but look for healthy debate opportunities in private. Focus on differentiating yourself from others. Don’t ever forget your peers at work are your competition. They’re not your friends—at least not in the game of career management. You need to be looking for ways to elevate yourself above other people on the team. A good first step is to spend more time with your boss and less time with your teammates.

• Don’t wait to be noticed. Nobody is watching you. Reliability is not a leadership quality. At least not one anybody cares enough about to promote you. The best way to get to the top is to make yourself more visible by taking on bigger projects. Even if that means you volunteer for projects that have nothing to do with your objectives. Wait for the right pitch. You can’t just swing blindly for every big project that comes your way. You need to choose the ones with the highest probability for success. The ones that will connect you to your career influencers. Having a big project failure is as profoundly bad as having a big project success is good. Swing for the fences. Don’t turn down chances to hit a home run. They come around more than we think sometimes. Next time someone asks you to be a part of a project or to take something on outside of your objectives, say yes.

• Your career isn’t played in a vacuum. Being successful in a corporation requires you play the correct strategy based on your environment. Dottie failed to assess her playing field. Most corporate cultures reject conflict. As managers, we know we should embrace healthy conflict, but in practice we do not. Most people fight against accountability. Especially being held accountable by peers. But instead of working with her environment, Dottie fought against it—and lost.

• Accountability has been a business best practice for a long time now and holding people accountable is a universal must-do in management circles. We’ve been taught how critical it is to drive a team to perform, to demand personal accountability and excellence from your team and peers. Though this sounds great in theory, I don’t believe it to be true in practice. When you hold people accountable you illicit an instinctively defensive response as people’s personal objectives always take precedence over corporate objectives.

• Define your power. An easy first step is to determine whether or not you have legitimate power over a person or group. If they work for you, you have power. If they don’t, you don’t. Your power situation dictates whether helping or holding accountable makes sense for you. Embrace empathy over emotion. Many people do not respond well to being held accountable. I find it more effective with many people I work with to offer help rather than criticism even when deep down inside I want to tear my hair out. Make it public. It doesn’t help you career much to mentor people if nobody important will ever find out. Find ways to let influencers know that you’re offering mentorship and support to your peers so you can benefit from the image of leadership when the time comes.

• Here is a simple checklist of tasks that will get you on the right track and can be done in a single day: Make an influencer plan. Build a decision framework. Create a promotion plan. Assemble a learning calendar. Create a change playbook. Find a big project. Identify someone to help.

• Here are seven criteria I use to determine whether or not an individual is an influencer for me: 1. Seniority. This person is more senior in the organization than I am. 2. Risk. This person can terminate my employment or influence my termination. 3. Power. This person can promote me or influence my future promotion. 4. Exposure. This person tends to be very vocal in the company and is listened to by many people. 5. Fear. This person has a tendency to be critical or negative and can be hard to work with. 6. Validation. Public support from this person would be good for my career. 7. Future. This person has proven to be going places and is likely to get promoted soon.

• For each of these seven criteria we should assign a score between 1 and 5 to rank the degree of influence they have. Then we can total them up and see who to give priority to in our plan.

• The simplest way to get started is to take your prioritized list of influencers and create an influencer calendar. Essentially this is a reminder to set up a meeting at least once a quarter for influencers more senior than you and at least once a month for people at the same level as you. When it comes time for the actual meetings I tend to focus on basic relationship building and do my best to avoid making it all about business or overly professional.

• As we saw in a couple of our tales, hubris often gets in the way of objectivity, and we make the mistake of backing our own ideas to a fault.

• As I’ve said so many times, your only priority at work is to advance your career. That is how you attain your personal objectives for your personal shareholders—your family and loved ones. Everything else at work is secondary to this. The only way to attain your personal objectives, like more money, better benefits, vacation time, retirement savings, and other rewards, is to get promotions and move up the corporate ladder.

• The most important thing in taking advantage of change scenarios is your attitude. Get on the winning team. Do the opposite of what the herd is doing.