How To Succeed In Business By Really Trying
No sugar coating
here. Unless you’re fortunate enough to be born to take over a thriving
family business or to get in on
the ground floor of the next road to business success is seldom a simple one.
In my experience and
observation, success is much less the product of one brilliant idea than of a
great deal of hard work, well-executed and sustained over a long period of
time.
Even in the best of times, no
one will just hand you a position of great value for nothing. If your
goal is vice presidency or partner or managing director or the c-suite, or
whatever role has captured your imagination, no one can guarantee you’ll attain
it. But if hard work is the currency of success, there are things you can
do to make that effort work as hard as possible for your up-and-coming
career. So with a tip of the cap to one the greatest musicals ever (“How
to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, here are five activities that can be worth really
trying to put extra time into.
Learn
the business – If you work for a sizable organization, and perhaps
if you don’t, chances are your business has considerable complexity. Take
time to learn not just your particular role (that’s “table stakes”- you have to know it), but
also to gain a broader understanding of the business: the competitive
environment, the market forces at play, the company’s value proposition, sales
model, pricing model, etc. No one’s expecting you to become expert in all
these fields, but gaining at least a working understanding of the key
macro-level issues is always helpful. Familiarity with these larger
issues senior management is grappling
with will only enhance your decision-making capabilities in your own role.
Make
yourself indispensable – Take
time to really understand what your manager needs. Not just what is
needed from you in your current role, but what are the troubling problems that
keep him or her up at night? Is it help with PowerPoint, an
upcoming presentation to a hostile audience, delicate personnel problems, or
dealing with regulators… to name just a few of a thousand possibilities?
Try to see things through the eyes of others. The more substantive
assistance you can provide, the more gaps you can fill, the more valuable
you’ll be to an organization.
Provide
solutions, not problems – The normal state of senior management is too much to
do in too little time. When wrestling with difficult issues in your
own area, naturally you can’t always solve all the problems yourself. But
it definitely can be worth the extra time to not simply make your problems your
manager’s. Instead, present your manager with a carefully thought out
range of viable options – ideally including your recommended solution – rather
than just posing a vexing, time-consuming problem.
This approach
demonstrates your critical thinking capabilities, and can be an appreciated
time saver for a person with little time to spare.