The Fundamentals of Success

The toil of labor should not come without professional progress. One of my personal mistakes was focusing solely on competency in my initial years. I believe this stemmed from a college-inspired mindset that conditioned me to think that the only input required was hard work (study much → get good grades).

The corporate world barely operates in that fashion. Success depends on four themes majority of which can be controlled, measured and worked upon:

1) Competency: You deliver results and make an impact. You get the job done. You move the key performance indicator. You either increase revenue, or you reduce cost or undertake something which indirectly in the long run will enable the aforementioned. By doing this, you are not at the finish line. You are at the very start. You have just entered the conversation.

2) Visibility: This one is important. People should be aware of your contributions, and you’ve built relationships with key individuals in the calibration room (also called promotion committee). If they don’t know who you are, what you have done and have nothing vested in your success, your competency has no value at all. Your contributions do not exist.

A senior executive took time to help me understand that for my promotion I had to undertake a roadshow. For this organization, setting up calls with people on the promotion committee, using this time to parade my contributions to the company and indirectly solicit support. Most of the people I called knew the purpose of the call; they understood the game and offered their support.

My mistake was approaching this at the last moment; the whole thing seemed transactional. The best-in-class way to do it is to build deep and consistent relationships with executives through which highlight your work and also go beyond in building the human element and furthering it.

3) Likeability: The people on the promotion committee should enjoy working with you. You may be their "go-to" person for a task or chatting with on a dreary airport lounge. Likeability settles the tie when your competition is equal on Competency and Visibility. I personally lost a promotion to someone whose contributions were 70% of mine but exceeded me 3X on the likeability scale.

At that time, it seemed unfair. But my sense of unfairness came from an incorrect idea of how the world worked. I was quick to realize that work was required was work in areas I had neglected, instead of a fight against the world on how it works. Yes, some men do change the world. But that wasn’t my fight; I focused on optimizing my career by following the dictates of a what seemed like a broken system.

There is a lot that is forgiven in the corporate world if people like you. Your failures will be forgotten, your small victories paraded with full regalia. Make sure you are liked. Being not hated or subject to neutrality is not enough.

4) Luck: Unpredictable events or opportunities within your organization can play a role. There is no better superpower that consistently being at the right place at the right time. Many a time you will see people with no extraordinary capabilities, many which are not even comparable or equal to yours occupying seats of power you think you will never have access to for the sole reason that they were at the right place at the right time. Your time will come. Wait for it. And if it doesn’t, don’t give way to resentment. More on that later.

I have too many people devote 95% of their time to creating impact which I subsume under competence. I don’t think this ratio should be more than 70%. Yes, truly being visible and likeable requires stepping out from a comfortable shell into the word of people. Yes, it may come across as desperate. Yes, you may even call it playing the corporate game.

But what is the justification for refusing to run the last mile in a hundred-mile race? Why throw away 99 miles only for the personal reluctance to do a bit more? Take that extra call asking for advice. Go to the lunch dinner which will need despite needing to rewire your extra calendar. Jump in that car with the senior executive and figure out what matters to him at work and outside.

The corporate pyramid eventually is a zero-sum game. Some people will climb, other will not. And it is an aggregate of individual actions that decide that many of which have nothing to with impact. Commit to it. Embrace it. Climb.