Quick Tips to Survive (Thrive) Induction in a Big Company
I feel like I am being fed on a high volume, high power hose pumping liquid opportunities at me. It’s hard to keep up, rather like you can’t breath pure Oxygen (sic pun). I know some people get lost in big organizations. I seem to thrive in them. Here are some tips for what’s working for me at the moment.
Make the Effort - Don’t wait for people, to come to you. You are the new guy and have to make the effort to go to others. Remember you are new and novel and have a reason to reach out to people and being new they will listen to you.
Accept a Lack of Sleep - For the last month I have been grabbing hours here and there. I sleep on planes a lot and at weekends. I know its not healthy but I also know it won’t last forever. This is a period of getting the ball rolling and time doesn’t stand still. In fact time is just a measurement of our distance in space!
Travel Will Pay Off - These days people are all over the place. Meeting people face to face is worth its weight in gold. I flew to Rome this week for a 30 min presentation but it was well worth it. Make the effort. People really appreciate the effort.
Meet People and Ask Them to Help You - I started off my asking people to meet for coffee. At every meeting I ask them if they can help introduce me to other people who might be able to help me. I guess I am like a pyramid social net worker! The folks at the coffee shops now all know what I drink. You would be amazed at how fast you uncover people that can really help you and people you can really help in return; right up and right down the food chain. Be a social connector (read the Tipping Point).
Map out the Org - I have a MindMap going of the organization as a whole. I overlay all the business units and then build an org chart of people I meet in various places. It helps me connect places where I know people and places I don’t. When I have coffee I ask people if they know people in places I don’t know people. I plan to turn this into a heat map eventually. Wouldn’t it be a cool Outlook calendar plugin to build this automatically from meeting requests!
Note: I’ll post some screen shots of a cool internal Outlook plugin. When you setup a meeting it pulls the persons picture off the Intranet so you can put a face to who you are going to meet them in the coffee area etc. Very useful!
Ignore Titles, Find the Players - Some people have grandiose titles, others have humble titles. Titles and influence are not directly related. People lead by authority or respect. Both are useful but you have to see through titles to find players who lead by respect and can help you. They are usually respected for a reason and much better to deal with socially!
Politics is Politics, Learn to Play the Game - Politics is just bull shitake but exists in almost every company from small to big ones. In my opinion politics is played by people who can’t win at the game of business by skill and value. People who play politics generally don’t lead by respect but you can’t ignore them. Understand the game and play along on your own terms. Focus on adding value and those playing politics will get sidelined over time. Accelerate that event with skill and value to the business.
October 28, 2007 at 5:31 am
Mark,
Good blog post! I found it very informative. My only issue/concern with it is that lower-level people cannot exactly fly around the country meeting other people. At least in my experience as a low-level grunt it is usually frowned upon
. Unless of course you pay for it yourself which can be a stretch sometimes. What did you do when you were first starting out?
When you were starting out did you just network initially with local people and grow out from there? To me that would make sense.
November 1, 2007 at 6:53 am
Hi Mark,
Fantastic post …..especially the last point about politics
But I beg to differ ……..I would not like to play the game any way !! I believe that if u have the passion , skill and knowledge to succeed ……u dont need to play the game.
what do u say ??
November 2, 2007 at 3:25 am
Yogesh,
I agree, I’m all for a meritocracy myself, but it’s a rare orgainzation that works that way. I, myself, am not a good player of the game - I’m far to honest and oppionated (as well as often quite vocal) to play well at office politics
I would just have to say play to what your strengths are, know what you are not comfortable doing, and be happy to play at the lower levels if you feel that you’d give up too much of yourself if to “advance” you need to play these games.
I’ve been reading “The 12 Bad Habits That Hold Good People Back” to help me understand these things a bit better in myself. It’s a nice read for these sort of books (which generally I hate with a passion!)
November 5, 2007 at 2:37 pm
After reading this post, that’s all fine and great. You’re meeting people, getting your face out there, mapping out the org so you know where to get resources…
…but what exactly are you accomplishing or doing? I guess for people like me, doing the above stuff doesn’t really help all that much. It’s a game that I don’t plan to play until I absolutely have to, and hopefully never will. As long as what we do makes us happy now, as opposed to suffering years of unhappiness to get a few years of bliss in the end…then more power to everyone!