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You have to walk before you can run. Then later, when you're running, youneed more sophisticated guidance, because doing a bunch of important thingswhile running isn't all that easy.
In the beginning, as opposed to now, I really didn't know what I was doing. So thefirst things I looked at were overall strategies to very simple things thatturned out to be a lot harder than they looked. Giving good phone. Taking lunchwith distinction. Considering how to tackle the everyday tactical challenges that, taken together, could help define a career.
No issue was too small. Back at the start, or instance, before I got my windgoing, I got tired in the afternoons and very often wanted a nap. It took me awhile to work out a strategy to get one in without getting egregiously busted. Finally, I did it. First, I never took a nap through a phone call. If the phone rangon my desk, I woke and answered it. That was rule one. Second, I decided oneday to sleep on the floor with my head against the door. That way if somebodycame in without knocking, the door would hit me on the head and wake me. Ifasked, I could say I was doing my back exercises. Nobody wants to rag on a guywith a bad back. So that was my nap strategy. And it worked.
Other strategies followed about increasingly complex issues. It has turned out, in the end, that the need to think about the nuts and bolts never goes away. Atevery point of a working career, the issue of How must be managed -- and the firststep in that battle is to view every problem as a puzzle that can be solved not with emotion, not with will or gumption or moxie, but with the proper strategy. Thisputs you, no matter how low-down you are on the food chain, on the same footingas the pasty executives who make nothing but decisions and money all day.
Protecting Your Turf
In the beginning, there was my turf. And I beheld it, and it was very tiny. There were more of us then, back when the corporation was young andcentralized. The landscape swarmed with associates and directors andvice presidents so numerous that, when they massed, the hillsidehummed for miles around. Each of us tended his proud little patch ofduties, met with pals around the watering hole at sundown, and, for themost part, coveted not his neighbor's ass. Then the plague of merger fellupon our house, and many good folk were swept away. Vast tracts layripe for conquest, and we who survived took pretty much what we wanted. Before long I found myself steward of quite a nice chunk ofreal estate, with nary a shot fired in anger.
Then came the post-Armageddon wasteland that is now upon us. Where before there was me and Chuck and Ted and Fred and Phyllisand Janice and Lenny, now there's simply me and Lenny. And Lenny, I'msorry to say, is a classic turf-fresser, slavering on mine while he gibberspossessively over his own. I come in some mornings to find him squatting with a disingenuous expression in what used to be my backyard. "You've soaked up a lot of turf that used to be mine, Len," I told himrecently over a morning cup of coffee. "If you want war, it's okay byme, but I warn you -- I won't lose." Since then, Lenny and I have enjoyeda nice sense of collegiality. We even have a chat once every couple ofdays about what we're up to, more or less. But I'm not fooled. Hitlerdidn't stop at Prague when the tasty little Balkans lay at his feet, andLenny won't either.
Turf is the work that no one but you should be doing. But it's more. It's the proprietary relationships you have with people -- the human gluethat holds your career together. Like all great things in life, it's mostimportant to those who don't get much. "If you're secure in your job, and you have a well-defined position with a lot of responsibility, turfdoesn't become that big an issue," says my friend Steve, senior managerat a publishing company. Good attitude, when all that's challenged isyour right to fund an opinion survey or something. But there are timeswhen something more fundamental is threatened. Keep the following inmind:
Try not to act like a thumb-sucking worm. A lot of very uptight people are drawn to the world of business, who knows why. Butfew are as minimal as those who scrab around clutching worthless sod totheir bosoms. I've seen guys haggle over who has the duty, nay, thehonor, of ordering the chairman's muffin. "Real turf is something youhave an emotional investment in," says a young powermeister I know, "that, if you lost it, would take away a real part of you." So take whatyou need and leave the rest.
The turf you make is equal to the bows you take. Recognition begets turf. When I was a new recruit, I was given the chore of assembling the department's monthly reports to the chairman. This gentlybubbling pot of self-aggrandizement was routinely signed by my erstwhile vice president. As a neophyte in the business world, it neveroccurred to me that my work should be attributed to someone else. Itwas three months before Chuck, in a spasm of assiduity, perused my output and noticed my name, not his, affixed to the title page. By then it wasimpossible for him to re-create the fiction that he was solely responsible. Thus did I attain my first visible piece of soil ...
Excerpted from The Big Bing: Black Holes of Time Management, Gaseous Executive Bodies, Exploding Careers, and Other Theories on the Origins of the Business Universe by Stanley Bing All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
