During my 15 years experience working for many companies, I’ve observed the kind of behaviour that advance career best when working in a business organization. I have made some observations to new recruits, my contemporaries (2-4 years working at the company), and old timers in the company. I got to know them well enough to know what they think made them advance career wise within the company they work for. Here are some of the conclusions that I came up with:

 

Focus on What Brings in the Revenue

In some companies this might be a product line, in another it’s certain service offerings. It’s basically what brings in the money, the cash cow of the company. Superiors get irritated if they found that his subordinates paying more attention to taxi fare claim and per diem reimbursement compare to revenue stream. But, do not think that focus on the main revenue stream alone will get you career advancement on every yearly assessment, the effect is not quite that far fetching. This is more like a mandatory requirement that all employee should have, to avoid termination, still quite far to be determining factor for career advancement consideration.

 

Ability to Monetize New Product or Service

Ability to innovate or create a new product and/or a service offering is a talent that is hard to find from employees. Yet, ability to turn that innovation into a money minting machine is harder still to find. Only in recent months, Facebook’s market value increased significantly after they showed that they can actually make money in mobile computing market. Facebook does have some of the brightest engineers in the industry at the moment. But it was not perceived as a money maker in the beginning of the it’s IPO and the market punished the price of the stock down approximately 50% of initial price only days after the IPO. When they managed to prove to the world that Facebook can indeed monetize it’s social website, through mobile computing (tablets, smartphones), the world rewarded it by appreciating it’s market value.

 

Understand Things, Accurate Perception of a Situation

Nothing is more annoying to a boss than an employee who are so convinced about something and cannot be told that that is wrong. In cases like these, superiors use words like: hopeless, termination candidate, dead weight, and so on, you got the drift.

 

Make People Around You Look Good

Employees used to think that the best way to get ahead in an organization is to kowtow to superiors, push aside colleagues, and step on subordinates. This is simply wrong in this day and age, and quite the opposite is true. By working together and helping out other employees in need, to achieve the common goal, will get you and the organization you are a part of, ahead.

 

So there you have it. A few pointers to get you to the favourable side of your boss.

 

 

[jbs]