Management Leverage Blog

Do others’ perceptions become more important than results as you move up the corporate ladder?

I don’t think so.

Social capital becomes more important as you move up the ladder than it was at the beginning of your career.

Why? Because as your career progresses,
1) Your results are harder to measure, and
2) You are competing for promotions against others who produce results, and have taken the time to build social capital. In the beginning of your career this isn’t necessarily the case.

But even if perceptions are more important now than they were before, they’re not more important than results.

For the sake of simplicity, lets divide the corporate world into three buckets. In the first bucket, we’ll put the “results should speak for themselves” people. In the second bucket we’ll put the “it’s not what you know, but who you know” crowd.

Everyone in both of these buckets will hit a ceiling sooner or later.

The people in the first bucket are the best kept secrets in their organizations. They are the ghost people. We may know their name, or their face, but no one is really sure what it is they do.

In Texas we call the people in the second bucket “all sizzle and no steak”. They spend so much time working the crowd and promoting themselves, that it doesn’t take long before the perceptions of their abilities far exceed their actual abilities. They have spent more time worrying about what others think about them than actually developing themselves.

It won’t take long before they are put in charge of something and fail miserably, and very publicly.

Sure. We all know people who succeed in spite of themselves. But put these people in the same group with the 325 year old woman who has chain smoked for 324 years. Or the high school drop out who starts a
computer company and becomes a billionaire before turning 30.

If you want to work your way up, put yourself in the third bucket with those who manage  results AND others’ perceptions of them.

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Imagine you have an opportunity to move up in your company. To your surprise, your boss gave the promotion to a much less qualified co-worker. My guess is you would feel disappointed—probably even frustrated.

Now imagine you discover that the opportunity never really existed, because your application was never given serious consideration. If you are the best kept secret in your organization, you might want to get used to this kind of abuse.

But What If I Don’t Like To Toot My Own Tuba?

Me either. In fact, I hate it. Do you work with people who constantly draw attention to how great they want you to think they are? Am I asking you to become a braggart? Of course not. Just don’t blend in. Let your brand shine, or become one of the ghost people at work.

Why It’s Not Your Boss’s Fault

Her brain isn’t wired to promote you. Here’s a quick pop quiz (modified from Max’s wonderful book):

The following 8 corporations were ranked by Fortune magazine to be among the 500 largest United States-based firms according to sales volume for 2007:

a. Apple, Black & Decker, McGraw Hill, Owens Corning, Bristol-Meyers-Squibb

b. American International Group, McKesson, Publix, Plains All-American
Pipeline

Which group of five organizations listed (A or B) had the larger total sales volume?

Most people incorrectly choose A. Why?

When making decisions the human brain is wired to make mistakes in very predictable ways. We choose “A” because we hear, read, and see more about Apple Computer than McKesson. We choose motor vehicle accidents for the same reason. Yet each year about twice as many people die of stomach cancer than car wrecks.

Is Your Career Like a Car Wreck?

So what does all this have to do with your career? In the words of my two kids, “mucho”. We tend to give greater weight to those things we can recall easily. That’s why your boss grimaces when you leave work an hour before she does. She wasn’t around when you got to work (two hours before her), so it’s much easier for her to recall you leaving early. She saw you do it!

When it comes to promotions, don’t blend in. You want your boss to easily recall your positive traits. Standing out doesn’t necessarily mean bragging. Find a way to promote yourself that fits your personality, your strengths, and your company culture.

Or go ahead and make yourself comfortable in your cube. You aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

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I recently gave a talk about personal branding. I had hardly finished speaking when someone rushed up to me and shook my hand. “This stuff is great”, he said. “I have to develop my brand at work.” I explained how he needed to manage his brand, not develop it. He already had a personal brand. Maybe not a good one, but he had already been pigeon-holed by the people he worked with. His brand, and yours for that matter, falls somewhere along the following continuum (Thanks to John Daly at The University of Texas for this continuum).
 

1)      Rejection brands. A rejection brand does not necessarily mean that a person isn’t liked. It just means that you wouldn’t want to work with them. Maybe they are competent enough, but they have been on several projects in the past that failed. Just to be safe, let’s stay out of their way.
 

2)      Non-recognition. These are the ghost people in an organization. You see them wandering around at work, but you really aren’t sure what they do. Milton, the guy with the red stapler in Office Space, is the perfect example in Office Space is the perfect example.
 

3)      Association. Goes with. Guy Kawasaki is a VC. When I think of him, I think venture capital. She is a CPA. When I think of her, I think accounting.
 

4)      Preference. A preference brand is a stronger degree of association. Not only do I associate you with something, I prefer you to other people with a similar brand. For example, if I am going to work on this marketing project, I would prefer to have Seth Godin on my team.

 

5)      Insistence. An insistence brand is even stronger. I associate you with a particular attribute and I cannot imagine anyone else working on a project (for example) than you. If I am going to work with someone on my personal finances, I instist on working with J.D.

 

So which brand do you want? Insistence? Not necessarily. I’ll write about that soon.

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By its very nature, you shouldn’t have to look too hard to find an example of an employee with a robust personal brand. Let me introduce you to Dan Schawbel, a 23-year-old marketing specialist at EMC².

Poke around on his blog and figure out why Fast Company magazine calls him a ‘personal branding force of nature’. Like all examples, not all of what he does will fit your personality or situation (it doesn’t fit mine), but that doesn’t mean you should write him off completely. Study him and learn. What aspects of Dan’s strategy can you adopt into your own career? Tweak them to fit your own brand.

Where do you think Dan’s career will be when he is 33? I’ve been on this planet almost twice as long as Dan, and I am humbled.

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I taught two executive MBA classes this summer. One at SMU and the other at an amazing university called Universidad Francisco Marroquin in

Guatemala. The hard-work-fallacy seemed to frustrate the execs in

Dallas. They didn’t deny it, but habitually ignored it in their own careers. The Guatemalans, on the other hand, did not embrace it, but accepted it and worked within its confines. Every class has its own personality, and this difference between these two classes was startling.

If the world were truly just, a gifted writer would land a lucrative publishing contract. A talented actor, with the gift of moving us to tears or laughter, would be a shoe-in for the red carpet. A mind-blowing rock band in

Austin, TX would be an MTV staple (if MTV still showed videos).

And a hard-working, productive employee would be promotable.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

We know that hard work and talent don’t guaranty prominence in Hollywood, on Broadway, on iTunes… or in

Washington, DC. So why do we fall prey to the hard work fallacy where we work? Why do we think that if we just keep our head down, keep plugging away, one day we’ll get the recognition we deserve?

Is hard work, productivity, efficiency (etc.) necessary for career success? I sure hope so. But these qualities will only get you so far. Eventually, its not who you know, but who knows you, not what you know, but who knows that you know it, and, of course, who likes you. Only then are you promotable.

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Nope. But it will get you a job.

Cameron Martel has an interesting post today about the purpose of higher education. Like Cameron, the idealist in me would like to encourage you to get an education for your own personal growth, But realistically, yes, a business education will get you a job.

But it won’t get you promoted. People are usually hired for their technical skills–accounting, finance, marketing–the things you learn in business school. But promotions (at least eventually) depend on soft skills such as getting things done through others, strategic (and ethical) influence (aka office politics), and conflict management.

My advice is to stay current in your technical skills. But load up on training in soft skills.  Career frustration abounds when you follow the oh-so-logical path of getting better at you were hired to do in the first place. 

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Of course you do.

If you’ve worked in a company for more than a few months, you already have a brand. It doesn’t take long to get pigeon-holed.

Promotable employees think of themselves as self-employed service professionals. As president of your own service company, the value you provide your organization, and others’ perceptions of it, are not the same thing. In fact, if you aren’t actively managing your brand, I can almost guarantee you that your brand would surprise you. More than likely it’s completely out of whack with reality.

Promotable employees

1) know their brand,

2) are aware of the brand they would like to have, and

3) manage the difference between 1 and 2.

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