CHAPTER 41
WHAT IT TAKES TO GET AHEAD
Most management gurus tell you half the truth, at best, about what it takes to become an outstanding manager.
They will tell you about the need for vision, handling people, dealing with crises and all the other good stuff that makes up the corporate speaking circuit. Here are seven vital qualities you are less likely to hear them talk about:
1. Be ambitious for your organisation and yourself. Stretch yourself and your team to achieve more than ever; keep on learning and growing. Don’t accept excuses, don’t be a victim: take responsibility.
2. Work the politics. Find the right assignments, right support and right mentors. Set expectations well. Negotiate budgets hard. Wake up to the reality of corporate life.
3. Stay positive, stay motivated. Even when you are dealing with surly customers, sneaky colleagues, aggressive bosses and unhelpful staff, learn to wear the mask: stay calm and be positive. The moment you descend to their level, you lose.
4. Working in vehicles. If you cannot work in taxis, trains and planes, you will waste more time than you can afford. Staring out of the window mindlessly is not good.
5. Dieting. Managers are surrounded by biscuits, cookies and other corporate death food; and then there are the inevitable lunches, dinners and hotel breakfasts. Either learn to love the fruit, or start jogging. Or die early as an obese alcoholic. But to this day, some firms demand that you put your liver on the line: if you do not drink and entertain, you fail. Pick your diet to fit your firm.
6. Sleeping on planes and dealing with jet lag. In any large organisation, a manager who is going places will go to many places: you will spend a large amount of time on planes. Business class is not for fancy meals and watching movies: it is for work or sleep.
7. Ruthless time management. Queues were invented to let leaders catch up with emails and phone calls; ditch or delegate everything you can; fix appointments around your diary, not around other people’s. One of the joys of top management is that you will never suffer the rush hour. You will arrive before it and leave after it. Make time work for you.
These seven qualities add up to a person who is pretty driven: they are often not comfortable people to be with. Not surprisingly, many people prefer to keep their humanity and their life than make the sacrifices to get to the top. You choose.