A shortcut to getting promoted

In all these years I have seen that there is only one way of getting promoted and fast. 'Do your managers job'. I can hear people saying "What are you talking about???? This is not done!!!! My manager will think that I am taking over his or her role!". I have been working at different companies and seen people climb up the corporate latter very quickly because they the increased their 'locus of control'. Meaning they looked at what their managers wanted (where their managers were hurting) and made it their business to go the extra mile to solve the problem before they were asked to, without disrupting their managers plans for the team! "It is not that easy Harsha!" you say, "Give me an example of how I can do this".

Here goes… In one my previous jobs, our manager was a highly innovate, highly dynamic, micro manager of the nth degree. While he was a visionary he would do treat everyone as gophers. While most of the team members felt helpless and talked behind his back, one of the team members (Let us call her Jill) would just stick to her business and never indulge in loose talk. She knew the strengths and weakness of our manager. She would study what our manager did with the information that we provided him. She would then go the extra mile and analyze the data that we provided our manager to help him present the information to customer and his management alike.

Jill's proactive attitude was so effective that very soon our manager would not take any major decisions without running it by Jill (while he continued to treat the rest of us like gophers!). Jill's work ethics, her view of the team problems and going above and beyond without side stepping our manager was so impactful that within a year our manager was promoted and Jill become our new manager despite being five years younger than the average team age and despite not having an MBA.

Jill's attitude was so good and her work ethics were so incredible that today she is the CTO of a fortune 500 company in the world!

You can do the same! No two ways about it. The only way to grow is to provide more value to the organization. Promotions are NOT an automatic. Promotions are not about age or qualifications. Great careers are all about providing more value to the organizations and taking more responsibility when everyone complains about the problems!

Let us know the challenges you are facing in your teams and career. We are here for you.