Only the truly competent individual can be free of politics in an organization.
When you’re really good at what you do, you can rise above politics. It’s the mediocrities at work who have to play games and every study shows that although they sometimes succeed in the short-term, they invariably fail when everyone figures them out.
Do What You Have To Do
Select your work carefully and if you don’t love what you’re doing enough to want to be the best at it, get out! Flee from the boring or unsatisfying job as you would from a burning building. Working at something you don’t care about is the very best way to waste your life. Remember, this life is not a rehearsal for something else.
Look for Pay for Performance
One key to getting onto the fast-track is for you to work for the right company and the right boss. The right company is one that respects its people and practices pay for performance. The right company is dynamic, growing, open to new ideas, and full of opportunities for people with ambition and initiative.
How to Make Progress
A woman spoke to me at a seminar recently and reminded me that she had asked me a question at a seminar about two years ago. She had told me that she was very ambitious and hard-working but that she wasn’t making any progress in the large company where she worked. She felt it was because most of the senior executives were men in their fifties and sixties and that women had a hard time getting into positions of responsibility. What could she do?
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Change Jobs When Necessary
I told her quite frankly that there was nothing she could do. The senior executives and the company were not going to change. If she was really as capable as she said, I told her to find a job with a young, growing company that wouldn’t care whether she was a woman as long as she could do the job.
A Success Story
She told me that she had followed my advice, quit her job, much to the disapproval of her co-workers, and found a job with a small growing company - and it was exactly as I had said. She had been promoted twice in the last 14 months and was already earning 40% more than her best year with her previous company.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to assure that you are in the right position.
First, make sure that you really enjoy your work and that you do it well. You will never be successful at a job that you don’t like.
Second, be sure that there are lots of opportunities for you to grow, develop and advance in your company. Your future is too valuable to waste where there is no future.
Brian Tracy is Chairman and CEO of Brian Tracy International, a company specializing in the training and development of individuals and organizations.
Brian's goal is to help you achieve your personal and business goals faster and easier than you ever imagined.
Brian Tracy has consulted for more than 1,000 companies and addressed more than 4,000,000 people in 4,000 talks and seminars throughout the US, Canada and 40 other countries worldwide. As a Keynote speaker and seminar leader, he addresses more than 250,000 people each year.
He has studied, researched, written and spoken for 30 years in the fields of economics, history, business, philosophy and psychology. He is the top selling author of over 45 books that have been translated into dozens of languages.
You can learn more about Brian by reading his blog or visiting his website.