Ever wish that marketing directors would share the "cheat codes" for getting to their position? A few mentors did that for me when I was young, and so now I'm sharing them here.
Cheat Code #2 - Learn the Currency and Deal in it
Every office has a currency that isn't obvious on the surface. It is the thing that people in your company value. This might be education, it might be joining the company softball team, it might be participation in a client organization...
Whatever your context, there is something you will be measured on that no one will mention directly. It is up to you to figure it out.
I once heard a firm owner share how he had seen many executives lose their quality of life when their health failed. He became so impassioned that people could take steps to positively impact their own health that he launched a program in his firm called
Simply Well which touched everything from an employee being able to do things to lower what they paid for their family's insurance, to exercise challenges to the types of food the firm catered for business lunches. At one of these catered events, I stood in a buffet line with the healthy choices spread out before me and heard the man behind me mutter about
Simply Hell. He was clueless that being proactive about health was the currency his boss was dealing in.
Currency varies from place to place, and it isn't enough to know it exists. You have to figure out what it is. The only consistent way I've learned to decipher it in a new organization is by
listening to the stories people tell. Here are a few examples…
If the stories are about working long hours and the company gives you a smart phone, then the currency might be availability.
If the stories include tales of driving to the airport to make the last FedEx ship out, then the currency may be "the diving catch."
If the stories feature a villain (which can sometimes be an ex-employee) lying to a client, then the currency might be honesty.
If the stories feature a hero that is getting his doctorate, then the currency might be education.
Some people naturally pick up the clues to an organization's values. Others are oblivious and still others balk at them. In the best scenarios, an organization's currency is aligned with your own. But it doesn't have to be. You can simply be smart about it.
Once you figure out the currency in your context? You have to deal in it. It is all about creating value in that system. So, if the currency is participation on the company softball team, you have options. You can grab a glove and sign up, attend and cheer from the stands or write blurbs and share photos of the game on the company intranet.
Create value in an organization's currency and it raises your value.
But shhhh…don't tell anybody.