Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Who Moved My Cheese?

The Big Idea


Cheese is a metaphor for what you want to have in life – whether it is a good job, a loving relationship, money, or spiritual peace of mind. Cheese is what we think will make us happy, and when circumstances take it away, different people deal with change in different ways. Four characters in this delightful parable represent parts of ourselves whenever we are confronted with change. Discover how you can let change work to your advantage and let it lead you to success!

The Maze

Four characters live in a maze and look for cheese to nourish them and make them happy. The maze is where you spend time looking for what you want. It may be the organization you work in, the relationships you have in your life, or the community you live in.

Parts of All of Us

Two of the characters named Sniff and Scurry are mice. They represent parts of us that are simple and instinctive. Hem and Haw are the little people, representing those complex parts of us as human beings. Sometimes we are like Sniff, who anticipates change early by sniffing it out, or Scurry, who quickly scurries into action and adapts. Maybe we are more like Hem, who denies change and resists it out of fear, or Haw, who learns to adapt in time when he sees something better. Whatever part of us we choose, we all share the common need to find our way in the maze of life and succeed in changing times.

Wisdom in a Nutshell from Who Moved My Cheese?

• Anticipate change.

• Adapt quickly.

• Enjoy change.

• Be ready to change quickly, again and again.

• Having Cheese makes you happy.

• The more important your Cheese is to you, the more you want to hold on to it.

• If you do not change, you can become extinct.

• Ask yourself “What would I do if I weren’t afraid?”

• Smell the Cheese often so you know when it is getting old.

• Movement in a new direction helps you find New Cheese.

• When you move beyond your fear, you feel free.

• Imagining myself enjoying New Cheese, even before I find it, leads me to it.

• The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find New Cheese.

• It is safer to search in the maze than remain in a cheeseless situation.

• Old beliefs do not lead you to New Cheese.

• When you see that you can find and enjoy New Cheese, you change course.

• Noticing small changes early helps you adapt to the bigger changes that are to come.

• Read the Handwriting on the Wall

• Change happens. They keep moving the Cheese.

• Move with the Cheese and enjoy it!

The Story Behind the Story

Kenneth Blanchard, Ph.D. relates how the Cheese story has made a difference in the lives of many people all over the world. This simple parable has been credited with saving careers, marriages, and lives! NBC-TV Olympic broadcaster Charlie Jones heard the story and it helped him overcome his anger about being transferred from his usual Track and Field assignment to Swimming and Diving, where he had little experience. He realized his boss had “moved his cheese”, so he adapted, learned the two new sports, and in the process, found that doing something new made him feel young.

His boss soon recognized his new attitude and energy, and gave him better assignments. Charlie went on to enjoy more success and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame Broadcaster’s Alley.

A Gathering

One sunny Sunday in Chicago, a group of former classmates gathered for lunch to catch up on each other’s lives, having attended their high school reunion the night before. The topic came around to change, and how each person experienced it. Michael tells the group The Story.

Who Moved My Cheese?

Everyday Hem, Haw, Sniff, and Scurry went about their business collecting and eating cheese. Every morning, the mice and little men put on their jogging suits and running shoes, left their homes, and raced around the maze looking for their favorite Cheese.

They each found their own kind of cheese one day at the end of one of the corridors in Cheese Station C. Every morning the mice and men headed over to Cheese Station C and soon they established their own routines.

Sniff and Scurry woke up early everyday, always following the same route. The mice would arrive at the station, tie their running shoes together, and hang them around their necks so they could get to them quickly whenever they needed to.

Hem and Haw followed the same routine for a while, but later on, they awoke a little later each day, dressed slower, and walked to Station C, always assuming there would be Cheese waiting for them. In fact, the little people put away their running shoes, and grew very comfortable in Station C. Later, this over-confidence turned into arrogance.

The mice, on the other hand, always inspected the area, and noticed the Cheese supply was getting smaller every day.

One morning they discovered there was no more cheese. The mice did not overanalyze things, they knew it was coming, so they simply untied their running shoes from their necks and put them on. The mice wasted no time and immediately ventured into the maze in search of New Cheese.

Hem and Haw arrived later, and having taken their Cheese for granted, they were surprised to find there was no more cheese. Hem yelled, “Who moved my Cheese?”

Because the Cheese was so important to them, the two little people spent too much time deciding what to do. They couldn’t believe the Cheese was gone.

After much whining, Haw suggested,

MAYBE WE SHOULD JUST STOP ANALYZING THE SITUATION SO MUCH

AND JUST GET GOING AND FIND SOME NEW CHEESE.

While Hem and Haw were wasting time fretting over their situation, Sniff and Scurry had already found a great supply of New Cheese at Cheese Station N.

Haw began to imagine himself tasting and enjoying New Cheese. Hem refused to leave Cheese Station C. Haw also began to realize his fear was keeping him from leaving Hem and going back into the maze. He painted a picture in his mind of himself venturing out into the maze and eventually finding New Cheese.

Haw was in the habit of writing thoughts on the wall for Hem to read. Before leaving he wrote, “If you do not change, you become extinct.” Haw would write thoughts like these every now and then as he went about the maze, hoping Hem would venture out of Station C and read the handwriting on the wall.

Haw found a little cheese here and there. As he moved through the maze, he learned several things for himself:

He needed to let go of his fears.

He realized what lies out there could be a lot better, not worse.

He should be alert in order to anticipate change, and next time, periodically smell the cheese to check if it is getting old.

And to learn these important lessons he had to tell himself:

GET OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE.

He found a cheese station but it was empty. He realized that if he had moved sooner, he would have very likely found a good deal of New Cheese here. So he wrote on the wall:

• The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find New Cheese.

Haw went back to the cheeseless station to offer Hem some bits of Cheese he had picked up along the way. Hem turned it down because he wanted the cheese he was used to. Haw went back into the maze.

Haw soon came to realize:

• The fear you let build up in your mind is worse than the situation that actually exists.

WHAT YOU ARE AFRAID OF IS NEVER AS BAD AS WHAT YOU IMAGINE.

• When you change what you believe, you change what you do.

Haw soon found New Cheese at Station N, and met up with his old friends Sniff and Scurry who looked like they had been there for quite some time because they had grown fat.

Haw reflected as he enjoyed his New Cheese. He realized many more things:

He had been holding onto the illusion of Old Cheese that was no longer there.

He had started to change as soon as he learned to laugh at his own mistakes, then he was able to let go and move on.

Sniff and Scurry kept life simple. They didn’t overanalyze or overcomplicate things. They simply moved with the Cheese.

The mistakes he made in the past can be used to plan for the future.

Notice the little changes so you are better prepared for the big change that might be coming.

The biggest inhibitor of change lies within your self. Nothing gets better until You change.

THERE IS ALWAYS NEW CHEESE OUT THERE.

While Haw still had a supply of cheese, he often went out and explored new areas in order to stay in touch with what was happening around him. He knew it was safer to be aware of his real choices than to isolate himself in his comfort zone.

A Discussion

Michael finished telling the story and the group of former classmates gathered at a hotel lounge later that evening for drinks. Each one could identify with one of the characters in the story. Nathan pointed out, “Change happens to all of us.” The group talked about how the parable related to the changes in their professional and personal lives.

Nathan’s retail business suffered from unanticipated change. Their chain of small stores had to compete with mega-stores. These retail giants had huge inventory and low prices, forcing Nathan to close down some of the stores in their chain.

Jessica’s encyclopedia company resisted change when someone suggested they sell their product in disk format. The idea was that disks would be cheaper to update and produce, and would sell for a fraction of the cost of actual hardbound encyclopedias. Jessica’s company didn’t change but their competitor did. Sales fell badly, and her job security became threatened. She may need to go out into the maze and look for New Cheese.

Michael applied the story to his work, asking each person in his organization who they thought they were: Sniff, Scurry, Hem or Haw. He recognized each character type had to be treated differently.

Sniffs could sniff out changes in the marketplace, and update the corporate vision. They identified changes as well as possible new products and services consumers would want.

The Scurrys liked to get things done, so they took action based on the new corporate vision. They only needed to be monitored so they didn’t scurry off in the wrong direction.

The Hems wanted to work in a place that was safe and where the changes made sense to them, turning them into Haws. If they didn’t change, they were eventually fired.

The Haws were hesitant at first, but were open-minded enough to learn something new, and adapted.

Richard realized how his children had been acting like Hem lately. They were angry and didn’t want to accept the change in their family, since Richard had recently separated from his wife.

Jessica and Cory each recognized it was time for New Cheese in their personal relationships, which could mean getting out of a bad relationship, or adapting new behaviors to save the relationship.

Richard also thought perhaps New Cheese could mean changing the way he behaved on the job rather than completely changing jobs.

Michael concluded that the Cheese parable works best when everyone in the organization knows about it, because an organization can only change when enough people in it change. He added that passing the story on to people they wanted to do business with had proved profitable. They promoted themselves as that client’s New Cheese, which led to new business.


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Disruptive Ideas

The Big Idea


In a time when organizations simultaneously run multiple corporate initiatives and large change programs, Disruptive Ideas tells us that – contrary to the collective mindset that says that big problems need big solutions – all you need is a small set of powerful rules to create big impact.



In his previous book, Viral Change, Leandro Herrero described how a small set of behaviors, spread by a small number of people, can create sustainable change. In this follow-up book, the author suggests a menu of 10 'structures', 10 'processes' and 10 'behaviors' that have the power to transform an organization.



These 30 disruptive ideas can be implemented at any time and at almost no cost; and what's more... you don't even need them all. But their compound effect – the 10+10+10 maths – will be more powerful than vast corporate programs with dozens of objectives and efficiency targets.





Why You Need This Book

This book will appeal to people at different levels of management or leadership – those who want to reshape their culture by enhancing working practices and in general aiming at greater organizational effectiveness. Its practical nature will appeal to all who want to implement key ideas that have the power to transform any organization, without having to embark upon a massive change management program.



Structures



TEAM 365: THE TEAM THAT (ALMOST) DOESN’T MEET. In ‘team 365’ mode, the meeting is an occasional event, something that happens when needed. It’s not the center of activity for the team. Instead, the emphasis is on the team as a continuous collaboration structure. The meeting is merely a device for occasional needs. Literally, Team 365 is always meeting, so it doesn’t really need to meet. Well, almost.



In team 365, the project leader is also a ‘project leader 365’, not just the information traffic warden pre, during and post-meeting. Project leaders facilitate continuous discussion and the working together of members, whether in duos, trios or bigger groups.



DOUBLE HATS (ONE BOSS IS NOT ENOUGH). How can you implement double hats? Assign competing or parallel responsibilities. This is not a simple division of the cake or a justification for doing two jobs for the price of one. At senior level, make double hats a requirement. Watching a key competitor and having broader managerial responsibilities at the same time works very well for them!



SHADOW JOBS. Through shadowing, knowledge gets spread and extra expertise is created. It may be a bit counterintuitive when you implement it for the first time, particularly if you pay too much attention to the ‘Focus Police’, who will be horrified. But it will pay off. Like any other of these 10+10+10 disruptive ideas, this one has the potential to transform the organization into a true knowledge sharing one, where the risk of losing corporate I.Q is minimized.



EVERYTHING A PROJECT. ‘Everything is a project’ is a powerful philosophy. It injects discipline into what we do. If you work in an organization that has ‘projects’ and ‘other things’ (not called projects), you may be at risk of having two separate worlds with different standards. When we say Joe works on a project or is a member of project X, we usually mean that he is part of a group that has objectives, timelines, milestones and resources.



MANAGEMENT BY INVITATION. Most management teams are formed by what the organization chart dictates; by an ‘accidental’ reporting line. There may be alternative arrangements, but the principle is one of ‘by invitation only’. A principle that forces you to stop taking for granted the fact that membership will happen automatically or that grade or rank are a form of entitlement. It may be counterintuitive at first, but it is very effective. Much of the counterintuitive aspect comes from the fact that we tend to have pre-conceived ideas about how the organization should work.



FIXED-TERM TEAMS. To fix a term for teams and their membership sounds like yet another ‘obvious’ thing to do, but the reality is that in many cases teams seem to have a life of their own and tend to drag on well beyond their ‘sell-by date’. It should be a simple discipline to design a beginning and an end for teams, with their goals, objectives and milestones mapped out in between.



NET-WORK, NOT MORE TEAMWORK. Teams are predictable structures. They are very good for operational delivery, but not so good for strategy or innovation. A certain degree of ‘groupthink’ is always present. Putting the net-work before the teamwork ensures the continuous flow of new ideas. If the old saying “If you have two people who think the same, fire one of them!” were to be applied to teams, the world population of teams would shrink by 50%.



SUPPORT FUNCTIONS ARE BUSINESSES (‘MARKET TESTED’). Support functions such as HR, Finance or IT should survive the market test. Could they become self-contained businesses with their own portfolio of clients? If the answer is no, chances are you could outsource all of them. If the answer is yes, don’t let them go.



MEMBERSHIP BIDS. Inviting bids from your own internal market for the membership of a project or team will create a culture where these membership decisions are assessed on their own merits and not in a ‘management by default’ mode. The consequences are significant.



HOME EFFECTS. Projects of any kind need a home, a place where they belong. This may sound trivial and just like another ‘obvious thing’. However, in the organization there are often many things that seem to be homeless. They don’t really belong anywhere. People in organizations tend to determine their own loyalties. There are people happy to belong to a global enterprise and its global objectives, but more frequently you will find that people are happier to belong to a particular project or to the endeavors of a particular country.



Processes



INTERNAL CLOCKS. Organizational business life is rhythmical and cyclical with clocks set externally to mark things such as ‘quarters’ and ‘year end’. This tends to orchestrate internal cycles, but also creates straightjackets. You should create your own internal clocks, your own internal game.



DECISIONS PUSHED DOWN (AND IN REAL TIME). When a decision is made by a management team in a satisfactory way, it can create a good feeling of completion and achievement. But if that decision could have been made at a lower level in the organization, then completion and feeling good about it don’t equal effectiveness. Push decisions down to the lowest possible level.



SCAN FOR TALENT, FIND A JOB. Scanning for talent and then bringing it into the company should be part of everybody’s job description, particularly at senior level. And it should be a real objective with consequences for their bonus, not just a nice idea they pay lip service to.



FIX ACCOUNTABILITIES (IF NOTHING ELSE). If you look around your organization, you must be able to map these areas of accountability and responsibility in a way that is clear (everybody can understand it) and transparent (everybody is informed).



FAKE PROJECT, BEAT OUTLOOK. Calendars manage us and not the other way around. Protecting people’s space and time is a project to be taken seriously. Treat your time and other people’s time as the most important project. Apply the same discipline you use for other projects. That includes fixing meetings with yourself.



UNCLUTTERING. Many corporate initiatives compete for airtime in the employee’s hearts and minds. Unnecessary organizational complexity and its associated terminology is a significant feature of modern corporate life. You need simple, ruthless and urgent uncluttering – not reengineering. Clean up and do less.



3-WAY, 365 PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL. Performance appraisal should be an ongoing process, not just an end-of-year affair. It should also be 3-way: supervisor à employee; employee à supervisor and both à ‘the system’. This ongoing circle (top-down, bottom-up) and asking “Do you have what you need?” is a powerful disruptive rule leading to true transformation. It’s not the usual way. But it works miracles.



FACE IT, DON’T EMAIL IT. Reducing email communication in favor of more direct ‘face-to-face’ contact is in itself a powerful way of transforming the corporate environment and of boosting precious social skills. E-mail is as addictive as slot machine gambling, but it has not been recognized as an illness yet.



LESS POWERPOINT, MORE STORIES. Stories travel better across the organization than clinical PowerPoint presentations. They have the power to create organizational glue. Switching to stories and slide-less presentations is a small revolution in itself, but with great positive consequences.



BE IMPERFECT. To accept and embrace imperfection and mistakes as a path to progress means that there will be practical and visible implications:



Create the Hall of Fame of Mistakes where mistakes are publicly displayed. Once you start (and if you are in senior management, I suggest you put your mistakes up first), it will be contagious and people will have no problem sharing them.

Ask for decisions based on imperfect data and the associated risk assessment.

Accept lower probabilities of success.

Spend time on scenario planning and discussion, on exploring and ‘prototyping’ ideas.

Have conversations about risks and their behavioral consequences.

Police, spot and highlight instances where mistakes have been punished.

Behaviors



GO TO SOURCE (AND TURN THE VOLUME DOWN). Invalidated rumors (corporate, project, group, individuals), minor issues and personal or group fears are reinforced by passing them along. There is only a fine line between benign rumors and a toxic atmosphere. Also, half-truths have a tendency to spread faster than the real truth. By constantly decreasing the decibels and going to the primary source of information to clarify issues, you will detox the organization fast and you will create a culture of transparency.



KEEP PROMISES. Keeping promises is a simple behavior that has the power to boost accountability, credibility and trust, all in one. Just imagine for a second that everybody in your organization kept their promises! It’s so simple that it’s easily trivialized. ‘Keeping promises’ as a behavior needs to be reinforced by acknowledging it when it happens and by showing the benefits.



COLLABORATION (‘THE VOLUNTEERS’). Collaboration is the new competitive advantage. The current business environment (be that in a private or public company, or an NGO) can be described with one single word: interdependence. Virtually no job can be done in isolation. Success, any kind of it, depends on somebody else’s success. This is the reality, both at macro social and micro social levels.



REWARD OUTPUTS. In managerial terms, you reward inputs (e.g. effort) because you want outputs (e.g. productivity). In behavioral terms, if you reward inputs, you will get more inputs and not the outputs you were really after. Rewarding effort does not necessarily lead to a better outcome. It only leads to people making more efforts.



BEHAVE LIKE AN INVESTOR. Employees are investors of their own human capital. They are no different from any other kind of investor. Therefore, performance appraisals should first focus on how the (human) capital has grown. By doing this, you can transform the organization. Everything from plain management to HR management would be completely different. Which is as scary as it is exciting.



RESPECT THE PAST, LEAVE IT TO ARCHAELOGISTS. These are 10 approaches for dealing with the past:



Past as pride and pillar. Looking back, you can see the foundations, the raison d’être, the justification for today’s existence.

Past as baggage and shame. Looking back, you recognize the mistakes and the liabilities; the things you wish never happened.

Past as pain. Sometimes the past can be of a haunting nature: it is there all the time to remind you of something, to ask you for understanding/relief/an explanation.

Past as vacuum filler. People who use the past to fill a vacuum are sometimes insufficiently linked to the present.

Past as comfort. A benign form of the above, this is the ‘been there, done that’ approach.

Past as rear-view mirror. ‘Rear-view mirror’ people and organizations constantly look at the past for reference, almost automatically and unconsciously, like when driving.

Past as predictor. What happened before is seen as a good way to predict the future and therefore deal with uncertainty. People who use the past as a predictor of the future live rather linear lives, determined by previous experiences.

Past, what past? This is another extreme, which is more frequent than you think. People and organizations can easily go into denial mode and survive like that for a long time.

Past as perspective. Some people seem to manage to use the past as a healthy perspective for their own present reality. Healthy detachment is one of the best-kept secrets.

Past as a profession. For some reason, some people choose to become historians, palaeontologists, archaeologists or psycho-analysts. They all have a (probably genetic) fascination with the past in common.

ASK THE QUESTION. Asking “What is the question?” - i.e., what are we trying to address; what is the real issue on the table or why are we doing this? - is a behavior that can spread virally very fast. All it takes is a few people to start the practice! The potential to re-direct ideas and avoid big fiascos is enormous.



LOSE CONTROL. The more ‘command-and-control’ you practice, the less control you actually have and the more you’ll have to command. In today’s organizational life, there is little room for the ‘and’ between the words ‘command’ and ‘control’. If anything, it is ‘command and be a slave to it’. Lose control and you will actually gain more control.



CAN IT BE DONE DIFFERENTLY? There is no such thing as an innovative culture. There are only cultures where people do innovative things. These sorts of cultures are created by innovative behavior, such as seeking unpredictable answers and always asking “can this be done differently?”



TALK THE WALK. Talk the walk is highly viral because people will see you doing something and then they will hear about the philosophy or the rationale behind it. Seeing the behavior is the first step to successful imitation. Start with the action, follow up with the words. It doesn’t get more disruptive than that!



Final Words

It would be a terrible idea to allocate one ‘energy point’ to each disruptive idea, because you only need a few to have real transformation. And if you want to get serious transformation faster, do it virally. Start somewhere, choose some champions and make sure they know how to reinforce behaviors and how to spread the chosen ideas to other parts of the organization.










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Executive Warfare

Book Summary Preview : Executive Warfare


By David F. D’Alessandro with Michele Owens

McGraw–Hill, 2008

ISBN 978-0-07-15423-8

263 pages





The Big Idea




It's not enough anymore to be smart, hard-working, and able to show results – because nowadays everybody is smart, hard-working, and able to show results.



What really sets you apart are the relationships you build with people of influence. These people can include your peers, your employees, your organization's directors, reporters, vendors, and regulators – as well as the people directly above you in the organizational hierarchy.



In senior management, you no longer answer to just one boss. There is now a hazy matrix of hundreds of bosses both inside and outside the office, any one of whom can stop you cold or give you a tremendous push forward. “Executive Warfare” offers concrete advice for handling all of them, including:



YOUR PEERS: They can be either the most valuable allies or the most dangerous enemies.

THE CEO: Her office is often where the real fairy dust is kept. Make sure you have a good relationship with her.

THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS: They won't judge you fairly if all they see of you are your PowerPoint presentations.

YOUR DIRECT REPORTS: These people are your vital organs, so treat them accordingly. And if you find a “blood clot” among them, excise that person before he kills you.

YOUR RIVALS: It's not always wise to shoot at them, but if you do, do not shoot to wound.



Why You Need This Book



This book will tell you how to lead all your many bosses to the inevitable conclusion that you and you alone have what it takes to run the show.



In his bestsellers “Brand Warfare” and “Career Warfare”, author David D'Alessandro offered sharp advice for building a brand and building a career. Now “Executive Warfare” is the advanced class for the truly ambitious. It will teach you what it takes to rise to the top – and to do the even harder thing, which is to survive there.



Attitude, Risk, and Luck: They Are the Most Influential Bosses



To rise, you may have to broaden your horizons, and you may have to look for an employer who will allow you to broaden them. You’ll also need three things to make the most of the chances you are given: the right attitude, a willingness to take calculated risks, and dumb luck.



ATTITUDE: The Boss Within



It’s incredibly important to get your own head in the game if you intend to rise. If you are bossed around by your own greed, arrogance, or childish lack of discipline, you will give people reason to doubt you, and you will undermine yourself.



RISK: Slice It, Dice It, and If It Looks Good, Eat It for Breakfast



One of the most significant attitude adjustments you will have to make as you move into higher management is your attitude toward risks. Higher management is all about handling risks intelligently and in a calculated fashion.



LUCK: Smarter Than Reaching for the Brass Ring Is Letting It Slap You in the Nose



There is no such thing in this world as a pure meritocracy. Nobody gets to the top without being lucky. Luck happens to the most deserving of people and some of the most undeserving.



Not even the most powerful or ambitious person can force lighting to strike. But you can maneuver yourself into a position where it’s more likely you strike. Figure out how to stand tall in an open field as soon as you can.



Bosses: You Need a License to Cut Hair, but Not to Manage and Control Thousands of People



The first rule of your relationship with your boss is to understand that it’s a business transaction. Most of the time, they are merely the major obstacle standing between you and the prize. Love them or hate them, what you really want is to get beyond them.



If you are willing to give the boss the truth, you’re probably going to engage in some spirited debate with your boss as part of the decision-making process. This leads to the second thing you need to do to be a valuable instrument: Understand that once the decision is made, even if you don’t agree with it and have argued against it, you must drop your opposition and execute it to the best of your abilities.



It also is helpful to understand something beyond the immediate goal. Be eager to always want to know what your boss’ next move is going to be.



The fourth thing you have to do is to assure the boss that you are both loyal and discreet. No matter how incompetent or unpleasant he may be, never tell stories about your boss. Never make the boss feel betrayed – unless, of course, you are ready to grab the boss’ job.



Peers: Understand That They Are Your Most Valuable Allies… or Your Most Dangerous Enemies



CULTIVATING THE “CONSIGLIERI” (ALSO KNOWN AS SUCKING UP)



You can identify the consiglieri by their unfettered access to the boss. These are the people able to walk into the office of the executive director or president or CEO on a moment’s notice and just glide past the assistant, with or without an appointment.



Cultivating the consiglieri is not just a smart defensive move. They can also be extraordinarily helpful as you struggle to get things done. Use your peers and they can have a lot of influence on your success. It’s also good for them because it allows them to demonstrate to the boss how ahead of they curve they are. The key thing to understand is that such a relationship only works if you are willing to be generous with the credit for your great idea.




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