I have been in the workforce over thirty five years. I have worked for myself. I have worked for a Fortune 500 company, Apple, and I have worked for some small companies. With that much work experience, it is inevitable that you will learn some hard lessons. Seriously evaluating the company where you have a chance to work just might save you some real pain and agony.
If you are a person like myself who sincerely enjoys meeting people, working with people, and helping people grow and meet their dreams, you can sometimes get disillusioned by what you find in today's workplace. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with a competitive workplace, there are people in just about every company who would sell their mothers if it got them where they wanted to be. Given that, a workplace friendship with one of these folks is not just dangerous but often deadly, especially to your career.
These undependable workplace friends display an almost undetectable false sincerity. They work hard to win your trust. They will often pretend to bring you into their confidence only to try to find some way to trip you up. They are masters of their own interests while they pretend to want to help you succeed. Mostly they want to eliminate threats to their sphere of influence. If you are competent and end up winning the trust of the boss, there might not be room for them.
One of the most unsatisfying work experiences is trying to watch your back while doing your job. It's especially frustrating in companies where the only feedback you get is often from close workers. Imagine the fun if the feedback you're being given is structured to cause to you trip up.
Lots of times you'll find that certain companies grow more of these untrustworthy people than other companies. Companies which really don't have good internal communications often breed these folks. CEOs who share their real thoughts with only a few close associates often are enablers.
Knowledge becomes power, and often that power can be abused without anyone knowing since the knowledge is held by so few.
It's hard to put a finger on a strategy that protect yourself from someone who is actually trying to trip you up. It is especially hard in today's environment where employees often have to depend on each other for information to get their jobs done. If you want to sabotage someone, and you have the CEOs ear, it's not much of a challenge unless you actually care about treating people ethically. Most of the folks like the ones I'm discussing have no ethical standard on which to fall back. Corporations and small companies often are defined by the ethics practiced by their CEOs. Just do a Google search on "CEOs under investigation," and read a few of the results to understand why no one is bragging about the ethics displayed by American CEOs.
If you're in a company where a CEO depends on a close circle of friends for advice and where the CEO's ego is the defining factor of the company, you might want to consider just looking for another company. In the long run, the odds are against it being a good company. Unfettered CEOs as the Google results show are about as corrupting to an organization as absolute power is to government.
Actually the biggest lesson that I have learned in thirty five years is that most companies are what they are. They rarely change in a radical fashion. One individual certainly can't change them. Sometimes companies with some unusually nasty folks can actually be pretty successful by taking advantage of some mix of customers, investors, or even employees. Still the likelihood of that success lasting over time is slim. They end up being a flash in the pan. Eventually the competition gets them.
It's hard to measure a company by something other than finances, but I was recently at a sales awards dinner for a relatively small company. It was pretty clear the company had the formula right for lasting success. There were employees that had been with the company for nearly twenty years. The company had shown tremendous growth. Employees and owners had benefited over the years. The owners were humble even in success. People who worked only one day a week for the company were proud of their association with the company. Even those people were recognized for their contributions.
One of the owners got up and said something that probably is the best measure of a great company that I have heard in a long time.
"First of all I would like to thank all of you for working here. We know there are lots of places that you could work, we're proud that you chosen to work here, and we greatly appreciate the contribution that each of you have made over the years to creating the success that we are enjoying together as a company."
He then went on to thank above all the administrative people who in his belief provided the glue that held the company together in addition to creating that all important first impression for potential customers.
You could tell that this was more an inclusive club of winners than an exclusive one. What a better way of looking at winners. It included all the employees willing to give their all, no matter what it was to the company. Yet it was clear in everything that was said that the company and its managers valued employees not just for what they did for their company but for the kind of people they were and how they represented the company in their public and private lives.
The idea that being a winner is relative to your own skill set is a very positive one. Still this company had demonstrated that its sales people were absolutely at the top of their game by winning some top national awards while competing against thousands of others.
That's a recipe for success that many companies would do well to emulate. It's not a cult of the CEO recipe, but it will be far more sustainable. The companies which pin their hopes on the vision of a single CEO often end up more cult than company. That especially the case when the CEO thinks he's larger than life.
It takes more than a CEO to make a company that will stand the test of time.
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