Introduction
The book starts with promising to provide practical steps for advancing your career, standing out as a leader and liking your life.
The author Patty Azzarello, who became the youngest general manager at HP (at the age of 36), shares her insights on how to grow the corporate ladder. Broadly, they fall into 3 big categories
Do Better: Set Ruthless priorities, work and learn more strategically, and deal with frustrating obstacles and stupid people
Look Better: Build your credibility with the people who can help (or blacklist) you
Connect Better: Develop your network without being political. Get on “the list” of people who get the best opportunities.
If you are motivated to grow in your corporate life and if you think leadership is your strength (and choice), Rise provides what is the difference between getting ahead and just working hard.
Many of us certainly would not be reading such a book without having a good idea about what it means by 1 and 2 steps. We would have also probably done a lot in those areas in our experience. The third point is the game changer and in fact what differentiates a middle manager and an executive. The most common misconception is that a lot of these things are not in your hand. One of the main purpose of this book is to educate us that “many” of these things are within your controllable limits and you can certainly influence them to move ahead.
This review aims to capture and validate some of the concepts that are so prevalent for growth but understood wrongly as “politics” or “unethical” which prevents many potential managers from going for it.
Do Better
Be Less Busy
Nobody can get there by doing less work but with limited time, you need to figure out your efforts and prioritize where to focus on.
As a leader, you are expected to be able to deal with an overwhelming workload and not to be overwhelmed.
No one cares how hard you work but adding value is critical. Your stamina of hard work is either a result of you being scared to stop or you fell into the trap of continuous work is a real value. Be conscious of it.
Be rational about the efforts and benefits and don't get into self pity of doing more without strategically adding value.
Ruthless priorities
Nobody can give you permission to be less busy but choose your time to spend on the highest business outcome.
Catch all the work but not do all the work. The work never comes across the table at you the way you should do it. Redefine with business outcome.
Just trying to do everything - you fail to do some things and it's the wrong way which won’t scale.
Your boss wants you to push back based on what makes sense. Your boss is expecting you to think through the business strategy and the workload and offer advice.
Focus on what you are doing and not on what you are not doing
Assign less than 100% of your time.
You need to connect the dots between your work laid and the most important and significant business outcome. Focus on what matters.
21-times Rule : Over communicate and create new social forms around what you are delivering. To understand any concept, people need to see it and hear it 21 times. So choose how to get what you deliver with your communication strategy. This is a proven strategy.
Pick only the top 3 as your priorities at any time. Your job is to figure out a better way to deal with all this stuff than to do all this stuff.
Make more time
Create a to do list and don’t do list. Hide yourself for some time for thinking and leave something unresolved.
The Agony and the paycheck
Doing what you love is bad advice. Do what you love for free and work for money. Spend the money you make on doing the things you love when you are not at work.
Take your real self to work
If you play to your core strengths, you will be much more successful.
Figure out your strengths and ride on it. You need to find out the essence of why you are good at what you are good at.
It is up to you to put yourself in a job where you can thrive based on your strengths.
Getting outside your comfort zone will make you realize your additional strengths or make you appreciate your core strengths more.
Communication skills are a must have.
They shoot workhorses
Be recognized for getting important work done but not everything. Being a workhorse will get you stuck.
Think you work again and see what value you can sustainably deliver. Overwork is mismanagement, fundamentally something wrong. Either make your boss understand or choose a different job. Be rational!
To break out of workhorse mode, you need to invent systems and processes that use less of your personal time to handle the work. Show that you can get the work done without being overwhelmed by the work!
The level dilemma
The higher up you go, you are not an expert anymore. You leave the work to the team. You need to be thinking how to provide bigger value together instead of focussing on everything your team does.
It is easier to just keep focussed on the work you know and to think you are adding value by being involved in the content and pitching in than to figure out what new work you should be doing.
If you are not sure about what level you should do, talk to everybody and see how you can support them and how you can deliver bigger value. Stay connected to reality.
Build out a strategy and create a process to execute that.Ensure there is an alignment across the board on what your team does. Look for game- changing opportunities
Develop talent. Improve communication. Find ways to reduce cost. Continually make connections outside your direct organization to create positive visibility for your team and create a broader base support.
Make your team more capable. If you don’t grow capacity over time, as the business gets harder, you and your team will no longer be qualified at your jobs.
Never carry detail up. Make sure that you are never the one to carry detail up. Part of working at the right level is always to turn detail into high-value information through summaries and abstractions. If you simply get the details and share them with the boss, then you are working at the wrong level.
Delegate or Die
Don’t think of delegating as just assigning work; Think of it as building value in your team.
Resist the temptation. Get over any guilt about it. Don’t cover for poort work. Don’t kill your planned hires. Get more comfortable. Accept imperfection. Let People fail. Measure and inspect.
Standout leadership is not just accepting the team you inherited; it is building a team capable of working at a higher level.
Your high performing team would not necessarily be a high-performing team for a different leader. Every time you step into a role as leader, you need to build your team
When possible, delegate to a process
Better with Less
Rise the bar or fall behind
Act like you own the budget. Reduce baseline costs year over year
Trust and Consequences
You are either building or destroying the trust. There is no neutral. If you are not actively building it, it is slipping away. You can’t do nothing and keep trust. You have to do something.
Be Yourself. You can’t fake being you
Be straightforward in difficult times.
Make the work matter
Smart person will never be damaged by a letter; a smarter person will thrive beneath him.
Tough on expectations and results but kind to people
Look Better
Credibility and Relevance
Credibility is inversely proportional to obstacles
Get more done; Get bigger results; Go Faster; Be relevant to the business;
Think like a General Manager. Don’t try to educate people about your function.
To be relevant, you need to be a translator when you communicate with people outside your function.
Personal Brand
You have a personal brand whether you know it or not. Inspect and see is that what you want.
Two ideas about brand : Behaviors and Consistency
Being good doesn’t help if you are inconsistent; It is better to be consistently bad than inconsistently good.
Get feedback on what people think of you and consciously create it the way you want.
Create brandable behaviors and be consistent. Change the ones you want.
It will make you more effective in your work; helps to sell better; gives you confidence.
.
Look Better
Was he the one with a bad haircut? Make your appearance up to date; You need to show the world, you care for your look and you get it the current trend to show your relevancy. It also conveys, you made an effort.
Age does not matter as long as you are current.
Going bald is an evergreen style.
Be Visible but not annoying
If you get ignored, you get blocked
You need to be thought of as better than your peers for the promotion to work. If you want the job, you need your boss and your boss’s peers to think you are the best candidate
Create a stakeholder communication plan
Use 7-minute meetings to get sharp output.
Communicate with people above and around your boss with thank you notes and positive feedbacks
Sell your ideas
Having brilliant ideas doesn’t mean people will listen to you. You need to sell them. People have to be intrigued by the idea and impressed with you personally to buy it.
Presentations are performances; Get People excited
Own the outcome of the communication, not just the communication
You will be judged harshly. Be clear, succinct, and compelling. No boring; Show personal presence;
Field questions succinctly and not get nervous. Hold the control of the conversation.
Connect Better
Mentorship
Successful people get a lot of help. Develop your network without being political. Get access to and win the best opportunities.
Mentors help you to show your blindspots and validate your convictions
Mentors can be potential influencers
Mentors can cover you during the re-org. How many can care about what happens to you when there is a re-org
Potential mentors are your boss’s peers and your 2nd up boss peers
Who can be your mentors? - People who work at an order or bigger scope, people who are two or three career stages ahead of you, people who are at least 10-15 years older and way ahead of you career-wise, talented peers, people from different industries, also someone in their twenties who is a master at new tech.
Seeking Mentorship: Start slow with casual conversation and build over time to get buy-in. Ask in a way that they can’t refuse. Don’t ask for a lot of time. Offer some value. Also Be a Mentor; It's a great way to expand the network and build your extra team. Reach out to people at lower levels in the organization and learn from them.
Make a conscious effort to meet people. Learn their names and say hello and show respect. Seek input and say thank you. Create opportunities for people to connect with you. Spend time in their world. Invite guests to your staff meeting.
Hold brainstorming sessions for your team and invite people from all over organization to participate
Share knowledge. Start an internal blog, share insights and encourage ideas and feedback
Give credit where it’s due.
If you are not seen as someone who has a lot of support, you will not be viewed as capable of doing a leadership role.
Authentic networking
Build genuine connections that create value for both the sides
Don’t let discomfort with new people keep you from building value into the network you already have. Consider meeting new people as a separate task, one that doesn’t prevent you from doing a better job of networking with people you know
Networking is about giving rather than taking. Always give more than what you take
Weak connections : The connections you keep in touch once a year. They go a long way without much time investment. They have access to different network and different environment and they can help to close many deals
Make time to meet new people. Schedule them. Have a genuine reason to meet them. Be personal, Be specific and no dead ends.
It's important to fight the tendency of not meeting people when everything is going great for you. Step away from work, schedule time to stay connected with people. If you don’t you will be uncomfortable when you need them.
Imagine That next role you want to take on
If you are not confident you can do the big job, the only best option is to be fearless and do it now. You can learn on the job rather than preparing for it for years which never materializes
You first need to get yourself there. Once you are there, learn really fast, do the job, and get more comfortable and confident as you go. Then leap again.
Fuel your imagination. Everyone gets to the CEO job for the first time sometime. Use your mentors to analyze your strengths and look forward to leap anytime.
People don’t imagine they are allowed to change their job and the business around them to make the future happen. This is the trap keeping the directors from moving up to C-levels. Get ideas from everywhere. It's up to you to change your job. Do the job that needs to be done, not the one that is given to you.
Nobody will guide you or make it happen for you when you go higher up. Imagine what is possible, set the right course, and then drive significant changes to get there.
The Experience paradox
You can’t get the job before you get the experience, but you can get the experience before you get the job
You want to get the experience in your desired job not in the skillset of the job contents. Don’t make the mistake of collecting all the cards before digging into the job. You first jump and learn fast to equip yourself.
You need to learn how to manage the functions but not how to do them. You need to be able to set and lead the agenda for business growth.
Find the people who are in the job and learn from them
Use other people's experience to answer the interview questions. You can make it genuine and at the same time you can prove that you are ready to use the experience to handle the scenarios if required.
Practice your next job before you are in it. Get actual experience in your next job before you are in it.
Don’t assume you will get all your work experience at work. Seek out a non-profit and get the experience you want to have.
Going Big
Make an executive presence.
Be fearless and handle all the situations. Comfort and confidence
The Executives don’t know everything. They just manage every situation.
Look Better
Step up. Don’t just be in the room or at the dinner at the end of the table. Say Something. Have a point of view. Reach out and bring them together as a team with your words and actions.
Ease and Grace. Deal with what is overwhelming privately and in public handle everything with grace. You should never appear overwhelmed
Avoid talking too much about your experience, avoid talking about how you solve the problems, avoid presenting yourself as a package of skills, avoid long discussions about tactics, avoid not fitting in socially, avoid being boring
Prepare the right stories. Make sure you consider the answers to the stories at the new level and test yourself to ensure that your answers are different from answers at the current level
Do start doing the job. Proactively prepare the assessment of the current state, challenges, opportunities and see what you can do to get the desired outcome. The idea is not to discuss what you have done in the past but what you will do in the future role.
Bring in external feedback, support and endorsement
Getting on the List
Every big job is a “List”. Unless you are on the list, nobody will consider you for the job.
Do some outreach and develop a relationship with someone in the inner circle.
Getting experience on the job before you are in it gets people associating you with being in that job and working at that level. Its gets them thinking about you in the desired role, giving you credibility you need to win the job
It is like a political campaign. It is. Every high stake winning is a campaign. It doesn’t need to be ugly and shallow. It can be in such a way that you are always giving more to your network than you are taking.
If you want the big job, this outreach is a necessary part of the process. Get comfortable with it.
Big executives are not smarter than you actually think. They just have courage to face the world without knowing everything!
Decide for yourself
The results of following these steps are very much subjective to your personality, your environment and your other goals. However, these are some of the solid steps that will make you not regret your choices irrespective of whether you are following them or not. Humans are complex, time is much more complex and continuously evolving. The leadership is not yet so mechanical that it can be cracked easily. While you need to figure out your own “Way” but the awareness of these steps can make you see things in perspective of what is happening around you.
At the end of the day, it is like a political campaign. If you are too passionate about something, rational about what it demands and ready to provide it, there is no barrier. However, this book also asks you to deeply reflect on what you want and it need not be a default choice for everyone to get to the peak of the corporate ladder with extreme compromise on other aspects of life.
