Swimming Upstream - Chapter One - Your Boss's Calendar - Part 1

Too many professionals only pay attention to their own calendar. And too many managers only pay attention to theirs, and their directs. But if you want to grow your responsibilities and therefore your career, you’ve got to think outside of your own team. That thinking starts with your boss, your link to the rest of the organization.

Part of professional development is swimming upstream. That means learning what’s happening both above and outside of your organization, as well as what’s coming in the future. If you’re standing in a stream, the water upstream from you eventually becomes the water you’re standing in.

What are the causes of your team’s work? What value does your team’s work provide for the rest of the organization? Where does the work come from? Who are the drivers of the work you’re responsible for? What do those who consume your team’s output think about that work? And what are their internal and external customers thinking about relative to their inputs and their customers?

We have spent 20 years teaching the basics of managing others here on Manager Tools. Now, with the advent of Executive Tools, we’re going to start letting some executive recommendations leak into our regular Manager Tools content. The idea is that if you know some simple basics about executive life, you can become a better manager, even if you don’t aspire to be an executive. But it’s also because if you are a good manager but you’ve never thought about becoming an executive, we would encourage you to reconsider that limitation on your career. Because great managers are much more likely to become great executives than poor managers who simply aspire to more power and money and control.

The fact is, once you’ve mastered the basics of management, you’ve only started on your journey towards professional mastery. Becoming a competent manager is like getting a black belt in the martial arts. Any martial artist will tell you: at the black belt level is where the real learning begins.

Our Swimming Upstream guidance will address those areas where managers can become more effective now by learning what happens outside of their part of the organization. In this guidance, we’ll share with you some basic things you can do right away to “swim upstream” into the world of the executives above you. It will make you more aware of the forces that work on you and your team. By doing so, you will become better able to predict and respond to them. You will become more effective now, and if you become an executive, you’ll be more effective then as well.