Climbing that Ladder Fast

How To Rise Fast At Work: A True Story

Avril David, 12.21.09, 06:00 PM EST

The wise moves that outpaced a wily and ambitious colleague.

This is a true story about two acquaintances of mine. One knew instinctively exactly how to get ahead in the workplace. The other thought he knew--and was dead wrong. Most of us would probably behave pretty much the way the latter did. I believe their experiences hold lessons for all of us.

The first of them, the successful one, I'll call Mark. Mark got a degree in finance from New York University's Stern School of Business in the spring of 2006 and landed a job as an analyst at a small investment firm in New York. Given the cutthroat atmosphere of his business school classes, Mark was fairly certain that his first foray into the working world of finance would be a high intensity, high-competition experience.

Though his organization was small, he realized that to rise within the ranks he would have to find some way to differentiate himself among his peers. He figured there were two traditional ways he could try to do so. He could strive to perform his tasks faster and better than his peers and hope to be recognized for doing a better job, or he could schmooze his way to the top by identifying the most important people in the organization and trying to win their favor.

However, he wasn't a self-promoter by nature, and he also wasn't sure he could outpace other people at the kind of work in Excel spreadsheets he'd be doing. He decided that before deciding which course to take, he'd need to learn all he could about the company he was working for.

From day one, Mark asked people questions about what they were working on, who they were working with and how they got their work done. It didn't matter if a person was junior or senior, administrative assistant or lead investor. He simply wanted to know what he could about what they did and the organization he was working for.

Once he had a clear sense of all of the moving parts within the company, he began to see ways its operations could be improved. Making those improvements lay outside his job description, but he believed it made sense to fix what he could easily fix, drawing on the understanding he was gathering of how the people in the organization operated.

At first the improvements Mark made were far from glamorous. In fact his peers derided him for wasting his time on actions they said would never increase his bonus. He began ordering lunch for the investment group's weekly meeting and making sure office supplies were ordered on time and in the right quantities. It was obvious he didn't mind pitching in where help was needed, and his supervisors began to notice his work ethic. They saw him making sure that people got the tools that they needed to do their jobs efficiently. And they saw everyone benefiting.

Without being a natural networker and without competing, Mark had begun networking organically. People appreciated what he did because it wasn't based on self-promotion and because it genuinely helped them.

Eventually, as Mark learned more about the needs of the organization, he realized that some of the changes that needed to be made would be easier if new tools and skills were used to complete certain tasks. Not one to let down the team, he began teaching himself new Excel functions and other software programs in the evenings. Soon he was an expert at Excel, the go-to person in his investment group and responsible for getting his peers up to speed on new techniques. In effect he was managing.

As one of very few people at the company who fully understood both internal administrative needs and external investor requirements, he began to be included in strategic meetings regarding compliance, new software and the streamlining of processes to make the organization as a whole more effective. And so a non-self-promoting, non-competing newbie found himself managing and training his peers. He was exceeding performance expectations for his role with the newly acquired skills and expertise and was being recognized as a strategic thinker and leader within the organization. He was promoted to senior analyst by the end of his first year and received a bonus 50% bigger than any of his peers got.

Mark achieved all this by seeking to know and assist the organization as a whole rather than by directly competing to promote himself at the expense of others. He helped everyone do their jobs better and thereby became a natural facilitator, expert and, finally, leader.

Meanwhile, Mark's co-worker Ted--whose name I have also changed--took a different, more traditional path. He worked like a maniac to try to show that he was better than Mark and all the other analysts.

When he started, he wasn't sure how talented the other analysts were, but he figured that if he stayed in the office later and spent less time on unimportant things like eating lunch, he would probably be able to do a better job than at least most of them. He kept an eye on what they worked on (except for that dunce Mark, who wasted time ordering lunches) and made sure to take note of how he could make a case for taking over some of their work.

He networked aggressively. He dropped in to see members of senior management in their offices to express his eagerness to take on more work. He made sure to mention tasks he had already completed and to let them know of relevant courses he had taken in college that likely qualified him for added responsibility.

Ted didn't know--or care--what anyone outside the investment team did. The senior managers were the people to impress, and his fellow analysts were the people to keep ahead of. He sometimes had a hard time getting the administrative team's help in closing trades, but he didn't let that stop him. In fact, he'd often mention his disappointment with administrative staffers at his interruptions--er, meetings--with senior managers.

By the time bonus season rolled around, Ted felt sure he'd be the first analyst promoted. After all, he was the fastest at what he did and had the closest relationships with senior managers. To his shock and disappointment, he was passed over for that first promotion. He received a bonus, but he got no more than most of the other analysts. What had happened? Had they somehow managed to be just as fast as him?

What Ted had failed to realize was that everyone hired as an analyst was talented and bright. They all got their jobs done, and they all did them very well. Sure, working harder and faster got him noticed, but only for doing more of the same.

Although Ted was learning to do his job more speedily, he wasn't learning to do anything else. At no point was he facilitating, managing or leading--activities that could recommend him for advancement. More important, he had been asking his managers for more responsibility rather than taking on responsibilities organically and showing that he could handle them.

In the classroom his approach would have worked well. Instead of interrupting management, he would have been regularly visiting professors during office hours. His focus on his assigned tasks above all else would have made him a star student with the best grades in the class. Mission accomplished.

At work, on the other hand, Ted was still a top performer at what he did, but he was a hamster on a wheel trying to stay ahead of all the other bright and capable employees. Even worse, he was always worried about new competition. He was caught in an unending cycle of stress.

Let's examine what Mark did right that set him apart from Ted--and from everyone else starting out at the company.

1. Understanding how things work. His first move when he began his job was to learn as much as he could about the organization he was working for. He was driven more by curiosity and a desire to comprehend what he had gotten himself into than by ambition to outperform his peers. As a result, he quickly got to know people and their roles, without conveying any sense that he was just trying to promote himself.

2. Knowing what everyone does and how they do it. By asking questions about others rather than selling himself, Mark came to know more about the organization than some members of senior management. As a result, he became a go-to person for figuring out the best ways to get things done.

Note: When you're not comfortable speaking with a higher-up you don't really know, a simple e-mail can do the trick. Introduce yourself and let the person know that you're new and trying to get a full grasp of the organization, and you'd just like a quick sentence or two about what each person does. This is likely to work best at small to medium-size organizations. At larger organizations, the company Intranet can often help you get a handle on things, though how they work on paper and how they work in practice can sometimes be very different. At the smallest organizations, simple observation is often enough for learning who does what and how.

3. Learning where gaps exist and conveying to others how to fill them. No one else in Mark's peer group took the time to learn much about the company beyond their own responsibilities. They were too busy competing (and in some cases schmoozing). Mark, having a sense of how everyone got their jobs done, he was able to make recommendations at meetings based on observations that he alone had been able to come up with. He wasn't psychic; he was just paying attention.

4. Identifying solutions to organizational problems and making quick fixes. Being privy to how things actually worked, Mark was able to identify problems and propose solutions. Most people had no idea that the problems even were problems. They were too busy within their own roles to notice. Mark's ability to propose solutions gave him an edge as a strategic thinker as he made quick, easy changes that were obvious to him as an observer but often not so obvious to those lost in their specific duties.

5. Being unafraid of unglamorous work, and pitching in where help is needed. Mark's path to success began with humbly ordering lunches. But that gave him a chance to spend a few minutes each week getting a sense of everyone's schedules and making conversation. Sure, remarks by his co-workers made him fear at first that he'd get pigeon-holed as the lunch guy, but his purposeful weekly access to senior management gave him a moment to mention any thoughts he had on the latest financial news. And anyway, ordering lunches was just one of many items on Mark's problem-solving agenda. It took only a few minutes, so it didn't keep him from his other work; it was easy to eventually delegate to someone else (making him look like more of a manager); and it established him as down-to-earth and thoughtful as well as bright, making him well-liked at all levels.

6. Identifying linkages, for himself and others. One benefit of knowing the inner workings of an organization is that you can see how the parts interact. Once you see that, you're equipped to facilitate interactions across functions and groups--and you've got an important tool of a strategizer and leader, who has to absorb the whole picture in a situation before he can make effective and appropriate decisions. Furthermore, understanding the linkages that affect your job function makes you more productive and effective without actually working any harder.

The somewhat accidental approach Mark took to his job is hardly the only way to achieve career advancement, but it does give the lie to the assumption that the best or only way ahead is the one most of us have pursued ever since the first grade.

Avril David is an energy and environment analyst for Project Performance Corporation, a global management consulting firm, and a freelance writer on topics related to careers, energy, climate policy and green business.