Occasionally I either meet or read about a woman at the top of a "male business." Lina Hudson, President of BAE Systems, land and armaments group, is just such a person. Recently, the NY Times interviewed her about rising to the top of organizations. Her basic philosophy is that organizations are built on relationships, and those are the skills you need to get things done.
Because it's unusual to see an interview with as much emphasis on the ability to work the organizational culture, and because that ability has become more and more important in today's workworld, I want to excerpt her wise comments on managing the organizational culture. The interviewer sets up her response by asking for Ms. Hudson's best career advice.
I tell people that in a corporate environment, which is all I’ve ever known, first and foremost you need to understand the culture you work in, and find a way to make it work for you rather than trying to fight it. Corporations are very interesting machines. And what you need to look for is the informal power of the corporation, not necessarily the way the organization looks.
An early boss told me, spend the first couple of months in this job figuring out how things really work around here, and then go and establish allies with the real movers and shakers in the organization because that’s the way you will be the most successful. And I advise people to do the same thing.
You can never succeed in a corporate culture on your own. It is all about how you fit, how you know how to make things happen within the infrastructure and in a way that’s acceptable to the norms and values of the corporation that you work in.
Once you catch on to who really pulls the strings and where the real power base is, who you have to collaborate with, who you have to inform, who you have to seek for advice and agreement, you can actually make these big, very, very lumbering organizations work very, very well. It’s all about the informal structure. It’s about the critical relationships, and it’s about fitting in, in a constructive way, so that you really make your decisions that not only benefit yourself but benefit the corporation as well.
Ms. Hudson's comments ring all too true. You'll want to check out the entire article.
Managing the organizational culture is about the ability to manage up as well as the ability to develop intelligence networks to support your objectives. In today's flattened organizational world, these are competencies you need to start building the first day of your job. Don't get caught like a newly promoted vice-president of a major consumer products company who hired me to help him learn how to manage organizational system. It was such a high priority for the company's new organizational model that he was certain he'd lose his job if he couldn't manage across disciplines (that was about eight years ago). The possibility that a person could go that far without influence management skills today is practically nil.