How to Survive in a Corporate Environment

In this week's video, I share three big ideas on how to survive in a startup or corporate envirnoment!

Have you ever struggled with feeling like you did not control your career, or that no matter how awesome you were at your job that you didn't get noticed for promotions?

Having worked the last ten years at corporate offices for Wal-Mart and Apple, I have learned how to effectivly navigate business environments as an individual contributor.  

The first idea:  Most business, techincal, or engineering problems are people problems.  Start-ups expect you to work 20hours a day!  If you are not taking care of your body, and more importantly your brain, you effectivly are hurting your creativity, your descions making, and your ability to use your brain to do the most effective work!

So sleep at least 7 hours a night.  Eat veggies.  Drink tons of water.  Stay away from too much caffiene.  Do not drink energy drinks.

The second idea:  Communicate and influence better!  Talk to people with positive intention, and showing them how they win when you make requests.  This requires building relationships, and taking an intreste in people outside of what you see at work.  

Knowing how to influence the right people to get things done is also important.  This could mean talking to someone's manager when they hold up your project, or talking to someone completelty different who has decision power.

The third idea:  Add value Always!  The times I focused on my career vs what helped my team or organization move forward were the times my career stalled.  Once I figured out how to help others more than I was helped in return, the promotions came and I was notices (in a good way) by management.

Figure out how to make everyone win when you propose a project, and the project will probably get approved.  If you then figure out the project will make the company $5 bazillion-million too, and your project will get approved if you can show how it will deliver.