Political Environment.

Political Environment

I have been working for my company for two years already. Few months after a came my company was purchased by venture capital and merged with its biggest competitor. Newly created corporation is still on its way to develop the structure and define shape of environment. Top management of our new employer was recently hired and old senior executives were let go or quite their job. I was working for "the old regime" as the former executives are called today at our company for few months only but I was able to notice that environment has hanged drastically within those two years. Today we have much less politicking then we use to have. I can truly say that before it was primarily important whom do you know. People were working for the company for decades and they were in charge of everything from hiring to buying merchandise and promoting area directors.

English: Diagram of venture capital fund structure...

Sand Hill Road sign from 280 north. "KTVC was the ...

Sepia photograph of the "Atlas" statue in New York...

Many frustrated managers quite company after they realized that they could not count on promotion if they are not part of the exclusive circle of friends. Today we can see that results are more important then anything. If you produce and deliver what desired by the company you can expect results. Many managers and sales people were given a second chance after the old executives departed from the company and they proved that they can do they job they were promoted and reworded. Many new people came to us and we have seen some fast promotions while the person was capable of delivering results. My sales manager for instance was hired one year ago as an assistance manager and today he is respected as one of the best managers and he has been promoted to sales manager of one of the biggest sales teams in the company.

As much as it is the truth that the saturation of our environment with politicking has been lately lowered it is also true that it did not disappeared completely. It still appears and I would agree if someone said that it is still quite high. At least it is high if I compare with my other jobs. But I understand that in the company were we are sales oriented and sales people are paid almost exclusively commission we can expect that people are going to insure their success by building relationships with everyone that could be helpful. Also among managers who now can see that they have opportunity to grow we can see different political styles but politicking is far from extinction. We have new methods of evaluation and they simply call for new relationships and new connections. Everyone wants to look good in eyes of the new management and people work together to help each other to achieve this goal.

I would recommend to the new employee that he would learn what is expected from him and then focus on working on relationships that would be helpful to his accomplishments. Very practical recommendations would be related to how he can meet people. First of all we have special clearance sales were he could meet almost everyone from the new owner, CEO, COO, CFO, area director, the Internet development director to area managers from other regions, plenty of sales people and people who are in charge of warehousing and delivery. It is especially important when we realize that he will need to work with all those people to get his job done and he will need to learn how to cooperate with them effectively. As well as he can be transferred to many different locations and then he will adopt much easier if he knows some people from the are then if he were new to everyone.

Finally, new person would need to understand that as much as politicking can help him to progress he will still be obligated to show consistent results to be promoted and reworded. He should use his political skills to deliver required results because there is very lean chance that politicking will get him something if he fail to perform well.