Decision makers and corporate strategists obsess over the analysis, the data, the evidence, the gut feeling. Decisions do require all that. But agility matters more than the quality of any single decision. You will get decisions wrong — that is not the failure. The failure is staying with a decision once it is wrong. The agile decision-maker reverses without hesitation, as many times as it takes. This is the part that separates the ones who rise: they are not attached to having been right.

Reputation is all you have. Now, reputation in corporates is not so much about who you authentically are, but more about how you are perceived. For anyone with a functioning conscience, these are closely related — but they remain different things. Navigating corporations successfully means knowing what your reputation should be, and when your reputation needs to change. The only thing is that reputation precedes you, so the manoeuvring space is never too wide.

Your strongest asset is not that you are black belt, devops certified, nor that you can write code faster than all your peers. Your strongest asset is what the highest ranking executive who knows your work, think of your competence. That could be surprising things: you are exceptionally good in creating engaging content, you have the best questions at all staff calls, you are the life of the party, or simply - you are their best buddy. This is how you should see your colleagues too, and be aware for yours but also for their strongest assets.

Now, if you are any good in what you do, chances are, people will want to work with you. People might even try to poach you to go to different units. It is incredibly important you judge the situation and those people correctly. And if you want to stay in corporate, you will need to keep doing this all along the way.

Thriving in corporations means playing a game. You do good job, you are well respected, you move on. You don't do that - it is game over. Now, what it means to do good job and what it means to be well respected can change quickly. It is important, you understand when that change happens, but more importantly who designs the game and creates the rules. Now, replicate their attitude (towards work) and you will be ok.

This is important at all levels, yet most important at executive level, where the game has the highest stake, and you have probably responsibility not only for yourself but also for others. Being the only one or part of very few who anticipates and work based on their anticipation will guarantee you success. Things become interesting, only, when people around you start anticipating your anticipation and then you start anticipating their anticipation about your anticipation.

This is only relevant if you are granted some large, unit-wise or enterprise-wide power, like when you are leading a Transformation effort, or you are rolling out a system that various units will use. To do this, you need to have the project mission handed to you and the power to use it. If you are in this position, you can be extremely effective if you are thoughtful about the long term effects from various policies and strategies (that you are responsible to roll-out) and you conduct your leadership and management efforts by steering disparate parties in a way that brings them closer together.

Do this for personal benefit - and it is manipulation, not steering.