Organizational Awareness
Hey!
Welcome back to another week of musings. This week, we have the GDC happening in the city. I had a friend come to the city for the event, and we met for lunch.
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Lately, I've been thinking more about organizational awareness because I've had to answer a few questions about who knows what, who knows who, or who can help unblock something.
Sometimes, the staff+ work feels like being a directory to your organization. However, organizational awareness goes beyond knowing your company's organizational chart.
Why do you need it?
When working at a company, you'll most likely need work from other teams in one way or another. Organizational awareness is a skill that lets you understand the power dynamics, who has influence, how dynamics work, and whom to network.
Also, while companies have formal hierarchies (i.e., management), informal hierarchies and networks exist, which curiously are the ones you need to tap to get stuff done.
Where to start?
You might have (or have not) noticed that some people come up more frequently than others. They might be the informal team leader or domain lead in your company.
In other cases, one team might "sit in front of" another to regulate their work intake.
Other times, you might notice that some teams are not amicable with each other, their managers, etc.
You might also notice that an earnings call is coming up, work is ramping up, or the company is selling a division, laying off people, etc.
These noticeable events or people are good starting points in many of these cases. With people, especially, they might connect you to other people or more informal leaders of the organization.
Leverage
Leveraging your organizational awareness might look different depending on what you're trying to achieve.
Huddles regularly to sync on work ahead. Inform the other teams of priority changes so they can adjust theirs. They are figuring out who needs to vet a project to get it done. Who can explain to your team how a new system works and how we can integrate it without needing to go through some intake queue for support?
Other times, it is more tactical: you find a bug in a system you depend on and convince the team to let your team land the fix while keeping the responsibility that it will work.
Your turn!
Have you tried to develop organizational awareness? Or did it come naturally for you? Some people have a knack for this.
Let me know your thoughts by replying to this email!
Happy coding!
Things I discovered in the past week
- How Netflix Really Uses Java. I've been trying to watch this presentation from Paul Bakker, but I've only managed to see chunks of it. Has been interesting either way.
- This week, I enrolled for John Cutler's Scoping and Shaping for Success workshop! I'm excited!
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