The corporate world is NOT a meritocracy.

I think that after 8 years of work experience I finally got it. The business world is absolutely not ruled by a meritocratic system.
I spent my first 8 years working hard, very hard, with my eyes only set on getting my job done in record time, closing deals, and what I call "turning the pages" of project after project after project. So yeah, I was pulling my companies forward, and everyone liked me for it. I even had the necessary ammo to negociate my salary raises and my 1st level promotions into middle management.

However, every once in a while I would take the time to study my environment and look around me. I would see incompetents running projects, departements or even companies, making way more money than me and working way less than me. I would ask myself: how do these "loosers" reach such high ranking positions?
Well, I finally got it: the corporate world is NOT a meritocracy. People like me can climb the ladders up to a certain point, then they hit a glass ceiling. What ceiling is that? It's the POLITICAL and NETWORKING ceiling.
And yes, it exists. You may not want to accept it, and in that case it's your loss, but it's there, right above the middle management floor.
So from now on, instead of only working insanely hard on the tasks at hand, I will make sure to spend the necessary time on networking, showing interest in others, having lunch with other departments, keeping that smile on my face, and working on my behavior to make sure it sticks to the behavior found in upper management.
It is of course key to be recognized for the excellence you always deliver in your work, but you also need to broaden your horizon and start walking the political walk. Consider it as part of your job, and allocate time to it as you would allocate time to any other tasks.

Finally, and to expand on the meritocracy idea, I recommend the TED video "Wrong Philosophy of Success". The topic goes way beyond the topic of this blog entry, however it does touch on the idea that the WORLD is not a meritocracy.

Ted talk on a "kinder, gentler philosophy of success".

Here are a few key points of this talk:
- the real world is not a meritocracy
- if you believe it is, then you believe that everyone who enjoys success deserves it... and all those that don't deserve it as well.
- this train of thought makes failure way more crushing then it should be (bad karma / negative vibes imo) and for some people this can be psychologically very rough.
- it's crazy to believe we live in a meritocratic world. What about accidents at births? Illnesses? Being born into power or povrety?

Lets end this on a quote from St Augustin: "It's a sin to judge any man by his post (his business card) as you do not know what someone's true value is".