The Politics Of Employment

Whern it comes to staying employed, this is not the time to be complacent or to rest on your laurels. Managers are no longer people-oriented. They are tough and exacting and are expected to make ruthless calls that effect large groups of people.

While it is impossible to shape decisions three levels above you, it is possible to position yourself so that you are perceived as a valuable employee. This is especially important for people in staff positions that don't have a direct impact on profits and people who are consultants.

My conclusions:

1. Discern the real organizational chart in distinction to the paper organizational chart. It is important to have face time with those who have real decision-making ability as to your long term viability as an employee. I do this by meeting bi-weekly with my managers. Recognize the power of the spoken word. Learn to control your behavior and shape the behavior of others by your behavior. Act the part.

2. Never let anyone else define you in a way that is at odds with what has really happened. Respond aggressively to wrong information about ypu. Protect your reputation with facts and truth.

3. Play to your strengths. Repair weaknesses.

4. Don't operate under the radar. This has the effect of making you stand out negatively.

5. Strive for Janus-like duality and flexibility. Work hard at what is in front of you but also plot your next move, try to see the big picture but also be detail oriented, be a technocrat but also be a generalist, work within your role but also across and outside your role. Don't allow yourself to be labeled. Cogs are expendable.

6. Survival is more a function of personaility and psychology rather than knowledge and hard work. Try to understand motivations and feelings of the main players.

7. Courtesy and integrity are power plays. Drain off grievances, admit mistakes, and give spiritual strength and affection to others when appropriate.

8. Information is reality. Perception is reality. Psychology is reality. The trick is to integrate information, perception, and psychology in such a way to protect your career.

9. Cover yourself. Document everything. Translate effort into metrics. Advertise or the sheriff will do it for you.

10. Get honest feedback on your performance. Make sure your performance is in alignment with managerial expectations and goals. Put in extra effort to make his happen.

Blue-Collar/Intellectual Snobbery

Letter to The New York Times Book Review

To the Editor:

As a “knowledge worker” who is all thumbs, I do not feel superior to people who work with their hands. I do not feel inferior to them, either, despite Matthew Crawford’s claim (described in Francis Fukuyama’s review of “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” June 7) that “most forms of real knowledge,” as Fukuyama writes, “come from the effort to struggle with and master the brute reality of material objects.” Rather than replacing intellectual snobbery with blue-collar snobbery, why can’t we recognize that the types of knowledge gained from struggling with material objects and from struggling with abstract arguments are equally “real”?

FELICIA NIMUE ACKERMAN
Providence, R.I.

The writer is a professor of philosophy at Brown University.