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Survive and Thrive in the Corporate World (My Humble Advice)
Michael Peng

Corporate America is experiencing a turbulent period. Lots of companies are struggling to keep afloat. Mass layoff, restructuring and bankruptcy have become the norm. Nevertheless, business is still running, albeit at a much slower pace. While scores of people lost their jobs, those ‘indispensable’ and ‘quintessential’ employees are doing just fine. Not only have they survived but are even poised to thrive in such a tough environment. Where is the catch? Well, I don’t think there are so many ‘secrets of success’ as those ‘golden rules’ often neglected. Despite all the well publicized scandals and infamy, I still believe that the corporate world in America is generally a meritocracy. That is, your advancement can only be determined by your merits and achievements. I have been a middle-level manager for financial firms on Wall Street for quite a few years. Here is some of my humble advice.

Develop Your Creativity By Finding The Work You Love To survive and prosper in a world that requires high creativity, you need to first find a job you love. Indeed, it is hard to feel creative in a job that you are doing just to get by. Sadly, today, we too often put concerns about financial security above creative passion. If what you are doing most of the day requires no creative skill, chances are your creativity is going downhill. Creativity is a way of life, not a matter of chance or a mysterious force to be summoned. You’re not going to walk in the door and suddenly be creative at home if all day you’ve been vegetating at work. Your creative power grows and develops through use; the more you are challenged, the more you grow. You have to take whatever action necessary to find your dream job: by retraining yourself, going back to school, or changing jobs if necessary. Or, if you cannot get used to working for somebody else, start your own company.

Establish Your Credibility People always judge you and can only judge you based on your previous record. Reputation is the most valuable intangible asset you can have as a person. Reputable record can also be your effective hedge against unfavorable situations. When it comes to dealing with critical issues, people turn to those whom they can trust. In a service-oriented corporate world, credibility is the strongest currency. Nevertheless, building a credit-based relationship between you and your colleagues is a challenging task. Here are some suggestions. (i) Make your first impression indelible. The first few projects that you are assigned to are critical in establishing your credibility. If you fail in your first and second projects, the chances are that you will be marginalized in the third one. Once again, remember, ‘you won’t have a second chance to make the first impression’. (ii) Manage the expectation. Do your best in making sure that all your promises are practical and feasible enough to implement and following through with. (iii) Maintain your reputation. It takes 10 times the effort to rebuild a damaged reputation than to maintain a good one. Don’t let small things ruin your reputation. You may be able to get away with dishonest behavior once or twice, but in the long run, integrity and reliability will pay off.
Do Small Things Right There is nothing too small in a corporate environment. Neglecting someone’s simple question could be interpreted as ‘irresponsive’ or ‘disrespectful’; a typo in an important report may be perceived as ‘sloppy’.

Be Responsive To Your ‘Client’ Essentially, the corporate world is a ‘client-server’ network. It is not just consultants who have to satisfy their clients. The concept of ‘client’ has a much broader meaning here. Nearly in all companies, most tasks can only be done interdependently---you take the job order from your boss, get the data from one group of people and you provide service to another group. Someone in another department may ask your help. All these people are your ‘clients’. As long as you are liable to those requests, you have the obligation to do it right and efficiently. Being sensitive and responsive to their need is crucial to establish your “indispensability”.
Keep Focused and Prioritize Make sure your ‘core’ tasks are fulfilled first before taking on something else. Otherwise not only might you not be appreciated, you might be subject to blames you don’t deserve. In the corporate world, everybody has a need, and you are being pulled in the different directions. You have to have dynamic priority list---updated all the time. Try to avoid meetings that you are invited to but don’t have to attend. Resist doing something that by its nature is interesting to you but is not an urgent task (e.g. testing some new algorithm that intrigues you).
Be Persistent And Work Hard The virtue of hard work has never been more true. Just go the extra mile--if needed--to get the things done.

Be Active In Staff Meetings For some people, staff meetings can be intimidating. People are afraid of saying the wrong things, or are afraid of misunderstanding others’ points. Nevertheless, the staff meeting is an important venue for people to understand your work, your contribution, and your thoughts. Make your voice heard. Here, both ‘style’ and ‘substance’ matter: be polite, be professional, be humorous (when occasion permits), be attentive to others’ opinions, and avoid asking a question that has been answered.
Publish Your Ideas Great ideas are always appreciated---particularly when the ideas have significantly practical values to your colleagues and the company. Don’t be afraid that your ideas will be stolen. Make your well-thought ideas be known and discuss them with your colleague or friends. Good ideas can only get better by getting constructive feedbacks from others. Try to publish them via newsletter, trade journal, or professional magazine. You will get much quicker recognition once your ideas are accepted and implemented. Don’t be lazy in writing E-mails and opinion memos. This is an important venue through which you can enhance your visibility and uplift your profile. Once again, creative and feasible ideas can advance you faster.

Never Stop Learning What you can do during the working hours is quite limited. Meetings, phone calls and E-mails are just a few among other distractions in your daily life. Most of the time, you are so swamped with work that just to keep your head above the water is quite a challenge, let alone have time to think and learn something more deeper. You have to find ‘spare time’ beyond 9:00am to 5:00pm to learn something new. You have to remain in a constant learning mentality. Visit a good university library or Borders Bookstore regularly (that’s how I spend most of my Saturday or Sunday afternoons.) What should we learn? In general, you need to enhance your knowledge in the following dimensions: (i) Exploring what is out there. For example, what’s new in the world (read Economist!)? what is new in the industry? What are the career opportunities? What are the new thinkings? (ii) The knowledge and skills you must have in order to do your current job well. (iii) The knowledge that helps enhance your thinking capacity in general. (iv) The insights that can improve your psychological well-being and help you balance your personal life (Ever heard of a book called Seven Habits of the Most Efficient People?).

Always Present Yourself Well Messy desk tops, sloppy dress, improper E-mails give people a bad impression and they would usually associate these behaviors to your work style. If you are living in a cubicle, be sensitive to your neighbors. Business casual notwithstanding, dress professionally and neatly all the time.
Make Long Term Goals You need to decide upon your true dreams and goals. Write down your specific goals and develop a plan to reach them. Ask yourself the same questions the HR manager would ask: how do you see yourself in five years? is your current job conducive to your long-term goals?

Time To Bail Out Things are not always worked out between you and your company. How do you know? Here are some potential warning signs. First, get an accurate picture of your status at the company. Are you no longer invited to meetings to which you previously contributed? Are you skipped over for special projects? Are you no longer in the CCed list of important E-mails relating to your project? Does your boss always keep the conversation with you short and overrule your decisions? Beyond that, you also should know how your boss fits into the overall organization. If you get a sense that your boss isn’t going anywhere, you might not be either. Failure to obtain an anticipated raise or promotion also may be a clear indication that it is time to start job hunting. If you see that the boss is hiring someone between you and him, it’s kind of a danger sign. That said, work your hardest to keep your current job secure.

Are We Being Held By Different Standard In America As Chinese American, we always ask ourselves: do we have to overcome additional barriers to get ahead in this society? The answer is, unfortunately, mostly likely. True, most of us have strong drive to succeed and work very hard to achieve, possess high degree of inherent intelligence and academic aptitude. True, many of us are willing to sacrifice short term gratification for a better future, are able to withstand plethora of unhealthy temptations generated-- as by-products-- by this ultra free society. We place education and learning at high importance. These factors give us potential to be high achievers. This may explain partially why the medium income of Asian American is appreciably higher than the average population in this country. Asian students generally score higher in most standardized tests. In California, Asian applicants usually have to fare much better to get into good law schools or medical schools. This double standard makes us frustrated yet proud. However, we can not afford to get complacent at all. In fact, I do see some major weaknesses in some of us aspirant to be successful in the corporate world.

First, we do not, and sometimes do not desire to understand the complicated structure of business. Most of us are merely content as a behind-the-scene ‘techie’ person. True, technical skills can help you get into the door of many good companies. But you have to learn the business side to be able to move up. Coming from a totally different environment, most Chinese professionals have difficulty understanding the business operation here. In the U.S., a business system is far more mature and sophisticated, and it is intertwined with the Byzantine structure of legal and financial institutions. How can the company find a niche in a highly competitive market? How was the deal done? Who are the players in the market? What are the roles of each counterpart? Those are just a few issues that deserve your attention. Once you have a deeper understanding of the business, you have a better chance to be a ‘front’ person as opposed to a ‘back end geek’ running the data warehouse all the time. You might even one day run your own high end company.

Secondly, we are not good at presenting ideas because of poor writing and speaking skills. If you are at higher level in a company, very often you are invited to ‘brainstorm’ meetings to generate ‘great ideas’. Sometimes, you are expected to provide a written opinion or thoughts. For example, in my quantitative group, we have a constant need to evaluate ‘third party’ vendors’ financial/mathematical models and their proprietary software. Not only must you understand the technical part, but also you have to express your thoughts well and offer valuable critical comments. Constantly failing to do so will accumulatively diminish your profile and standing in the company. For the most part, it is an issue of English language. Many Chinese students did quite well in GRE and TOEFL. But when it comes to using good English, they still don’t measure up. Unless you set a very high standard for yourself, you cannot expect to go very far from ‘communicable level’ of English. I hereby suggest that your yardstick be The New York Times’ “Book Review” section. Pick a Sunday edition and see how comfortable you are when reading it.

Thirdly, we do not recognize the value of interdisciplinary training. I noticed that lots of Wall Street managers were originally engineers or have science backgrounds. I even knew a successful female executive of a bond fund firm, whose bachelor degree was art history. If you are not quite successful in one particular area, try to find some cross-field position that not only uses your old skills but also takes you to something new, something with a promising future. Don’t stay in one specialized area for too long. If what you are doing now is nearly the same as what you were doing 10 years ago (say, C/C++, Java), you should think about switching to some ‘hybrid’ fields such as financial engineering, patent law, risk management, marketing research or IT training. On the other hand, if what you are doing is totally different from what you did 5 years ago, you may have wasted quite a lot of your human capital (i.e. the loss of education and experience, etc.). It is understandable that several years ago, many students switched to “computer science” because of an excellent job market. That seemingly never-sagging job market lured even those who studied social sciences. These people may not be happy because they virtually abandoned their ‘true love’ in order to fit the market. The bottom line is: you need to find the perfect mix for yourself that maximizes your total potential.

Michael Peng currently works as Director of Credit Product at Fitchratings, one of three largest credit rating companies (other two being Moody’s and S & P) in the U.S.. He was a vice president at ABN AMRO (a Dutch bank) and Credit Suiss First Boston respectively. Michael earned his Ph.D. in Economics from Temple University, Philadelphia in 1995. Michael’s professional experience also includes teaching Financial Engineering and Trading for EMBA program at Illinois Institute of Technology and Rutgers University. Michael may be reached at MichaelPeng@aol.com.