The test is really simple. Let's imagine that tomorrow you doubled your positive impact on the success of the company as a whole. Will your boss be twice as happy with you? If not, progression is basically political, or maybe in some cases based on the skillful execution of tasks unrelated to anything valuable, and people who are very friendly or are very unconcerned with the company they're working for (and consequently will not be bothered by wasting enormous amounts of brainpower on achieving pointless goals), respectively, will fill out the ranks in very little time.
It is not that uncommon for the first step in success to be forgetting about what the company ostensibly exists to do to make room for the misaligned incentives, whatever they may be, that determine what it actually does. That's the essential element of the big company malaise. Anyone can be mediocre if they're not trying, or if they're trying extremely hard to do something that's ultimately pointless.
It is not that uncommon for the first step in success to be forgetting about what the company ostensibly exists to do to make room for the misaligned incentives, whatever they may be, that determine what it actually does. That's the essential element of the big company malaise. Anyone can be mediocre if they're not trying, or if they're trying extremely hard to do something that's ultimately pointless.