Some observations from executives I've met: 1. Take risks. 2. Be willing to take on responsibilities that you don't know how to do yet. If you're competent at the task you're working on, you're wasting your time. 3. Get to know all sorts of people throughout the organization. Not just the important people, but ordinary people working on interesting things. The important people notice that you know all the folks worki…
Even with my company being so large, there's a few key names I always hear dropped. Those are the "A" players, and always busy. For new projects, they're always the first people managers try to draft on to their projects. This relates to both #4 & #5, where high priority people get high priority projects which leads to further high priority things.
What I'd like to know for my own career is (in a large and bureaucratic system) if there is a repeatable way to find the high priority projects. The "A" players get tagged first, and work seems to be silo'd so you don't hear about the cool/high priority projects until after it's underway and they've already staffed out the team through people they know.
My current strategy is to work with one of those "A" people in hopes of getting projects passed on that he's too busy for. We're in similar roles, and I work well with him. I recently got a fairly high priority project because of that, but I didn't know if anyone else had any strategies.