I’ve stated many times that the four keys to success include vision, purpose, skills and environment.  To begin the New Year and your new initiatives, I want to provide you with some useful tips on the last factor, environment.  You can be the greatest talent in the world, but if you are in the wrong environment or fail to manage it effectively, you can easily become your greatest obstacle to success.

If you spent most of 2010 trying to be an overachiever with minimal results, this year may be the year to tone down the focus on yourself and learn to manage your surroundings.  I’m not suggesting that you don’t create new resolutions to reach higher levels of success.  You must.  However, it doesn’t really serve you to work on your personal goals so much that you are driven to always engage in self-protection and self-promotion.  The danger here is that when things aren’t going so well, you will have a tendency to blame others, the company’s products or even the customer’s inability to define their needs.  You will inevitability alienate others.  Hopefully, you remember where the accolades we use to boast the need for our promotion, raise or recognition come from.  That’s rights, others.  This year will be the year to help others become a success.  There’s nothing so powerful as building a group of supporters who want you around because you create success.    Every US President brings in their own team to ensure they have supporters focused on creating a winning environment; that is, a win for everyone. 

TIP #1:  Focus on creating success for others, not yourself.

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, entitled “Managing Yourself: Stop Holding Yourself Back,” Morriss, Elly and Frei suggest that you don’t focus on your desired public image too much.  For example, trying to always be analytical by demanding that decisions be made based on data can lead to a reputation of being inhumane and unfriendly.  Concentrating on projecting a consistent image leaves little room for improvisation.  IBM’s 2010 Global CEO survey of over 1500 CEOs found that creativity will be the flavor of the year in helping companies navigate an increasingly complex economy.  Limit your flexibility and you’ll likely limit your upward mobility.

I would also consider the other side of the coin when it comes to your public image; that is, too little management.  A failure to establish your image doesn’t mean you won’t have one.  As the economy continues to decline, companies are forced to find creative ways to maintain and grow their business.  This is usually preceded by a round or two of the blame game.  You know, identifying those individuals who have failed to fully engage in their corporate duties (whether true or not).  The term I hear most often related to this phenomenon is “dragging people under the bus.”  If you haven’t established an image of being a high performer, you could end up with an undesirable image that could take you a lot of time and effort to repair.  Would other managers do that to you intentionally?  Unfortunately, some companies must identify guilty parties somewhere in the company.  Don’t find yourself in the crosshairs.

Tip #2:  Manage your image or others will.

Morriss, Elly and Frei also reference the complexities of chasing your career goals alone.  This is a concept I’ve been pushing for years.  Creating your own career support team is an invaluable way to manage your image (or perception held by others), develop a viable career path, accomplish great tasks, build new skills, battle office politics and receive constant feedback on your performance, to name a few.  Putting a team together is as simple as identifying a few co-workers or friends, whose opinion you trust, and taking them out to lunch.  Tell them your goals and ask for their support.  If you need a more formal understanding of this technique, check out my book, Blitz The Ladder.  Another way to look at this is to consider where we get the rewards we seek.  We don’t give them to ourselves.  We get them from others.  Otherwise, we would all be wealthy and powerful.  So, why not ask others what we need to be doing to achieve our desired rewards.

Tip #3:  More results require more efforts.  Build your team.

As we welcome in the New Year, we’ll also usher in more challenges for business.  To ensure you don’t inherit some of those difficulties, you’ll want to develop a new plan for managing your career.  That means doing things a little differently and seeing things from different perspectives.   If you’ve achieved great success so far, keep doing what you’re doing.  If you haven’t, don’t fall into the trap of doing the same things while expecting different results.  The economy in 2011 will be very similar to 2010.  The challenges (and competition) will still be there.