The effort you put within is all about you, family and relatives. The effort you allocate outside is about creating external linkages with peers and other stakeholders who have a strong impact on your life and can influence it.
For any kind of environment, there is always politics. There are many things happening that might certainly influence your personal life. When you have 100% of your resources in terms of money, time, how do you allocate them? Some people will allocate 30% to looking after themselves. This is being internal. Others will spend 70% marketing themselves to other parties. This is being external.
If you come to office in the morning, how many times do you go around greeting people for them to notice you are in? You can send them a chart, an email. Creating this kind of impact is very important to achieving personal success whether you are the boss or not, most senior in the organization or junior.
Alan Weiss says it is very important to always be pragmatic based on your level in any environment. The lower you are, the less opportunities for external networking. The higher you go on the corporate ladder, the more you need to keep focusing on external. If you are the CEO, you should actually not sit in office. Much as you have to mobilise the team internally, your major output of your job is creating stakeholder engagement, reputation and growth.
Once you achieve this, you are on your way to staying at the top of the corporate ladder.
