In school there is a big emphasis on the individual. This makes sense, because the goal is for the individual to learn. So assignments are for an individual, projects are for an individual, and grades are for an individual. You’ve gotten accustomed to working by yourself, being in control, and knowing everything in the scope. So now as you enter the workforce, throw all that out the window.
I/T has gotten so large and so complex that it is completely impossible for one person to do it all by theirself. There are huge processes around the lifecycle of I/T and you’ll likely play one small part at a time. Processes are broken into tasks, and tasks are assigned to teams. Everything needs to connect to everything else. To work in isolation is to be disconnected from the process, which probably means you aren’t part of the lifecycle, and may not be contributing what is needed.
So you’ll likely be working on a team. What is a team, is it just your department? It could be, but more than likely teams don’t follow hierarchial organizational boundaries. Probably your department is performing multiple tasks, so some people in your department will be doing things that aren’t directly connected to what you are doing. That means in the most simple case, your team is a fraction of your department.
But the thing that is happening with increasing frequency is a matrix team. Instead of the team being vertically oriented along hierarchy lines as in a hierarchial management model, it ends up being scatter-shot, with team members in a horizontal or diagonal orientation. What this means is that team members cross hierarchy boundaries, and the only level at which all the team members have a common manager is the CEO. So the CEO isn’t going to have the time to manage your team, so you’ll need to learn how peer management works. This is sometimes called “dotted-line” management. It is about taking and giving direction to and from people that have no direct hierarchial management of you. It’s basically all the responsibility with none of the authority. Yes, hierarchial managers can get involved if necessary, but that should be only if something is broken. It’s about getting people to do things by persuation instead of punishment. And a team can expand even outside the classical organization to include contractors, 3rd-party business partners, customers, and even competitors. And if everyone has a slightly different agenda or goal, it can be challenging.
But working at a large company I’ve learned that our competitive advantage isn’t about nimbleness, raw capital, or even established market power. The advantage is in the network of people. These are people that are on your team outside of your department, or folks that can provide information and insight from their experience that you can’t get anywhere else, or folks that have an interest in what you are doing and help in small ways. The power of the network is what enables you to do things that you simply can’t do by yourself. But with that network you can achieve some amazing things in a small amount of time. You need to crawl out of your personal shell and plug in to the network.