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Note the key insight in Ripp's observation: Start with your boss, but also consider the perspective of your boss's boss. If you help your boss achieve success with his or her boss (not by going around your boss, but collaboratively), you're really onto something. You're focusing on the issues that matter most at the highest levels of the company -- the ones that'll get you the most recognition, the most power within the firm, and permission to pursue all your other dreams and goals.

You can probably see where we're going with this. In order to sharpen your understanding of what your boss needs to succeed, try drawing a Manager's Universe map from the perspective of your boss. Put your boss in the middle and sketch out the network of relationships that are crucial to your boss's success. Rate their importance and the quality of each connection based on your observations of the interactions between them. Analyze the map from your boss's perspective: Which are the most important focal points in the network? Which relationships are the most troubled? And then relate the answers to yourself: What can I do to strengthen my boss's connections with the key stakeholders in his universe? How can I make him look smarter, more efficient, more creative, more powerful, more successful?

Everything you do in response to these imperatives will help make your boss happy, and ultimately produce direct benefits for you and your team members.

If you have a boss who truly believes in transparency, you can even share your own version of your boss's universe with him or her and make it the basis for a valuable discussion about your role in that universe. Have your boss correct, expand, and clarify the map as he or she sees it. If this isn't possible, never mind. Use the map you've drawn as your guide. The most important thing is to constantly reinforce your own awareness of the fact that making your boss look and feel good is the smartest (and ultimately most powerfully self-serving) strategy any manager in The Middle can practice.

Igniting Your Network

So far in this chapter, we've talked about the importance of your network of stakeholders without using that much-misunderstood (and often-maligned) word networking. In this section, we're going to talk about networking, hopefully providing a new perspective that will help you make this crucial career practice really work for you.

First, a quick story.

These days everyone takes e-mail for granted, and if you're like me, you may be overdue for a cleanup of your inbox. But my friend Brian Tu had his first experience with e-mail a lot earlier than most of us -- way back in 1990. Brian was only about 14 years old at the time, and his father, an early adopter, set up an e-mail account for him. For several years, Brian had only his dad with whom to exchange e-mails. It was fun to do, but so was walking down the hall and talking to good ol' Dad face-to-face. Brian had no real inkling of the burgeoning power of the e-mail medium.

In high school, Brian began meeting other kids via e-mail.With each new e-mail friend, the power of the medium for Brian grew. Friends had friends, and great jokes and rumors and stories began to circulate around cyberspace. In his sophomore year, when Brian got the e-mail address of a cute girl, the Internet took on a whole new level of significance!

Brian was learning a vital truth about networks: Each new addition to any network adds more total value for all those involved. The same happened with fax machines (more offices equipped with fax machines meant more opportunities to use the gadgets) and, a century ago, with telephones.

The same truth applies to your personal business network. The bigger and broader it gets, the more valuable it will be -- not just for you, but for every star in the galaxy.

The relative handful of stakeholders you identified when you created your Manager's Universe map are just a start at defining your business network. If your key stakeholders number eight or ten, then secondary nodes in the network may number 30 to 50, tertiary nodes a few hundred, and lesser nodes -- some of them no more than points of light with whom you may communicate only once a year or less -- may be almost infinite in number.