This is a true story. I swear it is.

Nearly 30 years ago, when I was a (very) young and upcoming professional, I was invited to a dinner party attended by many of the senior vice presidents of the firm (all male) and their wives. Despite their graciousness, it soon became clear that I was a previously-unencountered specimen of enormous interest to the SVPs wives, who spent most of the dinner probing thoroughly into every conceivable aspect of my domestic arrangements. How was I able to keep the house clean (and still work)? Go to the market and handle the cooking (and work, essentially in the role their husbands had once filled)?

Finally, we reached the crux of the questioning: Who read my husbands newspaper?

Who indeed?

One dinner partner explained that she rose early each morning, read the paper from cover to cover, cut out articles that were relevant to her husbands career (particularly those she knew to be of interest to his boss), and placed them in a folder next to his morning coffee. How, she wondered, was my husband able to obtain the information required to impress his boss and further his career?

This story reflects a world in which climbing the corporate ladder often required the effective teamwork of men and their equally competent partners (Behind every good man...). My dinner partner, in fact, explained that when her husband had attended Harvard Business School, there had been a separate track for the wives, training them in their responsibilities for furthering their husbands careers, with an emphasis on helping develop his relationship with the boss (including, I presume, the newspaper bit). (By the time I went to HBS, there were still sessions for spouses, but they were support groups on how to survive marriage to an HBS grad, not training classes on how to promote their careers.)

Although the idea of a spouse who could devote her lifes energy solely to furthering ones career may seem like a distant dream to those whove curried the favor required to climb the corporate ladder over the last several decades, there is an even greater step change underway: far less focus on impressing upward at all.

Pleasing the boss as a way to gain status is fast becoming less important than the reputation you build among your peers. Increasingly, the opinion of a superior or a positional authority will have limited influence on your ability to be effective or ultimately succeed in your career. Your contributions will be measured and valued through the opinion of your peers. The idea of soliciting favor with the boss may seem as odd to those in their 20s today as the world of those dinner party spouses did to me.

This principle is already evident in the game world inhabited by Generation X and Y. For example, in the highly popular World of Warcraft, participants are reviewed in post-battle debriefings by fellow guild members; the outcome of this peer judgment is integral to ones progress in the game. Participants use peer assessments to identify which person in the guild can be most helpful in each specific future encounter.

Peer networks are hierarchy-free. They do not take into account formal titles or positions; they run on acknowledged expertise. New knowledge is not sent up any formal chain of command to be vetted and approved; rather it is posted broadly or sent, via the network, to people who are believed to be most interested or most in the need to know. Similarly, questions are not directed to supervisors who meter the flow of knowledge, but to people who have proven reliable sources in the past -- who have a widely acknowledged reputation.

This peer-to-peer model will increasingly play out in the corporate world. Your insight, knowledge, and expertise will still be critically important -- perhaps more so than ever -- but you will use it primarily to build your reputation among your peers, not to impress your superiors. Digesting -- and disseminating -- information along with your morning coffee is more essential than ever, even if you dont have a spouse to serve it up for you.

Do you agree? Do you see a shift yet in the way corporate reputations are established and enhanced? Or are you (or someone you love) getting up early to clip newspaper articles?

HARVARD BUSINESS ONLINE RECOMMENDS:
Building a New Ladder to the Top (HMU Article)
Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence (Paperback)
What It Means to Work Here (HBR Article)
Getting 360-Degree Feedback Right (HBR Article)