“In a corporate environment you need to understand the culture you work in, and find a way to make it work for you rather than trying to fight it…what you need to look for is the informal power of the corporation, not necessarily the way the organization looks.”
— Linda Hudson, president of Land & Armaments at BAE Systems, in the New York Times. Hudson, who is No. 43 on Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women list, said an early boss told her to take a few months to figure out how things really work and identify the movers and shakers.
“You can never succeed in a corporate culture on your own,” she says. “It is all about how you fit, how you know how to make things happen within the infrastructure and in a way that’s acceptable to the norms and values of the corporation that you work in.” It all comes back to that key ingredient for success: adaptability. –Jessica Shambora