#1 Know The Business

When you are on the ‘same page’ as the business you will engender a deeper level of conversation, you will ask better questions, you will push back on the right issues and overall you will command the respect of your colleagues beyond your functional (task, project, product) brilliance.

You should know and be able to quickly articulate key business details such as:

• what industry you are in;
• what are the top performing product / service lines;
• what are your best channels to market;
• who are your primary customers;
• who are your most strategic partners (and why? what’s in it for them);
• who are your biggest competitors and what is their strategic or competitive advantage;
• who are your likely unexpected competitors and
• who is going to disrupt you or your industry externally

#2 Get To Know Your Customer’s Customer

Don’t settle with just understanding the ‘Marketing’, ‘Risk’, ‘Operations’...