Being great at your job is a pre-requisite to your success but insufficient

On the day I got promoted to my first Executive position I was asked "how do you think the CEO will judge you in your new role?"

I remember the response to my mutters about "being great at my job" because it stopped me in my tracks and shocked me to my core.

Apparently from there-on-in I would be judged by my ability to work across the business. I.e., by the quality of my relationships and ability to influence action outside of my immediate control. Technical excellence in a hitherto silo'd context might have been what got me promoted but this was a new dawn. Apparently all bets were off and the old measures no longer applied. Not fair!

It didn't seem fair that I would be judged by whether I could work effectively with Hank in Ops or with Mary in Dev. I'd got to the top by avoiding and working round such 'difficult' people and now I had to find a way to work with them? What kind of nonsense was that? Obviously I ignored the advice [it was bonkers after all], carried on as normal and assumed the old rules applied and all would be ok. My delusion didn't last long!

Today I work with lots of people who've got to the top by being brilliant at their job and who similarly struggling to influence peers or subordinates across their businesses. A few weeks ago one of them rued "it's not enough to be great at my job anymore, is it?".

The following week I came across the Pericles quote from about 420BC about politics being interested in you even if you've eschewed any interest in politics.

For me two statements make a lot of sense together.