Who sets your Agenda? (from Linchpin: Are You Dispensable?)

Who is your boss? What is your work for? Whom are you trying to please?

If you are working only for the person you report to according to the org chart, you may be sacrificing your future. Pleasing him may cause you to alienate customers, hide your best work, fit in, and become merely a cog in the system. The system wants you to fit in, but pleasing the system may not be your real work.

The typical big college in the United States today has a binge culture. The agenda is to get by in class, party a lot, become popular, and drink when you can. It's not so difficult to adopt this agenda, not so difficult to fit in. But where does it get you?

The typical nonprofit had embraced its status quo. If you embrace it, too, you'll get no pushback. Your anxieties will be minimized and your fears will not be aroused. But what will it lead to?

Your hard-charging boss wants to look good, and he's going to do this by cutting short-term costs. You can help him by doing nothing all day, spending no money, and making no noise. Then what happens?

If your agenda is set by someone else and it doesn't lead you where you want to go, why is it your agenda?