Managing Up Beyond your Chain : Guardian Angels

 Often times in today's organizations, we have a multi-master situation. Business situations are dynamic, industry, consumer, product trends always changing, leading to re-organizations at the top. Line Managers are often good at managing chaos at the bottom or even across, but only few managers are good at Managing chaos at the top. If you are one of those managers whose team is getting plagued by re-orgs, who always seems to get affected when a new director or VP comes in, here are some strategies for you to navigate a dynamic work environment

1. North Star : Have a north star for your team/feature/product which is tied to the long term mission of the product/company. Without this you are a functional unit without any long term investment.
2. Strategy : Have a clear strategy about how you are going to hit that north star, with milestone level goals with buy in from leadership - this means your immediate boss off course, his boss and main decision maker in your chain
3. Guardian Angel in Engineering : Network with upper management and identify a guardian angel/s for your project. Guardian Angels are people higher up in the leadership chain with influence and power who are invested in the outcomes of your project. They may or may not be directly funding your project, but would like/need your project to succeed to further their agenda. 
4. Guardian Angel in Product : find key product leads typically much higher up above you who might benefit from the business wins/metric wins/the value proposition that your team brings. They can be valuable product liason for your area.
5. Point 5 is to reiterate the importance of both point 3 and 4. You need to network both on the engineering and product side and dig the well before you are thirsty. Don't start this networking when the reorg rumor is hitting. Start this as soon as you start delivering value. You need a network at the top with varying degrees of support. 
6. Time Decay : Remember that this kind of network loses value with time as people come and go, priorities change. Hence it is important to have pulse and make sure your team is working on the most valuable projects in the area. 
7. Collaboration peers : Guardian Angels are much more powerful just by their positions and decision making power in the company. Collaboration peers can give you lot of bottoms up and organic power. These are the people who get value because your team's impact bleeds into their territory. These are the peers who are your allies in the organization. Focus on transforming this relationship from transactional impact goals/metric focus to a more strategic "lets win:win increase the pie" approach. This will help you build bottom's up traction for your team in the organization. 
8. Grow the team : Grow other senior voices in the team so that you are not the only voice.
9. Build a network of mentors : These are leaders who are not necessarily directly related to your team/company. These are leaders who you have worked with in the past who have an equity in your career growth. These leaders are your board of advisors with organizational complexity case studies. By bringing these case studies you can add value to them and the relationship and make them a part of the journey. 

Different manager's at different points of time are employing either some or all of these approaches. Let me know in the comments what worked for you or what did not. Also looking to learn other strategies that you have successfully employed.